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Repairing and Upgrading Rockbox Capable Players / Re: iPod Mini 2G Dramatic difference in battery life
« Last post by iPodVT on April 15, 2024, 05:43:17 PM »Rockbox writes to the disk far, far more often than the Apple firmware.
The fundamental problem is that the CF->SD chipset the iFlash adapters are built on don't properly support standard ATA power management commands (including "run in the lowest power mode possible without automatically going to sleep" and "flush everything to disk so it is safe to sleep" and even "flush everything and go to sleep now") so we have no way of reliably knowing when it is actually safe to kill power. Even the "just flush everything" command falsely claims success!) Killing power when it's not safe is near-guaranteed to cause data corruption. So we are forced to leave power on, which can severely hurt battery life depending on the specific SD card.
Does this mean that a Rockbox user would see a notable power consumption improvement when using a true CF card rather than a CF->SD adapter? (Meaning that a true CF card would be better than both the original HD and a CF->SD adapter?)
Is the power consumption even more degraded if the CF->SD adapter contains a microSD in an SD->microSD adapter?
Are you able to specify/recommend which SD (and/or microSD) cards do better than others re Rockbox power consumption with a CF->SD adapter?
[Edit - adding the following question]
Does Rockbox do better re power consumption when the mini contains one of the cheapo CF->SD adapters rather than the iFlash version?
Thanks very much.
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Repairing and Upgrading Rockbox Capable Players / Re: iPod Mini 2G Dramatic difference in battery life
« Last post by denkly on April 15, 2024, 09:29:30 AM »Rockbox writes to the disk far, far more often than the Apple firmware.
The fundamental problem is that the CF->SD chipset the iFlash adapters are built on don't properly support standard ATA power management commands (including "run in the lowest power mode possible without automatically going to sleep" and "flush everything to disk so it is safe to sleep" and even "flush everything and go to sleep now") so we have no way of reliably knowing when it is actually safe to kill power. Even the "just flush everything" command falsely claims success!) Killing power when it's not safe is near-guaranteed to cause data corruption. So we are forced to leave power on, which can severely hurt battery life depending on the specific SD card.
That said there is a flaw in the current code that results in power being left on even when it's safe to turn off -- I have a patch in gerrit that needs some wider testing:
https://gerrit.rockbox.org/r/c/rockbox/+/5647
Meanwhile, SATA SSDs are are a different kettle of fish, and there are supposedly issues there too, but since these are native ATA devices, more research is needed to determine the root cause of reported issues with those. For example, many problems have been traced to loose/flaky cables, which obviously that has nothing to do with Rockbox. Similarly, the SATA SSDs usually have _worse_ power characteristics than the original hard drives, which again is not uinque to Rockbox.
Thanks! Hope it will be resolved, as Mini is one the greatest
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Repairing and Upgrading Rockbox Capable Players / Re: iPod Mini 2G Dramatic difference in battery life
« Last post by speachy on April 15, 2024, 08:18:38 AM »Rockbox writes to the disk far, far more often than the Apple firmware.
The fundamental problem is that the CF->SD chipset the iFlash adapters are built on don't properly support standard ATA power management commands (including "run in the lowest power mode possible without automatically going to sleep" and "flush everything to disk so it is safe to sleep" and even "flush everything and go to sleep now") so we have no way of reliably knowing when it is actually safe to kill power. Even the "just flush everything" command falsely claims success!) Killing power when it's not safe is near-guaranteed to cause data corruption. So we are forced to leave power on, which can severely hurt battery life depending on the specific SD card.
That said there is a flaw in the current code that results in power being left on even when it's safe to turn off -- I have a patch in gerrit that needs some wider testing:
https://gerrit.rockbox.org/r/c/rockbox/+/5647
Meanwhile, SATA SSDs are are a different kettle of fish, and there are supposedly issues there too, but since these are native ATA devices, more research is needed to determine the root cause of reported issues with those. For example, many problems have been traced to loose/flaky cables, which obviously that has nothing to do with Rockbox. Similarly, the SATA SSDs usually have _worse_ power characteristics than the original hard drives, which again is not uinque to Rockbox.
The fundamental problem is that the CF->SD chipset the iFlash adapters are built on don't properly support standard ATA power management commands (including "run in the lowest power mode possible without automatically going to sleep" and "flush everything to disk so it is safe to sleep" and even "flush everything and go to sleep now") so we have no way of reliably knowing when it is actually safe to kill power. Even the "just flush everything" command falsely claims success!) Killing power when it's not safe is near-guaranteed to cause data corruption. So we are forced to leave power on, which can severely hurt battery life depending on the specific SD card.
That said there is a flaw in the current code that results in power being left on even when it's safe to turn off -- I have a patch in gerrit that needs some wider testing:
https://gerrit.rockbox.org/r/c/rockbox/+/5647
Meanwhile, SATA SSDs are are a different kettle of fish, and there are supposedly issues there too, but since these are native ATA devices, more research is needed to determine the root cause of reported issues with those. For example, many problems have been traced to loose/flaky cables, which obviously that has nothing to do with Rockbox. Similarly, the SATA SSDs usually have _worse_ power characteristics than the original hard drives, which again is not uinque to Rockbox.
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Repairing and Upgrading Rockbox Capable Players / iPod Mini 2G Dramatic difference in battery life
« Last post by denkly on April 15, 2024, 06:26:22 AM »Hello! I've successfully upgraded my Mini 2G with iFlash CF-SD + new 600mAh battery. Installed Rockbox Daily, no problems. Did some tests and figured that on Rockbox playtime is about 6 hours, while on original OS it's over 20 hours. Is there some patch i need to apply? I don't want to stick with original OS on Mini, cause it's sounds so nice on Rockbox.
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Audio Playback, Database and Playlists / Re: does rockbox support opus?
« Last post by saratoga on April 14, 2024, 11:43:44 PM »Yes opus is supported, although the file extension is .opus, not .ogg (which is vorbis).
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Audio Playback, Database and Playlists / does rockbox support opus?
« Last post by donkeyfromshrek on April 14, 2024, 10:53:38 PM »mainly concerning ipod classic, just wondering if it supports .ogg opus, and if it doesn't, if it can be supported in the future
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Audio Playback, Database and Playlists / Re: Converting ID3 image tags from PNG to JPG
« Last post by chris_s on April 14, 2024, 09:44:27 PM »thanks for sharing
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Audio Playback, Database and Playlists / Re: Converting ID3 image tags from PNG to JPG
« Last post by wintermute23 on April 14, 2024, 07:46:11 PM »If anyone is interested, the full code for my homemade podcatcher (now with embedded album art formatted for RockBox) is here: https://github.com/wintermute115/podcasts
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Repairing and Upgrading Rockbox Capable Players / Re: iPod mini repair/mod
« Last post by hiss on April 14, 2024, 06:20:33 PM »Can't believe I typed nano. I meant mini.
I've never had a nano...
I've never had a nano...
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Repairing and Upgrading Rockbox Capable Players / Re: iPod Nano repair/mod
« Last post by philden on April 14, 2024, 05:20:24 PM »Those parts look more suitable for an iPod Mini than a Nano.