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Wiki > Main > IpodPort > IpodStatus

Rockbox Status for Ipod Models

This document is historical and mostly out of date!

Known issues (1G-3G models)

%W% USER FEEDBACK NEEDED : Rockbox works with audio playback on the 3G iPod, but is still far behind the other iPod versions - please post your experiences here.

3G iPod, 10GB -- SteveYeats - 18 Oct 2010
  • OGG plays fine. no buffer underrun if encoded under 450Kbit/s
  • FLAC works perfectly, compression level 8.
  • MP3 playback (mixed bitrates) is flawless so far. no noticeable underrun if any at all.
  • AAC is also flawless. For reference I have a Toshiba MK1504GAL with firmware JB100B and a usable drive size of 9536MB.

UPDATE: iPod touch controls decided to kick the bucket early. recieved another iPod and tried out Rockbox, same test results apply (15GB HDD)

3G iPod, 15GB -- MichaelMoore - 15 Sep 2007
  • Ogg is playing fine. Haven't played with mp3s yet.
  • Using Banshee under Ubuntu Gutsy Linux allows me to use USB Mass Storage mode
3G iPod, 20GB
  • Playback
    • FLAC: All good (cpu at 30MHZ mostly), compression level 8
    • MP3 (192kbit/s) : Occasional buffer underrun (a few times per song), cpu at 75MHZ
    • OGG (500kbit/s): Constant buffer underrun (every 10 or so seconds), cpu at 75MHZ
  • Other
    • SCROLL: sometimes unresponsive, most of the time sluggish when playing. Not sluggish when stopped (I believe this probably due to to the CPU usage.
    • SHUTDOWN: Doesn't work, will lockup with "shutting down" message
    • USB: Not detected, will not go into "disk mode" as other ipod (tried 5th gen) do. Only way to transfer files is to boot into apple firmware and connect it to computer then.
    • LOCKUP: Will lockup randomly, This has been experienced with FLAC playback so far.
3G iPod, 40GB (-- PhilippeBoineau - 07 Mar 2007)
  • Playback
    • FLAC : ok (FLAC 1.1.4, compression level 8)
  • Other
    • help Shutdown problem (since daily build 20070222)
    • LOCKUP : iPod 3G randomly lockup during FLAC playback.

Known issues (4G models and higher)

The following table lists the known bugs and unimplemented features of the iPod port. Please do not add generic Rockbox bugs here.

Description of bug Affected iPods Comments
Click Wheel not fully implemented All No click sound played when click wheel is used.

To-do List

The following table lists the outstanding tasks remaining before the ipod port of Rockbox can be considered complete. The "Assigned to" column indicates the names of developers who have expressed an interest in working on this feature.

General tasks

Task Status Comments Assigned to
RoLo Buggy RoLo does not currently restart the coprocessor properly. Separately to this, RoLoing the original firmware does not work DanielAnkers / DaveChapman
Recording In progress Basic recording functionality (line-in and mic on the 4g and Color/Photo, line-in only on the 5g) is working and is in CVS but is missing important features such as gain control and selection of different samplerates. The current code also breaks playback after a recording is made.  
COP Usage Codec Implemented on COP Some codecs use COP, others probably could stand to benefit from it
Accessory Support In Progress A serial port driver has been written and some parts of the Apple accessory protocol are documented. See FS#8624  
USB Disk Mode In progress Disk mode works very well, but charging is not implemented on all iPods yet.  
Firewire support Not started All iPods apart from the Nano and 5g can act as external firewire hard drives, and all ipods can charge via firewire. Currently Rockbox doesn't have any specific support for firewire connections, but the hardware charges via firewire automatically.  
Flash support Not started All iPods have a 1MB flash ROM containing the Apple bootloader, the emergency disk mode application, and the diagnostics mode application. Replacing this code would allow far faster booting time into Rockbox, and the option to the run RomBox (Rockbox running directly from flash). However, doing so would require Rockbox to fully initialise the hardware on boot (it currently relies on some initialisations performed by Apple's bootloader) and failed flashing attempts would result in a bricked ipod. See IpodFlash.  

Model-specific tasks

Task Status Comments Assigned to
Greyscale library In progress On the non-iPod targets with mono or greyscale LCDs, Rockbox has a "greyscale library" capable of displaying more than the native number of shades of grey on the LCD. Porting of this library is required in order for the JPEG viewer, some demo plugins and Doom to run on those iPods.  
TV-Out (Photo/Color) Not started The Photo/Color iPods have a TV-Out capability (a third ring in the headphone socket). It is unknown how to control this hardware, but the ipodlinux wiki states that these iPods contain an Analog Devices ADV7179 NTSC/PAL Video Encoder.  
TV-Out (5g) Not started The 5g also has a TV-Out capability, but this is likely to be different to the Photo/Color and connected directly to the Broadcom chip to allow video playback.  
5g Broadcom chip Not started The 5g iPod has a Broadcom BCM2722 video decoder/processor which is used for video playback. Rockbox currently makes no use of this chip.  
3g USB Not Started The 3G ought to have the same USB behaviour as later generations (i.e. reboots into disk mode on USB insert.)  

r72 - 02 Apr 2021 - 20:46:06 - UnknownUser


Parents: IpodPort
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