Rockbox Technical Forums

Installation / Removal => Manual Installation => Iriver - Installation/Removal/Flashing => Topic started by: user on August 13, 2006, 03:07:43 PM

Title: iriver flash?
Post by: user on August 13, 2006, 03:07:43 PM
it seems like flashing to rom is possible?
how do i do that?

also, builds these days seem "less responsive" and more buggy

for example, i have to really move the joystick to certain direction in order to get it working; "tapping" the joystick with my thumb doesnt work anymore: sensitivity seems to be lower than it was before (i know this isn't just the unit since the sensitivity is quite normal in the original firmware)

also, sometimes selecting another song while playing doesnt play that last selected song, but just goes back to wps
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: MoD on August 13, 2006, 03:40:17 PM
1. yes
2. http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IriverFlashing
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: Mikerman on August 13, 2006, 09:09:32 PM
I'd be interested in hearing user reactions to flashing Rockbox.  I've read the documentation (thanks for the link!) and wonder about the advantages of flashing, as Rockbox already seems to work so well as to a number of the flashing benefits that I see (for example, my boot-up right now is a whopping 6 seconds).  Am just curious as to the benefits or not of flashing--it's always been nice having an alternate firmware available (the original iRiver) including for some things not currently in Rockbox, such as ff and rew with sound, and 1-button A-B looping (I guess recording to MP3 would fall here as well).
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: Llorean on August 13, 2006, 09:17:06 PM
The benefits are as listed. If they don't really suit you, there's no need to flash.
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: Mikerman on August 13, 2006, 10:23:54 PM
Absolutely--just seeing if there are user impressions from having done so.   
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: psycho_maniac on August 13, 2006, 10:56:36 PM
is there such a thing as bootloader 7 or is that a typo. its all over in that link and i looked on the wiki for the bootloader for my h120 and all i can find is version 6
Quote
Bootloader version 7 contains the ability to detect if there is original firmware present or if user has replaced it with Rockbox firmware.
Quote
Bootloader version 7 or newer is required to load Rockbox firmware directly from flash.
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: user on August 13, 2006, 10:58:27 PM
I forgot my previous boot time.
After flashing (which took a second or two) it's now 7 secs, 20GB with ~150MB left.
Honestly I don't feel much of a difference, and didn't really expect much anyways.
Just saw it updated and wanted to try :D
Wish there was some way to cache the unicode font so that it doesn't have to be loaded from HDD everytime I browse, since half my songs are Korean...
That weird sensitivity problem is gone btw either because I flashed or updated to the latest firmware :p

Oh and also, it seems like I can't go back to the original firmware anymore, even if I hold REC at the beginning; it just freezes.
Am I missing something?
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: Slasher on August 14, 2006, 02:20:43 AM
Oh and also, it seems like I can't go back to the original firmware anymore, even if I hold REC at the beginning; it just freezes.
Am I missing something?

It freezes? That shouldn't happen, instead it should load firmware from disk when record button is pressed.
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: Llorean on August 14, 2006, 02:28:01 AM
Maybe they don't have firmware on disk?
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: Slasher on August 14, 2006, 02:56:47 AM
Hmm, that might explain it. If user has removed rockbox.iriver and tries to boot from disk without usb cable attached, player will crash (a bug in the bootloader, it tries to load original firmware).

But it's normal original firmware wont work after Rockbox has been flashed, because Rockbox will overwrite original firmware (as should be mentioned in the wiki and by the iriver_flash plugin also).
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: Llorean on August 14, 2006, 03:07:40 AM
If you try to force it to boot from disk, and no rockbox.iriver is found in root or /.rockbox/ it should probably return an error message or something then.
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: stuffedspacedog on August 14, 2006, 05:22:49 AM
Having flashed bootloader and replaced original firmware, boot time on my H140 is now < 3 seconds... fantastic!
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: fml2 on August 14, 2006, 05:37:34 AM
Am just curious as to the benefits or not of flashing

You can't play WMA with RockBox (as of now).
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: xiang on August 14, 2006, 06:52:18 AM
is there some way to cache the unicode font into the rom? or maybe in the future?
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: psycho_maniac on August 14, 2006, 06:32:43 PM
this is truely amazing that i can finialy flash my iriver woo hoo im so excited to do it, but where can i find bootloader 7? i have flashed my iriver but i was just wondering where bootloader 7 is? is that the version you have on your player after you flashed it?
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: stuffedspacedog on August 14, 2006, 08:31:52 PM
Check the second message in this thread.  The bootloader is at the bottom of the linked page.
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: user on August 14, 2006, 08:37:42 PM
is there some way to cache the unicode font into the rom? or maybe in the future?
if someone can do this, i'd be really really grateful
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: stuffedspacedog on August 15, 2006, 12:52:42 AM
is there some way to cache the unicode font into the rom? or maybe in the future?
if someone can do this, i'd be really really grateful
Maybe I'm missing the point, but why is this important to you?
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: user on August 15, 2006, 06:53:34 AM
is there some way to cache the unicode font into the rom? or maybe in the future?
if someone can do this, i'd be really really grateful
Maybe I'm missing the point, but why is this important to you?

Unicode font is so big, it has to be loaded from the hdd frequently. So tagcache isn't as effective as only about half the files can be viewed without accessing the hdd
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: stuffedspacedog on August 15, 2006, 11:04:26 AM
OK, understood, sorry for my stupidity!!  Seems like a very reasonable request!
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: midgey on August 21, 2006, 02:30:32 PM
I believe the developers are considering adapting all screens to be able to be displayed with the user font and only use the sysfont on error messages. Then, they can eliminate some non-ascii letters from the sysfont, reducing the binary size. I believe the user font would be kept in ram and the letters would be loaded from there instead of spinning up the disk.
Title: Re: iriver flash?
Post by: user on August 21, 2006, 06:26:52 PM
I believe the developers are considering adapting all screens to be able to be displayed with the user font and only use the sysfont on error messages. Then, they can eliminate some non-ascii letters from the sysfont, reducing the binary size. I believe the user font would be kept in ram and the letters would be loaded from there instead of spinning up the disk.

sounds good to me