From: [IDC]Dragon <idc-dragon_at_gmx.de>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 22:46:04 +0200 (MEST)

Hello Paul,
(thanks for plain text)

> Flashed Rockbox
> -> batteries run out of juice before end of scan
>
> Flashed Rockbox with ajbrec.ajz rockbox
> -> batteries run out of juice before end of scan

I think there are 2 issues with charging, difficult to tell them apart from
people's postings:

1) The charging algorithm could need an overhaul in a few aspects. This
became more visible since we flash. One thing is in the case of the charging
screen the cells are not just recovering from a spinup like the algorithm
assumes, they are in fact weaker with the same voltage reading. So the upper limit
to charging time might be too short. Another mishap for the charging screen is
that the setting are not yet loaded, so it ignores capacity, deep discharge,
etc. in favour of some hopefully reasonable defaults. And the delayed
charging like I mentioned before. But all this is our code, Rockbox issue, to be
fixed one day.

2) Few people report that not even the F1-started Archos software is
charging well for them. They had to revert back to the original flash content to fix
it. You seem to have one of that kind. This is very interesting, in an older
posting I asked for the HW mask value of such units, but haven't gotten much
useful response. Nobody so far really investigated in detail. From how I
understand, the only software influence to charging is port B bit 5. We can only
switch the current on or off, no more. An yes, we set that bit to output in
power_init(). Do you have an amperemeter to measure the current in and out of
the cells for your use cases?
Another thing worth trying is my startup I/O experimental code to rolo, in
since quite a while, not really utilized yet. (But it helped me to fix rockbox
not properly roloing the Archos software.) Rolo now looks for a file
"startup_io.bin" in the root dir. If present, the whole hardware register space of
the controller gets reinitialized with its content, right before jumping into
the new software. This is meant to find missing inits. Can you try your
charging issue to it?

Please start with your known good combination, original flash and rockbox
loaded the ajbrec.ajz way. Choose Debug->Dump startup I/O. This creates the
startup_io.bin file in you root dir, make a backup of it. Then flash my stuff
and update to recent ucl. For the interesting test, rolo rockbox or Archos. Now
the I/O space for these will be the same as with the original. Check if the
charging is still not OK. If the situation improves, I'm interested in your
startup_io.bin dump, in comparison with another one you dump from the flashed
version (hence the backup).

Thanks for helping to improve,
Jörg

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Received on 2003-10-21