Do I Have to Keep Apple's Firmware?

[wswartzendruber]

If I wanted to, could I install the Rockbox (via x86_64 Linux) firmware without keeping any of Apple's software?  What am I required to keep?

[linuxstb]

Rockbox doesn't alter the contents of the flash ROM, which is where the Apple bootloader/disk-mode/diagnostics mode lives, so you can't remove that.  Rockbox also doesn't have its own usb disk mode, so removing the Apple disk mode would leave you unable to access your ipod anyway...

But you can completely replace the firmware on disk.  Using ipodpatcher, you have two options:

ipodpatcher [device] -wf bootloader-ipodXXXX.ipod

which will replace the Apple firmware on disk with the Rockbox bootloader.

Or even:

ipodpatcher [device] -wf rockbox.ipod

which will put the main Rockbox binary in the firmware partition, without any bootloader.

Before you use the -wf command, you may want to do:

ipodpatcher [device] -rf apple_os.ipod

to extract the main Apple firmware if you ever want to restore it.  Or you can then copy the apple_os.ipod file to either the root of your FAT32 partition or inside the .rockbox/ folder, and the bootloader will load the Apple firmware from there.

[wswartzendruber]

So in other words, I can still trash Apple's iPod UI?

[Hvatum]

Nice, I do this to save space on my iPod. I see absolutely no reason for keeping the iPod firmware. I've got the iPod Nano 2GB, so the slow transfer is tolerable.

I'm really impressed. This now start much faster then before. Ironic, that it now boot in a faster time then the original Apple firmware!  

Does anyone have an idea how one can increase the transfer speed under Rockbox, maybe this feature worked on? Is this possible? Thanks for the help!

[Jakeworld]

Is there any wiki page that has this information available? This is actually a very useful feature, and I have simply saved the commands to a document, but if there is a wiki on this, that'd be great. Thanks.

Edit: What do you mean by "transfer rate?" If you mean transferring the songs from the computer to the iPod, it really depends on the medium you're transferring from for one, but also since you're transferring through USB, you're automatically restricted in the maximum transfer rate. I personally find that by transferring manually, it takes less than 10 minutes to transfer 6GB of songs, whereas iTunes takes almost 20 minutes.

[Hvatum]

Edit: What do you mean by "transfer rate?" If you mean transferring the songs from the computer to the iPod, it really depends on the medium you're transferring from for one, but also since you're transferring through USB, you're automatically restricted in the maximum transfer rate. I personally find that by transferring manually, it takes less than 10 minutes to transfer 6GB of songs, whereas iTunes takes almost 20 minutes.

Yes. That is true. But under the Apple software I reached a transfer rate higher then under Rockbox. So if I understand correctly the problem is with Rockbox, not the limitation of USB, but perhaps I have made a mistake here. It is also possible that the problem finds itself in my computer's interaction with Rockbox. So you may not experience these slower transfers.

[Jakeworld]

That is rather strange, and it can be a significant issue if you have a large collection of media. I'm not sure what would cause that, unless somehow iTunes draws more potential out of the USB than does Explorer for certain computers.

One reason why it may be faster for drag and drop for me is that on iTunes, I had album art attached to each individual song, which it has to read, categorize, and allocate, and could greatly impact the speed of my transfer.

[linuxstb]

Rockbox doesn't have a USB disk mode - the problem is that Apple's firmware has two different disk modes, one of which is slow, and one is fast.

The slow one is the "emergency disk mode", which is part oif the firmware in flash ROM, and Rockbox reboots your ipod into this mode when it detects a USB connection.

The fast one is in Apple's main firmware - the one the original poster wanted to remove.

This seems to affect Nanos more than other targets.

Preliminary work has started on implementing a usb disk mode in Rockbox, but that may be a long time in coming.

[rADo]

This is great info, should be in wiki. I never use obsolete Apple FW, and doing "ipodpatcher [device] -wf rockbox.ipod" means it boots now 4-5 seconds faster :-)

[Hvatum]

This is great info, should be in wiki. I never use obsolete Apple FW, and doing "ipodpatcher [device] -wf rockbox.ipod" means it boots now 4-5 seconds faster :-)

Yes! This is a good tip. There almost is not a reason to keep the original iPod firmware.  

[knight4led]

this begs the question, since you are flashing rockbox.ipod to the firmware partition, do you have to use ipodpatcher to update builds?

[Llorean]

Please don't use the term "flashing" when there's none actually taking place. You're just writing to disk.

But yes, if you put rockbox.ipod in the firmware partition, you'll have to use ipodpatcher to update your build.