From: Björn Stenberg <bjorn_at_haxx.se>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 12:49:50 +0100 (CET)

Stuart Martin wrote:

> 1. The current behaviour of the jukebox's software sucks when it halts
> music playback to perform certain tasks such as reading a textfile or
> connecting to USB etc. Is there any reason that (at least some of)
> these things cannot be performed in parallel in our version of the
> software?

The archos have two distinct run modes: MP3 Player Mode and USB Harddisk
Mode. In MP3 player mode, there is no good reason for playback to be
interrupted by anything other than errors. In USB harddisk mode, there can
be no music playback since the USB chip is in charge of the hard drive.

> 2. Also, I take it that the memory is kept charged during a poweroff
> to retain volume settings and song resume. If this is the case, then
> this could easily be extended to playlist resume after poweroff, and
> other annoying features.

The settings are not saved in memory but on sector 63 of the harddisk,
which is not used for anything else. I thought we discussed this on the
list, but I can't seem to find it in the archive. That's why the disk
spins up every time you change volume or sound settings. And yes, playlist
resume and mid-song resume should be fairly simple functions to add.

> 3. Archos themselves have two versions of the firmware - one for each
> of the two jukebox models. Do they truly differ so much?

Yes. Look at the data sheet web page and you'll see that the LCD, the
DSP/DAC and the RAM all differs. And because of that, the circuit board
differs so some pins are used for different functions in the JBP and JBR.

> (I appreciate that footprint size can be an issue, but that can be
> controlled during the build process).

I hope we can have a unified source code for both models, but I don't
think it is a good idea to produce a single archos.mod file that runs in
both.

> 4. There was talk recently of being careful with the mods created by
> the esteemed members of this community, especially regarding frying
> one's harddisk or ide controller. How serious are these concerns?

They are serious for those of us working on getting the IDE interface
working. You do not need to be worried about it for the small LCD and LED
test programs we have so far released.

/Björn
Received on 2002-01-11