What does RockBox do to hardware?

[J2383]

Has anyone found that RockBox reduces the life of any of the hardware on their player?

Perhaps hard drive failure due to inefficient use of the HD.
Or maybe damage to the buttons due to playing doom for 6 hours a day.
Or screen failure due to some fault in the coding.
Or perhaps a shortened battery life due to all the extra rechargings.


This topic isn't meant to put RockBox or anyone involved with RockBox down. I adore what everyone here is doing, however, I am curious about what problems people have been having. Thanks everyone.

[AlexP]

None on H140.  Anyhow, someone using their DAP more and wearing out the buttons is hardly rockbox's fault.

IMO, the only one of your points that is conceivable is the battery life issue, and then only really on iPod/H10.  On the iriver H1x0 and H3x0, and the Archos I think, rockbox extends battery life.  I'm not sure about the X5

[michael.conner]

Has anyone found that RockBox reduces the life of any of the hardware on their player?

Perhaps hard drive failure due to inefficient use of the HD.
Or maybe damage to the buttons due to playing doom for 6 hours a day.
Or screen failure due to some fault in the coding.
Or perhaps a shortened battery life due to all the extra rechargings.

What kind of inefficient HD use do you suspect Rockbox does?  

[Llorean]

In the case of some hardware, Rockbox lasts longer per battery charging AND spins up the disk less often. Button use is of course entirely dependent upon the user, and there's never been a case of reported or even suggested damage to the screen so far, I believe.

While there is no question that batteries can be worn out, and so can hard disks, remember that currently all the version that get worse battery life aren't released yet, so you have to be aware that you're acting as a tester running unreleased software. While Rockbox should not cause any additional charge of your batter, if you're charging twice as often there is some wear involved.

[J2383]

What kind of inefficient HD use do you suspect Rockbox does?  

None. I was just attempting to think of every possible piece on an mp3 player that could become damaged.


Thank you Llorean, that was more or less what I was looking for.

[jdong]

What kind of inefficient HD use do you suspect Rockbox does?  

I've noticed on my 5.5G iPod that if I skip 5 songs while playing a playlist, Rockbox can take around 2-5 minutes to refill its buffer and spin down the HD, while stock firmware gets its buffering done in a matter of seconds.

This may be one case of inefficient HD use, and if the disk is really kept active for 5 minutes while the wearer is, say, jogging, I suspect it may make some kind of impact in the overall life of the unit.

And with the iPod, I think the most concerning aspect is the reduced battery life. Rockbox uses the battery about twice faster than stock firmware, and those additional charge cycles will have more impact on the unit's life than any other effect.

[J2383]

I've noticed on my 5.5G iPod that if I skip 5 songs while playing a playlist, Rockbox can take around 2-5 minutes to refill its buffer and spin down the HD

I've had that happen as well. Are you playing large files when that happens? Mostly all I have on my RockBox are all my 100+ Mb FLAC files I copied from various CDs. I assumed it was because they were so large that it took longer to refill the buffer.