From: TP Diffenbach <rockbox_at_diffenbach.org>
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 20:59:48 -0500

The good news is that I got my Archos back from newmp3technology today, and
had time to finish most of the extended battery life patch. This version
addressees the complaints that the original patch did not save resume
information, but should extend battery life as much as the original extended
battery life patch. For those who did testing, it has the battery life of
Test A and the resume saving of Test B.

What it does is pretty simple: it stops updating the wps screen after some
number of seconds without key presses. Some people hate the idea of
"freezing" the wps screen at all; this patch is clearly not for them. In
real life, depending on how you use your unit, it probably extends battery
life by about 10%, perhaps as much as 15% if you just play long playlists
without pressing any buttons on the unit. You can see some graphs here:
http://www.diffenbach.org/rockbox/ebl_test/results/ebl_results.html

Now for the bad news: about 7 and a half hours after I got the unit back
from newmp3technology, it again began to exhibit hardware problems: pressing
F1 caused it to hang, and I even got one amusing fault where the right
4/5ths of the screen blanked and was replaced with "IllInstr" written
/upside-down/. Wanting to be sure that I'd controlled for all possible
causes, and having had it freshly serviced, I re-flashed the unit with the
original Archos firmware. The flashing hung on the programming screen, and
the firmware was erased but not re-written.

So now I have hardware problems and a unit without any firmware at all.
(Actually, [IDC] Dragon says I must have the first /part/ of the Archos
firmware, given that both the red and the green leds come on.) I can't boot,
and about all I can do is hold down "Off" for hardware reset. Yes, my Archos
is now a $550 paper-weight. And this wasn't even the worst thing to happen
to me this week.

So, I don't expect I'll be hanging out here much in the future. If anyone
wants to finish the extended battery life code, drop me a line. As far as
plans for a database, well, if you feel up to taking that on I can give you
some ideas and some pointers to code.

--Tom
Received on 2003-12-18