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Subject: RE: Feature Request: USB HDD only Custom Rom.

RE: Feature Request: USB HDD only Custom Rom.

From: Joel Wiramu Pauling <aenertia_at_aenertia.net>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:22:16 +1200

On Wed, 2004-08-25 at 22:20, Stuart Tedford wrote:
> > Basically my Jukebox recorder arvies next week, (it´s a 20gb model not
> > v2). So I don´t think it charges through USB anyway(correct me if I´m
> > wrong), so not all of this is relevant.
> >
> Thats right, it does not charge via USB.
>
> > I have also just purchased a toshiba e800 (with usb host port). And I
> > want to be able to use the rockbox, as an external hdd, and just play
> > via the e800 (for ogg etc). Is this currently possible? (God
> > I hope so, the toshiba´s do work like this with ipods).
> >
> It does work, I've used my V1R with my NEC MobilePro P300 PocketPC which has
> USB host and it works OK, you do need PPC USB mass storage drivers though,
> which are freely available on the net. Also when I did this (about a year
> ago), there was no decent PPC software that could manage 40GB+ of mp3z, I
> even tried commercial "PocketMusic" which crashed and corrupted all of my
> playlists etc.

Have you tried pocket divx???

I´m not too worried about this tho, as I intend to put apache ce
(http://www.rainer-keuchel.de/wince/apache-ce.html) And run all my oggs
through a web interface. ;-) This gives you much better media management
options than probably any of the ppc native apps =-)

>
> > 1 as rockbox recorder rom standardly configured. And the second one as
> > an ultra optimised external HDD only image.
> >
> Rockbox has no real control of the HD when in USB mode, there is a dedicated
> USB to IDE bridge chip in the JB which controls the HD directly, all RockBox
> does is hand over control to the USB chip, at which point it cannot "talk
> to" the HD anymore.
>
> > Anyone done this type of thing before. What type of battery life can I
> > expect out of the rockbox running like this?
> >
> You will get a whopping 1 hour of battery life from this setup, becasue the
> disk will not spindown in USB mode. What you could do is make a custom
> build of RockBox that sets the internal ATA APM disk spindown to the lowest
> value before handing over to the USB chip, which might allow the disk to
> spin down in USB mode, I've been meaning to try this myself for ages, maybe
> someone already has done it???

Yeah I figured it would drain the beast... Even sonys new self powered
hdd and the xdrive only do 60mins... But I had hopped that with the
custom roms we could ramp this up a bit.

Would it be possible for rockbox to issue a disconnect to the IDE-USB
Bridge, after X seconds of inactivity across the USB connection? In
theory adding/hacking a sort of forced USB power management type thing?
And then do a wake up on a new get request. This would increase latency
alot, but upto if you are only playing oggs etc, then it´s fine a 10
second wait for the USB storage to re register is fine in terms of
getting better battery performance.

The alternative is perhaps by modifying the Mass storage device drivers
for PPC? If so any ideas how? (This would probably be better to
implement in rockbox tho, based on my two roms idea, because it will
mean this trick works on any comp the rockbox is plugged into)

Kiwi ehh;-) where about your from?

> > New Zealand
> >
> Always a pleasure to help out a fellow kiwi.
>
> Stu.
> _______________________________________________
> http://cool.haxx.se/mailman/listinfo/rockbox
>
>

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Received on 2004-08-25

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