From: Ben Vercellone <skimanbe_at_optonline.net>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:54:03 -0400

Hello, my name is Ben Vercellone, and I am a blind new Rock Box user with a
great deal of success accept for a consistent freezing problem. I have the
Ipod Video 80 GB. I use the daily build. I have gotten it to speak well,
and have changed the menus successfully for my preferences. I successfully
use the Voice Box program as well to voice label my files and folders.

 

Now here's the problem in detail.

When I turn on the Ipod, I am able to play music and do all the functions
for a period of time, after which the machine freezes. Sometimes, it takes
several minutes of music playing for the freezing to take place. Sometimes
the freezing happens right away. The freeze usually happens after I leave
the Ipod alone for a few minutes, but it sometimes happens while I am
operating the device in the now playing application. I suspect it may also
freeze in other applications as well when the music is playing. Since I
spend most of my time while using Rock Box by listening to music, all of my
freeze ups have happened during this time. I first notice the problem when
I cannot manipulate the volume. I hit the 12 o'clock part of the dial to go
to the main menu, but nothing happens. I hit all the main functions,
including skip forward, skip back, pause, stop, and power off. But nothing
fixes it accept for holding the middle circle button and the 12 o'clock
button for a few seconds in order to restart. After this, RockBox works
well again, until the next freeze, whether 1 minute or 30 minutes into the
music. I have installed 4 different daily build Rock Box programs over my
course of using the program. My second and my third installs were simply
updates. In other words, I just unzipped the fresh Rock Box contents over
the old, and manually replaced the old voice with the appropriate voice.
The problem that I described above persisted in exactly the same way. For
my forth successful Rock Box installation, I uninstalled Rock Box
completely, including uninstalling the Rock Box boot loader. Then, from
that point, I put the latest version back on, unzipped the fonts, put the
English.voice file in the langs folder, and installed the Rock Box boot
loader. Again, Rock Box worked perfectly for a while, after which time the
problem persisted in the same ways as before.

Finally, I uninstalled Rock Box completely like before, this time handing
the Ipod to my sighted dad so he could test the device with the Apple
software. I figured that if it continued to freeze under the same
conditions, then the problem would be that of the hardware, since Rock Box
and the Apple software are completely separate.

No problems occurred, so I concluded that the problem has to do at least
partly with the Rock Box firmware.

 

 

Is anyone able to offer advice that will allow me to fix this possible
problem? Any advice based on knowledge, or even experience would be
appreciated.

Please share, since I make great use of Rock Box already, and love it.

Thank you,

Ben Vercellone
Received on 2007-10-26