Rockbox and Compact Flash

[modernman]

This is what I see when booting the my ipod after the apple logo

Rockbox Boot loader
Version r17294-080501
IPOD version: 0x000B0011

Partition 1: 0x0B 3848 MB
Loading Rockbox...
Error!
Can't load rockbox.ipod:
File not found
Hold MENU+SELECT to reboot
then SELECT+PLAY for disk mode.

I have verified the rockbox.ipod is contained within the .rockbox folder.  I have also (out of frustration) tried copying it the root directory without avail.

Thanks for any help.

and then it locks. 

[wintermute23]

I have an iriver H320, which I am planning on converting to use a 32GB CF card. I have an adaptor, which I've tested with a SanDisk UltraII 2GB card and a Lexar High-Speed (40x) 512MB card. Both reported "no partition" on the first attempt, but formatting them as FAT32 meant that both could be successfully booted.

Now, the question is which card to use for real: There are three 32GB cards on the market that I've been able to track down:

A-Data "Speedy" - According to the techs at A-Data, this is an 80x card.
Transcend 133x
RiDATA Lightning 233x

I know that people have successfully used the A-Data card, and I've seen reports of issues booting RockBox from the Transcend card. Does anyone have any advice on which vard I should buy, as I don't want to put down $150 for something that RockBox can't support. All three cards claim to support TrueATA.

So, any advice, anyone? Should I go for the slow card that I'm confident will work, or would one of the faster ones be better (and, hopefully, risk-free)?

[Llorean]

I don't believe any card is actually 100% consistent right now, just because Rockbox was not designed for CF in these players. There have been a lot of recent fixes though, which means that if/when a new bootloader is released the situation will be much better. But I can't say for certain much beyond that.

[wintermute23]

I'm running Peter D'Hoye's custom bootloader, about which he says (in an email) "AFAIK, all CF cards should work. Personally I'd not go for cards slower than x133."

When a new bootloader is released, it's going to be annoying to install, as I'll need to switch back to the hard drive to boot into iriver's firmware, flash the new bootloader and then put the CF card back. Still, it's the kind of thing that will almost certainly be worth the effort.

[Llorean]

Well, it's *probably* got the very same changes you'd want from an official bootloader anyway. If he said all CF cards should work, there's really nobody here who can give you better advice on it.

[wintermute23]

Actually, I suspect there's a bug in the charging routines.

The standard bootloader powers into the OF to charge if you plug it in when it's turned off, but as that won't work from a CF card, I assume the bootloader charging routines are new. But once it's fully charged, it seems to start to run down slowly.

It's easy enough to work around; I just boot into RockBox and then plug it in to charge. But if there was a bootloader update that fixed this, it would be well worth the effort of re-flashing.

Anyway, in reference to my original query, it sounds like I'll get the RiDATA 233x card.

[petur]

Bootloader charging is indeed something new, and because my CF compatible bootloader was based on current SVN, it contains that feature too. Interesting to hear it has a bug.

And yes, all cards should work, and the reason I said to go for at least x133 is that it otherwise takes ages to copy to/from your player. Those 'speedy' cards are anything but...

I also have a spare HDD around if I ever need to load another bootloader, or we have to get flashing working stable on h300

[wintermute23]

Yeah, I've got ~17GB of music to copy over, and even on a fast card, I'm not looking forward to waiting for that to happen. But that's a one-time event, and I'd be more interested to know what speeds the H3x0 can handle in daily use. This is really of purely academic interest as all the cards I'm looking at are pretty much identical in price, but it would be good to know. Not that I have the faintest idea how you'd go about establishing that, and I wouldn't be surprised if no-one's figured it out.

As for the charging bug, all I really know is that the first time I charged it up overnight, it said "complete", but the voltage readout was slowly dropping, and when I booted it up, it said it was 90% full. I assume that once the battery was fully charged, it stopped drawing power from the charger, but kept powering the LCD from the battery.

[petur]

Yeah, I've got ~17GB of music to copy over, and even on a fast card, I'm not looking forward to waiting for that to happen. But that's a one-time event, and I'd be more interested to know what speeds the H3x0 can handle in daily use. This is really of purely academic interest as all the cards I'm looking at are pretty much identical in price, but it would be good to know. Not that I have the faintest idea how you'd go about establishing that, and I wouldn't be surprised if no-one's figured it out.

TIP: copy the initial music over by putting the card in a cardreader

As for the charging bug, all I really know is that the first time I charged it up overnight, it said "complete", but the voltage readout was slowly dropping, and when I booted it up, it said it was 90% full. I assume that once the battery was fully charged, it stopped drawing power from the charger, but kept powering the LCD from the battery.

I'll have a look if I can reproduce. In any case the charging is handled in hardware so it is a bit surprising...

[wintermute23]

TIP: copy the initial music over by putting the card in a cardreader

Well, yes. It looks like, in ideal circumstances, it ought to take a bit more than an hour to copy everything over. But I somehow suspect that it'll take longer than that to pull it off the existing hard drive. Anyway, worst case scenario is that I run the copy overnight, so how long that takes really doesn't matter.

As for the charging bug, all I really know is that the first time I charged it up overnight, it said "complete", but the voltage readout was slowly dropping, and when I booted it up, it said it was 90% full. I assume that once the battery was fully charged, it stopped drawing power from the charger, but kept powering the LCD from the battery.

I'll have a look if I can reproduce. In any case the charging is handled in hardware so it is a bit surprising...

Hrm. As I say, I only used the bootloader charger the once. It's not impossible that I misinterpreted what I saw. If other people are using this bootloader and aren't aware of this issue, it makes me suspect that I got something wrong. Maybe we can solve this with science?

[Llorean]

How old is your battery? Maybe it's just naturally losing the top of its charge fast (or due to age isn't charging as far as it used to). With my old battery in my H120, I'd rarely see it at 100% unless I took it off the charger immediately after reaching full, and even then it would drop rapidly.

[wintermute23]

At the time, I was using a 1700mAh battery that was about 18 months old. I've since replaced it with a 2200mAh battery.

I doubt it was an issue with the battery, as charging via the OF or with RockBox booted up both worked fine, and would end with 100% charge in the morning.

I'll try it with the new battery tonight, to see what happens, though.

[modernman]

I have complied the boot loader a couple of more times and I am still ending up with the same error message as above.  I have reformated the card a couple of more times as well.  Has anyone else had the same problem?

[wintermute23]

OK, I used the bootloader to charge my new battery overnight. In the morning, it said "Charging complete", but the battery was only at 93%. I can't confirm that it actually got above that level, but charging with Rockbox booted up meas that I see a charge of 100% in the morning.

EDIT::::

I installed my CF card, and it's all working smoothly. I'll update the Wiki page tomorrow.

[spike66]

I will buy a 32GB A-Data card to install on an ipod mini 2nd gen, but I will only do it if I can install Rockbox on it. Considering

When I use the A-Data CF everything works. I can dual boot, etc.

and what's here http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/MiniCF, as I understand it, now I can install Rockbox "as it is" to a compact flashed mini, since

Tests showed the Apple OS operating as expected. Rockbox froze after about 10 seconds of drive inactivity. When Rockbox sends the ATA sleep command the flash drive stops responding. The patch below resolves this issue by disabling the ATA sleep command as is done on the iPod Nano.

Current SVN should now be compatible with CF cards, and this patch should no longer be required (not tested, let us know) -- PeterDHoye - 19 Mar 2008

...
However, reading what's been said in this thread, I got confused. Would it be necessary to modify the bootloader, or to do anything different than installing Rockbox as I would on a standard mini?
Thanks in advance for any advice.