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Subject: Re: Blind user needs help with iRiver H320

Re: Blind user needs help with iRiver H320

From: ian douglas <id_at_w98.us>
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 10:25:30 -0700

> 1. Could someone tell me what does the other buttons do on the unit and when
> they should be used? Please describe them in left to right order.

top left: power on, play and pause
if your unit is set to recharge via USB, tapping this key twice will
turn the unit on for PC connection mode. Note that in this mode, the USB
charging shuts off and you begin to drain the battery.
If you are currently playing or recording something, it will pause the
recording until you hit play or record again. If you are currently
playing a track, it will pause then start playing where you left off.

Top right: record button
In radio mode, or recording mode, it will record the radio station
you're tuned into, or start recording from the microphone or the line
in, whichever you have your unit set to.
If you're in music playback mode, the record button is also your
repeat/shuffle mode setting, ie: repeat/shuffle all songs
alphabetically, repeat or shuffle this directory/folder only, etc.
In music playback mode, holding this button in will let you choose a
different mode: music, radio, record, text, pictures. You use the
left/right/navi button to select your mode from there.

Bottom left: power off and stop
This button stops all playback and recording of whatever you're doing.
It can also be used to escape navigating files. Holding the button for a
few seconds powers off the unit.

Bottom right: A-B button
In music playback mode, this will set a bookmark called 'A'. A second
press will set a new bookmark called 'B' and will loop from A to B
constantly until you tap the key a third time or stop the playback, etc.
Holding this key in during music playback lets you set the equalizer by
tapping the key again and again, rock, classic, user eq, bass,
SAS,TrueBass, etc. Once you've selected a new EQ mode, just leaving the
unit alone will keep that selection chosen. Note that an EQ setting can
be done during playback.
When playback is stopped, pressing this button will load any m3u
playlists that you have created on the unit. You can scroll through them
using the up/down and navi buttons.

You of course have found the up/down navigation keys which adjust volume
in playback or radio mode, but just to the left and right of the navi
button are left/right navigation keys as well ... holding them in during
playback will generally skip through a track like rewind and
fast-forward buttons.

holding in the navi button in some modes will put you into the settings
and configuration modes such as turning off the resume mode, tuner
region, etc, usb charging mode, etc. There are quite a few settings in
here, so I won't go into all of them.

> 2. How I can listen the music I've just transferred? Could someone explain
> the needed button presses?

As soon as the unit is powered up, press the 'navi' button, and this
will put you into the file/folder mode, where you can browse for your
music. Use the up/down keys to scroll and when you highlight a folder,
pressing the 'navi' button will open that folder and show you those files.

> 3. Is the bookmark function (or whatever it was)turned on by default?

Yes, if you simply power the unit on, it will resume playback where you
last stopped it. Unfortunately, powering off the unit forgets which
shuffle or repeat mode you were in, or which playlist you were listening
to - it simply puts you back at the same track and position where you
left off.
To turn the resume mode on or off, power the unit on, hold the center
navi button in for two seconds, tap the center navi button once, tap it
a second time, press the right or left navigation key, then press the
center navi button again then press the stop key (lower left) to exit
configuration mode.

> 4. I'd like to record a radio program with the FM radio and the recording
> function. How that can be done? First the radio should of course be tuned
> into the correct frequency.

Power the unit on, then hold the top-right button, record, press the
right navi button once, then press the navi button. From there, pressing
the left/right navi buttons will scroll through your saved stations. If
you press the navi button once, it will turn off the 'preset' mode, and
then the left/right buttons will let you scan one frequency at a time
(97.1 to 97.2 to 97.3 etc) Holding the left or right button will put it
into scan mode - press the opposite button to stop it - that is, if you
held the right button to scan up into the higher frequencies, press the
left button to stop it. The scanning will scroll from one end of the
frequency range to the other in a continuous loop. Once it finds a
station, tab the A-B button (bottom right) to put it into "save the
preset" mode, then use the left/right buttons to navigate the number of
the preset you want to save it as.

> I really hope that Rockbox would work on this unit

 From what I understand, there are quite a few of us waiting for this.

> Are there any estimations when the first version of Rockbox
> would be released for this unit?

 From the rockbox web site:

Will Rockbox be released for the H300 series? When will it be ready?

Short answer: when it's ready.

Longer answer: In mid-August, Linus Feltzing started the process of
tracing the circuitry of the H3xx series to create a schematic for it.
The schematic was required before Linus could hook up a BDM wiggler to
write a Rockbox bootloader for the H3xx series. As of 18 August 2005, he
estimated that he would have a prototype bootloader for the H3xx series
completed in "weeks." On 24 August 2005, Linus ran his first BDM wiggler
session on his H320. Thus, progress is being made on the H3xx bootloader.

What does this mean? On the H1xx series, it took approximately 6 months
from the time that a bootloader was written until music playback was
possible on the player. Just two and a half months later, a huge amount
of progress has been made, but Rockbox for the H1xx still has not been
formally "released" and there are still some features that need to be
implemented and bugs that need to be corrected. What it does mean that
those who are coding for the Rockbox project will soon be able to work
on the code for the H3xx series on the player itself and adapt existing
code for the idiosyncracies of the H3xx. It is likely that the timeline
for the H3xx series from bootloader to music playback will be
significantly shorter than it was for the H1xx series because of the
similarities between those two players.

Bottom line: this news should not be read to say that there will be a
functional version of Rockbox for the H3xx series within weeks. However,
it does mean that progress is being made, and that the rate of progress
will probably increase in the relatively near future.


So from their own web site, I'm guessing 6-8 months from August 2005, so
*maybe* sometime early next year, but that's just my own personal guess
and hope. I've been watching Rockbox for a number of months now just for
when they'll start to support the H300 series of players (H320 and H340).

Hope all of this helped.

ian
Received on 2005-10-15

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