From: LoveLearn <LoveLearn_at_iw.net>
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 00:30:24 -0500

As a catalyst to trigger useful conversation, here's my speculative
partial explanation. If my understanding of Archos available power flow
and power demands is correct, their relationship may be triggering long
recording session interruptions.

Let's start with my questionable assumptions. Our Archos units are
powered by their battery packs. These battery packs only get their power
from their charging circuit. Power required to continuously play is a
cycling mix of continuous playback electronics plus intermittent hard
drive cycling, which together generate an average power demand that's
less than the connected charging circuit is able to sustain. So the load
of playing only slows complete recharge times. But CONTINUOUSLY running
the hard drive plus the electronics sections requires more average power
than the connected power supply can input. Continuous or nearly
continuous hard drive running can occur when transferring files or when
recording. Right?? If that's true, even starting with a fully charged
battery set, eventually battery pack reserves will be exhausted causing
hard drive shut down.

Now it really gets more speculative. Then, perhaps the software tries to
comply with the last demand which is to record to a file. This could try
to recycle the hard drive into charging again. But until the battery
reserve has been more fully recharged, restarts fail creating
incompletely formed record files from these attempts. Does that
explanation fit known relationships and observed failure symptoms?

I thought that someone who actually knows would have addressed this, but
they didn't. So I've suggested this speculative explanation. I hope
someone who knows more about this will jump in and explain what probably
is actually occurring. There's a regularly scheduled 4 hour radio
broadcast that I'd like to record for playback at my convenience. So I'd
also like to reliably make Archos recordings that long.
John LoveLearn
Received on 2003-10-08