IPOD (ALL MODELS) iFlash Adapter Issues [SOLVED!?]

[ModemJunki]

I've a modified iPod Video with original iFlash adapter.

It's been a while since I checked (https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,51957.msg240446.html#msg240446) and I still seem to have the same issue.

I cannot use the latest developer builds though this thread seems to indicate I should be able to. The model of the iPod mainboard is MA446LL.

Things I have tried:

- overwriting the files in the .rockbox folder with latest build
- replacing the .rockbox folder entirely with latest developer build

But still the system freezes when I try to go into Files or Database, or even System->Rockbox Info freezes.

Only restoring the third-party modified build I downloaded years ago works but I get some stuttering on playback of some files and I was hoping to try a newer build to solve this.

Edit: Stuttering was *user error*. Files were stupidly high bitrate .flac copied directly to the device, setting up a device profile in MediaMonkey to transcode to a more reasonable bitrate fixed that. Still, I cannot use the latest dev builds and I don't know what I'm missing out on. :-| On the other hand I'm listening to music on the device again.

[STEELBAS]

Hi,

I bought this iflash ata1 (https://www.iflash.xyz/store/iflash-ata1/) to revive my old iPod 4g color/photo with failing hard disk. I ran Rockbox on it years ago and wanted to go back to those glory days. The iflash says 2021 on the actual hardware, so perhaps it's a new model?

I'm running the latest dev build (rockbox-ipodcolor-20220215). I'm using a PNY 512 GB SD card.

I copied some music to the device using the disk mode (holding select and play when booting up).

Unfortunately, I have a couple of problems that I've seen mentioned around this thread, too:

• After installing the iflash and restoring the disk using iTunes, looking at the disk with disk partitioning software gives an "Unable to detect file system" error.
• After installing Rockbox (using the Rockbox Utility on Linux) I can't play back any music, it gives an "error accessing playlist control file" error. I can browse the files and everything seems to be there. I tried with mp3's and flac's.
• Also, interestingly, I cannot run any(?) plugins. (I haven't tested them all, but at least the calculator and image viewer didn't work.)
• Different themes than the default will also not load.

I was afraid this was a hardware problem—that my SD card was faulty—but this thread at least makes me hopeful that that might not be the case? I saw the suggestion of setting ATA_MAX_UDMA to 1 in reply #30 (https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,52560.msg247796.html#msg247796) but looking at the code of the currect dev build I don't think that can still be done in the same way. That is, reading the comments and code seems to suggest that it should already run with ATA_MAX_UDMA set to 1, as I'm running a 4g iPod.

I'm not sure if it's relevant, but looking under Debug and "View disk info", it says "DMA mode: UDMA 2". Shouldn't that say UDMA 1? I have no idea if that's how this works, unfortunately.

Could it be that the fixes implemented only work for the 4g greyscale model?


My next step now is to setup gcc and try to compile Rockbox with all instances of ATA_MAX_UDMA set to 1 in the ata-target.h file. No idea if that will do anything but I figure I can always try. I would appreciate some help, though!


EDIT:

I compiled a version of Rockbox where I replaced all instances of "ATA_MAX_UDMA 2" with "ATA_MAX_UDMA 1" in ata-target.h. Plugins and themes seem to work now as well as music playback. Only tested it for a few seconds so far, though. Under Debug->View disk info, there is now also "DMA mode: UDMA 1". All this leads me to suspect that the fixes for the 4g iPod version were only implemented for the greyscale version.

Will test further.


EDIT:

Well, it is more stable than before, but the system seems to freeze up after a few minutes of use. Seemed to happen more the more files I copied to the player. The screen still lights up when I touch the scroll wheel, but the selected text becomes garbled after a while. Even when browsing settings without playing anything just now, it froze up. It seems to be busy with something. In any case, not really usable yet.

If I reboot and then as quickly as possible go into files and select something to play, it does seem to work for a short while. Browsing to other files quickly leads to more freezing and garbled text, however.

I took a screenshot of when this happens:



FINAL EDIT:

Well, I experimented a bit more, and talked with Bilgus about it on the IRC channel, and I think the conclusion has to be that my SD card was simply faulty. Trying with a 4gb SD card seems completely stable, also with the latest development version (where UDMA is 2 and DMA isn't disabled). For whoever is interested, perhaps with similar woes, you can find that in the IRC logs of 17 & 18 February 2022. I'll shop around for a new SD card, I suppose.

[STEELBAS]

Interestingly, I managed to get a working FAT32 drive in the iPod manually, without iTunes. I combined the instructions here https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/IpodManualRestore and here http://www.ipodlinux.org/Restore_without_iTunes.html

1. Download the MBR file and an ipsw file for your iPod model (doesn't matter which original disk size, I think).
2. Follow steps 1, 2 and 3 of the Rockbox page (dd MBR onto ipod.)
3. Use fdisk on the iPod, now delete the existing second partition (press d, then select partition 2)
4. Follow the steps on ipodlinux.org from "Create the data partition to fill the rest of your iPod." (I.e. create a new partition just filling up the rest of the free space (I used the defaults fdisk proposed), set type to W95 FAT32, write to disk, but don't do mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sdX2 yet)
5. Follow steps 5, 6 and 7 on the Rockbox page (dd the Firmware on partition 1, then mkfs.vfat partition 2.)

Voilà! This way partition software can also read the file system. (Restoring with iTunes gives an "Unable to detect file system" error in partition software.) This worked on my iPod Color/Photo. I might have done the mkfs.vfat before copying the Firmware. If it doesn't work you can try playing with the order here.

[gifkun]

I have a problem with current daily builds (April 21, 2022) for an iPod Video using iFlash solo, the problem is that the player doesn't respond to button press or click wheel movement in Rockbox, these things work in the diagnostic and in iPod mode. I was using this iPod previously and deleted the firmware to use the SD for other things and now I can't get it to work. At least I can reset the iPod in Rockbox mode, but nothing else. Also the lock symbol pops up sometimes and the player seems to go on and off if let alone for a while. I thick that the current dev revisions might not work all too well with my device.

EDIT
I was able to fixed it by removing the bootloader and .rockbox file, turning on my iPod and using for less than 2 minutes and trying again with the development version and only the Bootloader and Firmware now it works. I am writing all of what I did, no idea if it did something, but hope it helps someone with a similar problem.

[Bilgus]

likely you just got the build with a bad initialized viewport flag and now you have the fixed one

[karmazine]

Hello,

I bought iFlash quad back in 2018 for my ipod 5th. Tried RB, not worked (freezing, skipping tracks) - possibly due to RB issues with flash memory.

Now I found these updates so I gave it a go again. I picked the dev build, and daily build. Main question - are the Speachy's changes incorporated in the daily/dev builds?
I thought yes, so I tried them both.
I formatted the drive to fat32 in Aomei partition sw. Restored ipod in itunes. It seems working in the OF, even showing the disc size corretly (even when I had 2x256).
Then I installed RB (daily and second time the dev build). I installed it with itunes/ipod processes killed and in normal OF mode (connnected to Win pc), not the Apple disc mode (could be issue?).
I did put there the music right after instal, just a few gigs .

It shows slightly different glitches: I am able to play one album, but navigating more and putting more tracks to the "on the go" playlist causes freezes. The music usually plays but the display is frozen and the buttons are not doing anything.
So I thought maybe the micro sd cards are causing problem. I took off both Samsung Evo plus 256gig, and used older sandisk 32gig.

It remains the same. Sometime it freezes even when I navigate in the menus with no music playing.

Now on the last try with the small 32gig card different glitch appeared - it showed Panic dc_writeback_callback () Could not write sector 28 6957 (error -53).
After that RB sometimes boots, sometimes not (showing white screen with apple's sad looking ipod). This did not showed when using dual 256gigs, but the test period was not logn, sice freezes showed quick.
Now I am not able to differenciate if the problem is in the iflash, ipod, wrong install, wrong RB build, bad sd cards...

Any thoughts what could I try next?
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thank you very much!

p.s.
I found out few more thing which I did no try - setting the UDMA, DMA modes, etc. which I do not really know what it is and how to do it.
Also when I tried rb 2 years ago, one user "Pommes" gave me advice that RB works when it is not writing on the memory.
I tried not to use directory cache and no database, but still similar problems appeared.
more on my first attempts here:
https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,53166.0.html

Edit - one more strainge behaviour - many times when I switch the ipod on it shows apples sign saying "battery is very low". I usually leave it charging until it disappears.
But when it boots (even few seconds after that) to RB or OF, it shows more than 90percent charge...
The battery is very old, maybe even original which I plan replacing if the RB getts working on it. But now I thought it could contribute on the problem..?

[ceratophyllum]

My ipod 4G photo (A1099),  equipped with "Super Talent" 1.8inch (now impossible to find) brand SSD,  started having problems with disk corruption after I uploaded some new music and tried to rebuild the database on rockbox 3.15. I decided to try upgrading to  the latest dev version of rockbox and it seems fine now: rebuilt database, I installed a few themes, and have been using it a few hours without any panics. Is there anything diagnostic I can do to verify/check the filesystem?

[ceratophyllum]

Just for fun, I tested my other ipod 4G b/w (A1059), equipped with an el-cheapo chinese CF-IDE adapter with a 128GB Sandisk SD card in it, with the last nightly dev build of rockbox. Total failure: any attempt to play a file or build the database results in:

*PANIC*
dc_writeback_callback ()
- Could not write 202617 (error -4)
pc: 00071fb8
sd: 4000b578
    A: 0007f594
bt: end


The numbers vary, but it's always something to do with dc_writeback_callback().

My ipod photo (A1099) continues to work without probems, but it has something closer to a real hard drive in it.

[Frankenpod]

I've never figured out why those cheap generic adaptors sometimes work and sometimes don't.  Haven't tried one in a 4G but I've made a few that worked in 5Gs with 128gb cards, and even a couple that worked in 6Gs.  But others have entirely failed to work.  Something about them is very 'borderline' in terms of timings or something I guess, and maybe it depends on the memory card used?

[ceratophyllum]

Well, whatever the problem is, the A1059 w/Chinese junk adapter works with Apple's firmware. Is there something I else (other than UDMA) I can enable/disable in the rockbox source code that can make it just do whatever Apple's firmware does?  I recall some discussions above about defining some variable in some header to set UDMA to OFF, 1, or 2....but I thought that was all straightened out a while ago. If you look in firmware/target/arm/pp/ata-target.h, it says:

#if CPUFREQ_NORMAL >= 30000000 && !defined(IPOD_4G)
#define ATA_MAX_UDMA 2
#elif CPUFREQ_NORMAL >= 24000000
#define ATA_MAX_UDMA 1
#else
#error "CPU speeds under 24Mhz have not been tested with DMA"
#endif
#else
/* The bootloader runs at 24 Mhz and needs a slower mode */
#define ATA_MAX_UDMA 1
#endif

Can I define something to disable DMA altogether?
Maybe #define ATA_MAX_UDMA 0 ? Has this already been tried?

[ceratophyllum]

I tried the latest dev firmware in my olde iPod 3rd Gen--the one where the controls light up,I don't recall the model number-- with (I think) the same green pcb, black connector Chinese-junk IDE-to-CF adapter with Sandisk 128GB (in SD adapter) and it works! Built a large database, played a few songs...seems fine. I might look into fixing up this iPod now with a new battery and replace the failing screen.

So to summarize my test results (all using Sandisk 128GB uSD, except iPod 5G which has a now rare Sandisk 128GB CF):
iPod Photo with "Super Talent"  1.8" SSD works, which is no surprise.
iPod 4G greyscale with el cheapo chinese green board IDE-CF doesn't work.
iPod 5G Video works with Tarkan iFlash CF (I bought it a long time ago, when CF was still easier to get.)

iPod 3G works with (I think) the same Chinese green board IDE-CF that didn't work in 4G greyscale.
Edit: (10/3/2022): there is still something wrong as rockbox started rebooting constantly on my ipod 3G. I'm guessing something got corrupted in the .rockbox folder. There is no error message.


I'm all outta iPods to test. btw, I didn't bother to test my iPod minis which all work fine with rb 3.15. Is there any big benefit to upgrade the mini to latest bleeding edge?

[jasonwray]

FWIW, I had constant freezing/panics on my flash modded 3rd Gen.
I made the following changes in /firmware/export/config/ipod3g.h and then built from source:

Code: [Select]

Before: #define HAVE_DISK_STORAGE
After:  #define HAVE_FLASH_STORAGE

Before: #define HAVE_ATA_POWER_OFF
After:  //#define HAVE_ATA_POWER_OFF

It's been trouble-free ever since. I can attach my built zip for someone else with a 3rd Gen if that's allowed.
Edit: Attached, hope it helps someone.
iPod 3G Flash: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hpkPSAUsSs7UDW1ay4yJHOmyW5n_boF3/view?usp=sharing
(By request, untested) iPod Mini 2G Flash: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QtVaU-QBjgn72kXa3psRVNUdSyhLlVTV/view?usp=drivesdk

[Bilgus]

@jasonwray its allowed -- encouraged even

[Lostdotfish]

Is this actually fixed in the latest Dev builds?

I'm still getting track corruption after installing the latest Dev version using the Rockbox utility (installed release only, left the bootloader untouched from the previous release build).

Do I need to do a full clean install or is the issue still open?

Using an iPod 5G Video with iFlash Solo 128GB

No issues when adding files via OFW

[saintruggler]

For the benefit of posterity, I tried everything in this thread on my iPod 4th gen (monochrome) with iFlash ATA1, to no avail.

The culprit turned out to be the SD card. I first tried a 128gb PNY UHS-I and then a 32gb Sandisk Extreme Plus U3. The winning combo, which is fully functional in Rockbox (daily build) and original firmware, is the following:

iPod 4th Generation ClickWheel (20gb version, model A1059)
iFlash ATA1
256gb Samsung EVO Plus + Adapter MB-MC256KA

Hopefully this will help someone else make an informed decision in the future.