For the fun of it, I created a cross-compiler based on a developer
snapshot of gcc. It is a successor to 4.3.3, essentially an early
4.4.0. I am aware that versions other than 4.0.3 don't work well.

I thought you might like a bit of a report.

The development environment is hosted on a Debian Sid system.

I used the 4.3.3+something gcc to create a portal-player ARM firmware
for the Sansa e200.

It is based on version r20089-090223 of Rockbox

I got the source for GCC through svn from an official GNU mirror. I did
not record the release version. It is a quite recent snapshot, though.

I used the Rockbox wiki's instructions for a manual build as a checklist.

I did not apply any patches.

I used the Debian source for binutils, v. 2.19.1, but did not apply any
patches.

I built gdb v. 6.8, but I haven't yet tried to use it.

The resulting firmware works very well, except it crashes when playing
certain music files.

o The voice menu work perfectly
o The keyclicks work perfectly
o It can play .ogg Vorbis well.
o It can play .wav well.
o It crashes trying to play .mp3 with the error message "Undefined
   instruction at 40018920 (0)"
o It crashes trying to play .wma with a similar error message.
o It plays .m4a Apple-encoded songs very well
o The voice recorder works well.
o The radio works, and you can record from FM
o FreeDoom works including sound
o The screen capture did not behave as expected. Not sure if it is the
   firmware or user error.
o It plays FLAC lossless perfectly

Hope this report helps. What needs to be done to fix the problem?

Mark Allums
Received on 2009-02-24