On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 09:52:24AM -0700, Nicholas Gerstenberger wrote:
> Rockbox does support larger drives but i've found that i need to modify
> one line in the _ipodvideo.h_ source file (folder -
> firmware\export\config\) before Rockbox would boot up and run correctly
> for me:
> /#define MAX_PHYS_SECTOR_SIZE *1024*/
> Change *1024* to *4096*. Save and compile as normal.
>
> I don't know if this MAX is universal for all drives but it worked for
> the 120GB drive (a Hitachi HS12YHA)

You shouldn't have to do this unless the drive's firmware is broken. The
reason that exists in the first place is because the original 80GB drive
in the iPod Video is broken, and fails to emulate unaligned sector
accesses as is required by the ATA specification.

If this is really needed for your drive then this is surprising, but not
impossible; Toshiba managed to make a drive that was broken :)

What does it actually do when you try using a standard build?

4KB is the largest sector size currently in use by the drive industry;
this may change in the future.

> Is there any reason NOT to make this setting standard on future builds?
> Since this change is strictly with a source file pertaining to the iPod
> Video, does making it higher have adverse effects on smaller drives for
> the Video?

There is; it requires more memory (admittedly, not a great deal). Other
players do not have the software emulation feature *at all*, so changing
it to a larger value for the Video does not solve the problem for any
other player; they will all fail in the same way with that disk. Fixing
it for *those* devices would take significantly more memory and have a
small performance impact on all drives... the ipod video has just
already taken this impact by necessity.

At the time I added support for large drives to the standard builds, we
were not aware of any drives with broken firmware other than the
original 80GB ipod video drive. You are the first person to report a
drive having an issue, so I don't think it's worth increasing it at this
point.

The people on the forums who used to have to increase it don't need to
any more, because I improved the emulation code to only operate if the
drive actually requires it and no other drives do.

-- 
Torne Wuff
torne_at_wolfpuppy.org.uk
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