Rockbox Technical Forums

Installation / Removal => Manual Installation => Other - Installation/Removal => Topic started by: heyspencerb on March 31, 2021, 02:33:57 PM

Title: Fiio M3K linux Install, !!!VERY BUGGY!!!
Post by: heyspencerb on March 31, 2021, 02:33:57 PM
This version is still in the super early stages!! Back up your stuff, don't blame us for problems, and please help out if you can. Please use bug reports, not just reply on threads or DMing people who are working on this.

If you want this to work you need to follow these exact steps. This is the only way I have gotten this to work.

1. Go to this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vuqcaf1ssk4j1ee/Files.zip?dl=0
 and download the zip file I uploaded there. I am posting a dropbox link because its too big to upload here, let me know if thats not the best way to do this.

2. Un-zip the file. You might only see one file, called M3K.fw, but there is actually two files, the M3K.fw and a hidden directory called '.rockbox'. To see it, on Mac press Cmd+Shift+[.]  and on Ubuntu press control+h I have no idea how to see it on windows, but if you can't see it you can always extract the zip directly to the right location in step 4.

Note! To get the most up to date version of Rockbox:
Go to this link: https://build.rockbox.org/data/rockbox-fiiom3k.zip
This is the version RockBox that is updated with every new commit, so it could be much better than the one I included, or much worse, you never know. Unzip the file and use the .rockbock directory from that link instead in all of the steps moving forward with the M3K.fw file I provided. With that said, I have no way of knowing if future versions still work with this M3K.fw Vortex made, so if it fails, try using the .rockbox I provided and try again.

3. Take your sd card you have formatted in the Fiio M3K's settings menu and plug it into your computer

4. Drag or directly extract both the provided M3k.fw and the .rockbox directory into the home directory on the sd card, so not in any folders. Make sure the files are out of the 'Files' folder I sent them in, they need to be in the home directory on the sd. If you left the official M3K.fw file on the SD, you will need to replace it with the one I provided.

5. Put the SD back in your M3K while its turned off, and press and hold the 'power button' + 'volume up' until the firmware update starts.

6. once the update is done if things went properly, you should get a screen which will offer you either log in to Rockbox, the Fiio firmware, or a settings menu and there will be a countdown. Quickly navigate to the settings menu and enter it. If you miss the timing and log in to either of the other options, restart the device and be sure to go to the settings menu this time. Once in the setting menu, click on "Update Rockbox". This should then go to a screen which says 'Running update.sh ' for a few minutes, then it will say 'Done: 1'.

7. Finally, at this point you can restart the device and you should have the correct version of Rockbox, and the option of switching to the Fiio firmware as well.

If you later want to update the Rockbox version to a new version, you need to do all the same steps but replace the .rockbox file I gave you with the new one you want to use.
Important! in order to update the rockbox, you still need to go through steps 5 and 6! For some reason, you need to do the 'power button' + 'volume up' in order to update the RockBox version too!!

Finally, here are my necessary warnings:
This version of RockBox, especially the version from the link to the most recent commit, will probably be very buggy for a long time to come, it comes with the territory. Back up your stuff first, please submit bug reports, don't just go to the forum thread and post about it there. Thanks!

How to uninstall if things go badly

Simply delete the M3K.fw file I gave and the .rockbox directory. Remember that the .rockbox is a hidden file and it may still be there if even if you don't see it. Again, try using Cmd+Shift+[.] on Mac and on Ubuntu press control+h. Once you are sure that both those files are gone, download the official M3K.fw file from Fiio and follow step 5.

Please let me know if there are any issues with these steps, or if this version is still to buggy to have a thread here.
Title: Re: Fiio M3K linux Install, !!!VERY BUGGY!!!
Post by: saratoga on March 31, 2021, 02:57:04 PM
Stuff like this should go in the wiki so that it doesn't get lost.
Title: Re: Fiio M3K linux Install, !!!VERY BUGGY!!!
Post by: heyspencerb on March 31, 2021, 03:06:17 PM
Ok! Should I take this down? I just took a look at the wiki page and realized someone updated it! I didn’t see that two weeks back. Glad someone put that together!
Title: Re: Fiio M3K linux Install, !!!VERY BUGGY!!!
Post by: heyspencerb on March 31, 2021, 03:14:01 PM
I read through the wiki’s install instructions, they seem great and I’ll try them out when I get home! Though they definitely aren’t noob friendly which is what I was trying for here. I wrote this so that non devs would stop asking for fixes on the Vortex version on the thread and stop asking for people to install it for them. Maybe someone could rewrite this post better and use it as the ‘noob’ version
Title: Re: Fiio M3K linux Install, !!!VERY BUGGY!!!
Post by: vitt13 on April 03, 2021, 02:05:39 PM
Note! To get the most up to date version of Rockbox:
Go to this link: https://build.rockbox.org/data/rockbox-fiiom3k.zip
Fix the link to https://build.rockbox.org/data/rockbox-fiiom3klinux.zip in accordance the message
No, that is the wrong link.  This is the correct one: https://build.rockbox.org/data/rockbox-fiiom3klinux.zip

There are now two M3K ports, neither is really considered usable -- the Linux-based one based on the xvortex code dump (running on top of the extremely buggy FiiO linux platform) and a new native bare-metal port that is where all of the ongoing development effort is focused.  Once the latter is considered usable (it currently lacks such niceties like USB and dual-boot capabilities) the linux-based port will most likely be nuked from orbit.