rockbox evolution OR which build to use?

[trenche]

sry for being a bit offtopic:
Hi folks!

[Prologue]:
I didn't have internet access since July and therefore I'm still using an almost ancient rockbox build on my 5G ipod. As far as I can remember it's a senab build with julius patch and jBlackGlass Themes. Don't get me wrong: I'm actually totaly satisfied with this rockbox version. But as I now have internet again, the rockbox page was one of the first pages I surfed to
[/Prologue]
THX to everyone who didn't quit reading so far
Now I've got some questions.

1. Although I'm satisfied with my version of rockbox, I'm dying to know what progress the project made since my last glimpse of it. So is there any new kick-ass feature since Jul/06 I should't want to miss? (Sure I could read the whole changelog since my last visit, but maybe someone could outline the major changes in short.)

2. It seems that there are quite a lot popular "unsupported" builds at the moment. I planned using a Julius or a senab build, but I couldn't figure out the main differences between them two. Could someone give me a hint? Is there maybe another not too experimental build I should have a look at?

3. Do I have to consider something when updating such an outdated version of rockbox? Maybe I have to flash a new bootloader? Or can I just overwrite the .rockbox directory and the rockbox.ipod and that's it?

I hope my post is right in here, in case it's not: move please. Since it's only allowed to create threads containing new builds in the "Unsupported Builds"-board (yeah.. I've read the rules *smilie removed*) and as my question is mainly related to unofficial builds, I didn't know where to post..
And keep up the damn good work, guys! I would contribute if I wasn't too lame to code :/


Anyway: thanks in advance for reading & maybe someone has a litte time and could help me with my questions

cheers,
trenche

[Genre9mp3]

1. http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/MajorChanges

2. I don't use unsupported builds and neither have an iPod 5G. You can read details though about these builds in the appropriate threads in Unsupported Builds forum.

3. As you will see in the Major Changes page, there's a new bootloader out for iPods so you have to update both bootloader and Rockbox.

[Febs]

This one is a big deal to me, since I often use my iPod in the car:

2007-02-04: Ipods, sansa e200 and iriver h10 can now distinguish a charger from a real USB connection.

[trenche]

Thx for your answers so far, they where very helpful for me
But could someone maybe describe in short what's the difference between the julius and the senab experimental build? I know I could get this information from their threads, but I have to admit that I'm to lazy to read through 50 pages of posts *g*

[Llorean]

Since they're both unsupported builds, you really should read through their respective threads. Or at the very least read the most recent update for each and see which patches are included.

[trenche]

Well, I've read the patchlist and some 20 pages of the threads. And that's exactly the reason for my question. I can't find any major differences - but i suspect there must be, or why else would there be two seperate builds.. So I'm a bit confused.

But sry if this question ist inappropriate here, I didn't want to offend.

[Llorean]

The main difference is the fact that Julius' builds include patches specific to his themes. That's primarily it.

[trenche]

Thank you, Llorean! That was what I wanted to know
Thought senab includes the theme patches aswell, but my information may be outdated.

[ryran]

Indeed. That was only for a short period. At the moment, it seems Julius isn't intent on updating his builds extremely often, whereas Senab has been doing new ones at least every week.

I'd definitely recommend trying one of the [unsupported] builds that includes the coprocessor patch, which [obviously] hasn't been committed yet. In my experience, it makes a huge difference.

[trenche]

Ah, I see. Tomorrow I will give senabs build a try to test the coprocessor patch. So there's no possibility to use julius' wps with senabs recent builds, except selfcompiling?
That's a pity..
Seems there maybe was a conflict between senab/julius and there won't be the possibility to use julius themes with senabs builds in near future:

Can you include the patches from PiesJulius to support his themes ?

- http://pijulius.blogspot.com/2006/08/jclix-rockbox-themes-ipod-video.html
- http://pijulius.blogspot.com/2006/05/jblackglass-for-ipod-photocolor.html
- http://pijulius.blogspot.com/2006/05/jblackglass-rockbox-themes-ipod-video.html

These can also be found there : http://www.rockbox-themes.org/

And the links from http://pijulius.blogspot.com/ contain also the patches to apply...

Thank for all.

I could add them if I wanted, but there lies the problem. I don't want to  

Too bad..

A short question to the bootloader: Has the new bootloader any new features or why was it changed? And updating the bootloader/firmware partition won't affect the data on the fat32/"data partition", right?
There may be an answer to this in the forums or the wiki, but I'm a bit helpless atm with navigating.

[saratoga]

You're welcome to try adding the patches yourself.  From what you quoted, it sounds like senab hasn't actually tried, not that he tried and couldn't do it.

[ryran]

I don't believe there's any conflict; it would just be a lot of extra work (and he doesn't want to).

As for the bootloader: No, it won't hurt your data. As I remember, one of the reasons for the new bootloader was changes in anticipation of cop support.. I believe. Also, an oh-so-wonderful feature was implemented..that is, now you can turn on the hold switch during boot to go to the apple firmware, instead of trying to hold menu down.
see http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodInstallationBeta#Step_2_Install_the_bootloader ... easy as pie.