Rockbox Technical Forums
Support and General Use => Hardware => Topic started by: jbills on February 02, 2019, 02:16:03 PM
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Heya! I love Rockbox+iPod, so much that I finally went ahead and converted my 80gb 5.5 over to a 256gb SSD. Perfection. Went ahead and replaced the battery while in there. Friend helped me out and gave me a version of rockbox 3.14 that apparently had udma support for the ssd I was using (he had done the same mod and figured that part out).
Everything is working, but my battery life is terrible. With this setup, I'm getting 8 hours runtime after 3 power cycles, only dropping to 59% before cutting out. Which is about the runtime I was getting before with the previous (stock) drive and old battery.
It also acts SUPER flakey at the end of the power band. As it winds down, it dies and goes into a boot loop where it endlessly cycles on the apple logo (both rockbox and orig firmware) and won't charge up without me first jumping into the service mode and specifically telling it to power > sleep > forever. If I can get there fast enough before it dies. Only when I finally get it to manually shut down like that will it then charge up enough to get past the boot loop.
For comparison, I also have an old 30gb iPod 5.5 that I did the iFlash mod to (I use it as a recorder for work) w/ a 128gb SD card, and it gets almost 20 hours runtime. That's closer to what I was expecting.
The battery I ordered was one of the 850ah ones from amazon that had the best rating (upstart?), so I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt. Does an iPod battery just take a couple weeks to get back up to full capacity after a fresh install? Maybe it just needs to wake up still? The first cycle only gave me 6 hours! So it does seem to be improving, but 20 seems like a long shot.
I'm pretty close to doing an exchange on the battery, but thought I'd hit the boards first. Are there any config settings you all are using with an SSD that I might need to make to improve things? Any step by step when first updating to an ssd to make rockbox... rock? I didn't have these issues with the iflash adapter one, nor did I have to use a specific "fixed" rockbox to get it to recognize the drive. So I'm in new territory. Not seeing anything like this on the boards previously.
thx in advance.
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also of note - it seems to want to commit the database when starting up every time. for a really long time, sometimes 30+ minutes. Or maybe it's still boot looping and i'm just noticing it because I left and came back 30 mins later.
Drive seems fine otherwise - I dumped on 200gb of music and then ran the database when I first put the ssd in, just seems like it never completed whatever database ops it does even though it's been fully charged and drained a couple times since then.
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Either bad battery or a problem with the SSD. Put the old storage back in and see if the problem goes away.
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Thanks for the idea, but I don't suspect it's the drive enough to yank it out again (lot of effort). Pretty sure it's the battery. Gotta be. Drive took 200gb of music like a champ with no hiccups.
I suppose I could run the longer chkdsk on it, see if that turns up any bad sectors. That's about the only thing I can think of.
I'll poke around the forums and see if I can find out if there's a more reliable battery than this "Upstart" one I ordered off of Amazon. It seemed recommended enough but maybe I got a dud.
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Is it an mSATA SSD? This is known to cause short runtime.
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read this: https://www.iflash.xyz/runtime-shootout-2016-quad-dual-solo-msata-vs-original-hard-drive/
for good info on the kind of power draw msata drives cause.
if you are using a stock battery it will absolutely destroy it until you get about 5mins of power on time.
you need to get an upgraded battery.
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Ah - this is great info, thanks! Yes it's an mSata SSD, which I didn't realize was on par power wise with the orig HDD. In that case, I'm right on line with what should be expected.
I think I figured out the database problem - was a reboot step I wasn't completing before and it all seems good now. Just running an extended chkdsk to make sure, but no errors yet.
Well, I guess my assumption that just putting any old SSD in there would up the battery time to the 25+ hours others were mentioning was wrong! Good to know they are not all equal on this front.
I probably won't swap the mSata SSD out and will just roll with this regardless of the runtime. On the plus side, the battery does seem to be "waking up" and battery bench times have been extending a half hour or so with each cycle, hopefully this keeps going.
I've not noticed any extended capacity batteries while searching. Does anyone know of one that still fits in the stock 80gb space? I see the iFlash post at https://www.iflash.xyz/3rd-party-extended-battery-guide/ but those seem to be much bigger than the stock battery, and I'm not totally sure that would work with the thickness of an mSata drive in there also. Maybe. Anyone had success with anything?
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Having built 4 of these suckers now - I'll give you the benefit of my wisdom
this is the battery you need: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1900mAh-Li-ion-Polymer-Battery-for-iPod-6th-Classic-80GB-120GB-SSD-CF-Update/392227990534
there is no way to make it fit inside the slim back with the msata adapter. buy a replacement or salvage a thick case.
you might be tempted to mount it the only way it fits - with the msata drive touching the battery - don't do this - heat + battery = degradation
there is a triangular metal nib on the ipod housing that you can remove with a hacksaw that allows you to lay the battery down first and have the heat pad on the msata drive touching the metal back of the ipod case to dissipate the heat properly.
works perfectly.
I ran a battery bench on my msata upgraded battery ipod over a weekend and it was running for the whole weekend before I needed to interrupt the benchmark and use it for my commute.
however, in real world scenarios where you are seeking the disk for random/have the screen on/have different codecs will all cause it to draw more power.
I can wake up, start playing music, work a full day and just about get my evening commute out of mine - which is perfect. and in real scenarios it is plugged in to my work pc and shuffled with winamp so I never run out of battery.
hope that helps
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Right - that sounds doable. Thanks for the link. So battery first and then msata drive over top of that, then case? msata presses up against case?
Will check out the nub and see if I can figure out if it had any real need to be there, doesn't sound like it.
Found the same seller here on the US ebay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1900mAh-Li-ion-Polymer-Battery-for-iPod-6th-Classic-80GB-120GB-SSD-CF-Update/392227990534?hash=item5b529c2c06:g:pc0AAOSwqVxZiHGr:rk:1:pf:0
This is sounding good, and an upgrade worth $15 + 10 minutes of hacking.
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this is the battery you need: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1900mAh-Li-ion-Polymer-Battery-for-iPod-6th-Classic-80GB-120GB-SSD-CF-Update/392227990534
To use such battery is very tempting, but I hesitate because I am not convinced about the quality. Because there were reports of swelling batteries, I don't want to have this thing to explode. Any long term experiences?
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only anecdata...
my last ipod lasted ~1.5 years before it was stolen - and that one had the msata drive touching the battery - it was getting insanely hot but was still working fine.
the new one with the battery underneath the hot ssd is going 6 months strong.
I spent a considerable amount of time messing with sd cards and msata and different cases/batteries etc.
you can do the same investigations - but for me - using only rockbox - the SD cards were useless shit that constantly corrupted - and thats not a fault of rockbox alone ( imo there simply isnt enough space for reliable logic and extra cells for reallocating sectores with errors ) .
YMMV
This really is the best mp3 player you can get your hands on though. I use mine every single day.