I realised I had extracted the Apple firmware with an unpatched
ipod_fw, so I re-extracted and tried a bootloader with the 2K sectors
patch from Flyspray (http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/6169) and the
sleep(1) calls in perform_soft_reset() replaced with udelay(10000).

You will recall that ata_read_sectors is failing with ATA_STATUS set
to STATUS_ERR when it is called to read the MBR, which is the very
first disk read the bootloader tries to do.

"[IDC]Dragon" <idc-dragon_at_gmx.de> writes:

>> Then after another pause it spits an "Rockbox error" (too fast for me
>> to read it all - I can add a pause if this is important to know)
>
> I've successfully used a digicam for debugging in such cases, like error messages scrolling by too fast.

The error is "Rockbox error: -1". So here's a full transcript:

  Rockbox boot-loader
  Version: 20061012-1742
  IPOD version: 0xFFFFFFFF
  TOSHIBA MK8010GAH
(it pauses here for a few seconds)
  No partition found.
  Partition 1: 0x00 0MB
  Loading Rockbox...
(it pauses here for a few seconds)
  Rockbox error: -1
  Loading original firmware...

Now there is a pause after it prints "Loading original firmware..."
and instead of going straight back into the Rockbox bootloader, the
iPod seems to reset (I see the usual Apple logo, with the backlight
off), before going back into the Rockbox bootloader again.

-- 
Paul Collins
Wellington, New Zealand
Dag vijandelijk luchtschip de huismeester is dood