Discussion of now-committed ipod startup workaround

[torne]

There is an issue on some iPods where occasionally powering on the player by pressing a normal button does not work, and the iPod must be reset by holding MENU+SELECT before it will power on correctly. If you observe the screen closely when trying to power on you may see a small "low battery" symbol displayed very briefly, without the backlight being enabled.

Have you ever experienced this issue with a standard build? If you have ever seen this happen, even if it's not a frequent occurrence, please select Yes for your model in the poll above. If you have been using your iPod for some time with Rockbox (at least a couple of months, with a build no older than 3.x) and have never seen this problem, please select No for your model in the poll above. If you have some model that's not listed, and you have seen the problem, please post in the thread and state which model you have - but if you haven't, then you can ignore this post. Nano 2G users can also ignore this post as the hardware is completely different and the problem does not exist.

If you have a custom build, please check if the build includes the patch for FS#10107. If you have FS#10107 in your build then do not vote. Other custom build patches are fine. (If you do have FS#10107 but you still see the problem anyway, then please comment to this effect )

The reason I am interested is there is a workaround for the problem in FS#10107, but it's not clear for which models it should be applied.

[soap]

I said "no" for my Nano 1G, but honestly I don't use it very often at all.  Feel free to discount that vote.

[[Saint]]

I have *almost* this problem with My Nano 2nd Gen, it fits what You describe almost perfectly...with the battry icon appearing briefly and then trouble starting the iPod....but with My Nano 2nd Gen, when it actually does restart....it's in DFU mode and I get the lovely wee screen from Apple basically saying "Your iPod's had an epic fail and You have to use iTunes to reinstall the Apple iPod firmware" and I indeed have to do so before My PC will detect My iPod again.

I'm unsure as to whether or not these issues are related..it's only happened twice, and I know the 2nd Gen Nano is an "Unstable build"....but I thought I'd mention My experiences anyway.



Sincerely,
[St.]

[torne]

The 2nd gen nano has no hardware in common with the earlier PortalPlayer based iPods and boots in a different way. I suggest you report that issue elsewhere, as it sounds like the actual storage is getting corrupted...

[dok]

I indeed get this problem on my ipod 5.5G 80Gb very often (soft V3.4 installed through the installer). Quite annoying I must say, but you know that of course. Still, glad to see I'm not alone with this problem.

[macgeek417]

Nope, never on my 5.5G iPod 30GB. (I always do my installations the "old-fashioned" way with the whatever_modal_of_mp3_player_im_installing_rb_on_to_patcher.exe and copying .rockbox to it. Honestly I don't see the point of the RButil as its not at all hard to do it manuly

[torne]

Doesn't matter how you installed it; installing manually and via rbutil are identical once completed, and even the advanced install methods on the wiki don't prevent this problem from occurring. Some people just don't see it, no matter what they do, and some peple get it a lot; without the workaround my iPod Video fails to boot at least one time in three.

[macgeek417]

Gotcha. Just thought I'd mention it in case it mattered.



EDIT: Weird. It just happened to me...

[Chauncellor]

Using a 5.5 video. It has a 40 percent chance of doing that after every time it turns on.

I'm all for inclusion!

[edit]
I would also like to add that my firmware is up to date (Not like Apple's pushing any updates for this old piece anymore, anyway...)

[wamba]

Hi,

I have the exact same problem with my 5.5g 80GB and it happens quite often.

[Falco98]

I have noticed this problem with the 80gb 5.5 i just got a week or so ago -- the first time it happened I was worried but once I reset it I was convinced that I'd just mussed something up by resetting it and plugging it into USB so many times, as I was constantly going in and out of it since it was still rather new.  Now I've had the problem maybe once or twice more in semi-daily use during the last week or so; it's not enough to be annoying but just enough to be noticeable.

[Chauncellor]

There seems to be quite a large amount of people affected with the 5.5 ipod.

Does this mean that we're going to get the workaround for 3.5? I highly doubt Apple will ever fix this problem. It seems to be up to the great Rockbox guys.

(....pretty please? 

[torne]

I was originally going to wait until after the release to introduce this patch but I'll discuss it with the other devs, maybe it should go in 3.5.

I think the common-ness of the problem being reported on Video is mostly that more people have a Video, rather than the problem being rare on the others: it's probably best to commit it for all the above targets.

[Chauncellor]

Something I don't quite understand is why other 5.5 users aren't affected by this bug. Earlier apple firmware versions? Was this bug introduced a few versions back? It's weird to me.

[torne]

If we knew that we might be able to find a real solution

The workaround appears to be 100% effective with only minor cosmetic side effects, so it's not bad.