iPod Photo appears to lock up during boot

[zeb]

Hi, I've finally got around to trying Rockbox, after ressurecting my iPod with a new HDD and HDD cable.

I'm having some problems, though.  I've run a restore on the iPod to ensure that it was completely clean.  I then unzipped rockbox and the fonts onto the iPod, and I also did  DGT1.3cvs for good measure (as I like the look of it).

When I boot the iPod sometimes it hangs on the illuminated iPod logo and sometimes it sticks on the Rockbox logo.  On the odd occasion that it does go into Rockbox it doesn't seem to want to create the database properly.  If I go in to 'Database' it states that it hasn't been initialised.  I hit the select button and it says it's going to build it in the background but it just hangs.

By continually rebooting it I did manage to get an album in the database and it did start to play but it hung part way through :-(

The iPod boots to the Apple firmware and appears to operate correctly.

I've tried builds for 2007-03-16 and 2007-03-07 but they both appear to be the same.

Any advice would be appreciated.


Neil.

[gnu]

Have you used the newest bootloader? Try reinstalling!

[zeb]

I pulled down ipodpatcher and it reports 'ipodpatcher v0.9 with v1.0 bootloaders'.

I've just managed to get it to boot and gone into 'Database'.  It said that the database needed initializing so I clicked the select button.  It's now reporting 'Building database... 0 found (PLAY/PAUSE to return).

Pressing Play/Pause does nothing!  I only copied two albums across so it shouldn't take too long to build the database.

Any further advice appreciated.

Many thanks.

[bluebrother]

You need to reboot after building the database. Have you tried using the file browser first? That should have worked in the first place.

[zeb]

Only once has it told me I need to reboot for it to use the database.  I've just tried the files menu and it displayed the directory structure.  I pressed play on the directory containing the album and it hung!

I've had it hang at most points.  Sometimes on the illuminated apple, sometimes on the rockbox logo and also on the main menu.

I've just gone into the database again and opted to build the database, it's now up to '962 found', it's been up to over 1100 before, but now it's hung  

With the Apple firmware it appears to be fine, though

[zeb]

I've just forced a reboot and it said it was committing the changes to the databases.  It's now stuck at the rockbox logo on the wallpaper of my chosen theme!

[zeb]

OK, I've been having a play and I thought I'd try an older version of rockbox.  I gave http://solutions-i.org/julius/rockbox/rockbox-jbuild-4g-20070120-cop.zip a go and the jBlackGlass theme and it works a treat.  It hasn't hung once!

Any idea what may have changed in the last couple of months that would have affected stability?  Or is there a patch in the custom build that improves things?

Many thanks.

[Chill]

I can report an identical experience to Zeb's.  As a long time user of Rockbox on my iriver H140 I though putting Rockbox on my wife's old 20GB ipod colour/photo would be easy, but I've been pulling my hair out and cursing Rockbox for an hour or so, because it's been hanging at various points exactly as Zeb has described - only rarely did it get past the Apple logo.  Like Zeb, I've also restored the ipod, and I'm using the latest ipodpatcher.

I put on the same build that Zeb linked to above, and it works a treat.  I suppose the next step would be to try some later builds and see when the problem was introduced.

[Chill]

I've tried various archived daily builds between 20/01 and 17/03 to try and find the date when this problem was introduced.  In my testing, the build from 13/03 seems to work OK (haven't tested it for long, but it booted OK and started playing a track OK), whereas the build from 14/03 hung during boot up.

I can't see anything obvious in the changelog for 14/03.  Maybe Zeb could try these two builds as well.

Chris

[buckminster]

I just tried Rockbox for the first time yesterday and was having problems as well with the 17.03 build (as well as 16.03-14.03). I tried the 13.03 as Chill suggested and everything seems to be running fine now.

[zeb]

I've just tried the two builds from 13/03 and 14/03.  14/03 hangs in various places.  13/03 works a treat.  This looks to be a common problem.

I'll give the latest build a go in a mo'.

[zeb]

OK, the 2007-03-20 22:57 build appears to be working absolutely fine.  The UI appears slightly sluggish but is that because the second processor isn't being used?  The OS stacks debug info seems to indicate that the codec thread is running on the second core.

http://solutions-i.org/julius/rockbox/rockbox-jbuild-4g-20070120-cop.zip seems to be a lot more responsive.  Certainly changing volume during playback feels smoother.

HTH.