Rockbox

I'm using the newest build of Rockbox (2007-07-21) with an iAudio X5 20 GB and I have my tuner set to the European region. I encounter two little flaws in the FM-radio. I think they partially have to do with the player's hardware, but maybe Rockbox can improve the quality a bit.

1. The player is really sensitive to movement. The signal strength differs with every meter that you take the player with you. On top of that, most stations sound like they're not correctly tuned, but I can't get them any better. Maybe Rockbox could be more accurate in frequency selection? (Like 101.100, 101.125, 101.150.) I can get these stations quite well on my home radio. I don't expect the same quality from such a small device, but some finetuning would be great. The only problem is that it would take a while to scroll through the frequencies, but once set it'd be fine.
2. (I assume this is very hardware related.) The radio signal may change between stereo and mono. I have it set to stereo, but sometimes it just picks mono. I guess this is because of the hardware, since it is place related. I also didn't find any potential bugs in the source code.

What are your thoughts on this?

Oh, and keep up this good work! I really enjoy Rockbox!

When recording, as file size reaches 25.2MB and again at 52.4MB respectively, disk thrashing noise drowns out the recording for about 2 minutes.
This occurs at about 27.5 minutes if recording as mp3.
And about 5.25 minutes if recording as wav.

I am assuming that Rockbox is filling a cache and then dumping the file to disk all at once.

I would expect it to write quietly. Even if it where to write on the fly, the noise would be reduced to short bursts. 2 minutes of interruption is just not acceptable. I missed out on important information during those 2 minute periods.

How can we eliminate write noise altogether? Or at least in the recording itself.

Select ‘FM Radio’ Choose your station.
Then from the menu select ‘Recording’ Press ‘play’ or ‘Rec’ to begin recording.
Wait for file size to reach about 28MB. Then stop.

I can also provide recordings if necessary.

*note: I also had the USB cord attached to give better FM reception.
tested on e260 & e280
Rockbox Version: r15988-080102

Thanks

How to reproduce this:-

Use the remote to turn on the player while the hold switch is set to lock on the player. Backlight on both the player and the remote stay on constantly (timeout is set to 5s presently).

If you set the hold switch to unlock the backlight goes off after the timeout has expired and thereafter will turn off however the hold switch is set.

The (software-)equalizer is adding high noises to the playback.

I made a recording, the first part with eq enabled the second one with disabled equalizer.

I could also make a test on my older H110, on which I never used the sw-eq though.

Unsure if this is an RBUtil isssue or a sansapatcher issue, or even a Sansa issue that can’t be solved, but according to this (http://www.rockbox.org/irc/log-20080709#02:36:38), it reports a successful install on the e200R when it hasn’t. Related to  FS#7526 ?

- What behaviour you are seeing

Rockbox 17612-080523 on an iRiver H340 skips entire tracks, and also skips within tracks, when the battery level falls below 30%

- What behaviour you expected

No skipping.

- How to reproduce the bug

Allow the battery level to fall below 30% and start playing a directory of files. Some files will be skipped, some files will have parts skipped in the middle.

- The SVN revision you are using and if possible the particular SVN revision in which you think the bug was introduced.

17612-080523, no idea when the bug started.

If you need any further info on this bug, please ask and I’ll give more details. I have no other hardware to test whether this behaviour occurs on other Rockbox platforms.

Only filetree.c should be allowed to call opendir(), anything that needs to recursively scan directories should be calling ft_load() which can smartly open, scan and close a directory.

The problem with this is that the filename buffer could get corrupted easily if its misused.

as of r18234 the following is using opendir() in the core
filetree.c:133: dir = opendir(c→currdir); ← not recursive
filetree.c:257: dir = opendir(tempdir); ← in ft_load() so ok
filetree.c:259: dir = opendir(c→currdir); ← “” “” “” misc.c:164: dir = opendir(pathlen ? buffer : “/”);
misc.c:1059: dir = opendir(BOOTDIR);
misc.c:1142: DIR* d = opendir(path);
onplay.c:466: dir = opendir(dirname);
onplay.c:817: srcdir = opendir(src);
tagcache.c:4075: dir = opendir(dirname);

the tagcache and the onplay.c ones are dangerous… the 3 in misc.c are not recursive so safe.

the following are uses in plugins, havnt checked them so I only know for sure that stats, disktidy and properties are unsafe
plugins/disktidy.c:203: dir = rb→opendir(name);
plugins/disktidy.c:270: dir = rb→opendir(name);
plugins/md5sum.c:78: dir = rb→opendir( path );
plugins/md5sum.c:113: DIR *dir = rb→opendir( newpath );
plugins/md5sum.c:209: dir = rb→opendir( arg );
plugins/properties.c:79: dir = rb→opendir(tstr);
plugins/properties.c:151: dir = rb→opendir(dps→dirname);
plugins/properties.c:276: dir = rb→opendir(str_dirname);
plugins/random_folder_advance_config.c:70: dir = rb→opendir(fullpath);
plugins/random_folder_advance_config.c:165: dir_check = rb→opendir(formatted_line);
plugins/rockpaint.c:740: d = rb→opendir( bbuf );
plugins/rockpaint.c:754: d = rb→opendir( “/” );
plugins/rockpaint.c:915: d = rb→opendir( FONT_DIR “/” );
plugins/sokoban.c:925: if(!(dir = rb→opendir(dirname)))
plugins/stats.c:139: dir = rb→opendir(fullpath);
plugins/test_codec.c:763: dir = rb→opendir(dirpath);
plugins/test_disk.c:356: dir = rb→opendir(testbasedir);
plugins/test_disk.c:359: rb→splash(HZ, “opendir() failed.”);
plugins/test_disk.c:421: if 1) == NULL)
plugins/wavrecord.c:3774: if 2) == NULL)

so,
The bad calls in the core should be changed to use ft_load, and the plugins should either get a new function in the lib to grab some ram and manage the whole thing, or maybe its safe to just call ft_load there also?

or alternatively, we can go on ignoring the issue.

Rockbox Version:r16780-080324

Description:
If the “Bookmark on Stop” option is set to “Yes” and there is no free space left on the storage, rockbox freezes/takes a REALLY long time if pressing the Poweoff(=Stop) button, because it cannot save the bookmark(or has to push out the less recent?).

I wondered why rockbox crashed if doing this til I discovered this bug.

Expected behavoiur: Instantls notify user there’s no space left and don’t save the bookmark

How to reproduce:
1. Power on the player, launch rockbox. Make sure there’s enough disk space.
2. Go Settings→General Settings→Bookmarking→Bookmark on Stop→Set to “Yes” 3. Reboot, connect to PC
4. Create a text file which is big enough to consume the rest of your free disk space
5. Restart Sansa into rockbox
6. Play a track
7. Press poweroff (short)

This may represent other players as well.

I installed a new battery on my iriver, a 2100 mAh that is working perfectly. The problem however, is that when fully charged, the voltage holds up to 4.12 volts, and until it drains to somewhere under 3.9 volts, Rockbox thinks that it is powered via USB, so naturally Rockbox gets stuck in USB mode until the battery is drained enough for Rockbox to realize that it IS a battery. With this problem at hand, I have to charge my iriver to only less than seventy percent of its battery life, or else wait for an hour or so to drain it to that point. I HAVE tested it in its original firmware, like I said, works perfectly. The problem lies with Rockbox thinking that the battery is a USB charger. I am asking for a fix around this. Is there a way that I can modify Rockbox so that it may understand that it is running off of a battery that will get up to 4.12 volts and not mistake that for USB power? I just now thought to turn off the “Charge During USB Connection,” maybe that will solve the problem; I will get back when I find out whether or not that works. However, I would still like to request a work around for this problem. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.

I have just now installed the latest stable version of rockbox (that would be 3.0) on an iriver h340. Unfortunately, it’s unusable at the moment due to some serious screen corruption. It sort of looks like this picture: http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/2263/iriver3qs.jpg, but is so much worse that it’s impossible to navigate the menus. If I wait for the backlight to go off, and then press a button, the screen looks fine until I start navigating, at which point the corruption resurfaces.

I’m really excited about rockbox, but this bug is a showstopper for me at the moment.

Thanks for looking into it!

Regards.

The Idle Poweroff only reboots my 1G iPod. I assume it should power it off or put it into a power saving mode. This forces it to use up the battery faster then normal unless I set the Hold button to boot into the iPod firmware to do a proper suspend when Rockbox reboots.

Hi,

There is a compilation problem when the environment variable BLOCK_SIZE is set. It gave me errors about a comma.

This can be set or cleared systematically or on a command by command basis.

Suggestion one; unset BLOCK_SIZE and its relatives high in the build chain, but be prepared for POSIX to bite with 512 byte blocks.

Suggestion two; set LS_BLOCK_SIZE=1 high in the build chain. (And DF_BLOCK_SIZE=1024 and DU_BLOCK_SIZE=1024 ?)

Suggestion three; edit apps/lang/Makefile so that

$(SILENT)echo “#define MAX_LANGUAGE_SIZE `ls -ln $(OBJDIR)/* | awk ‘{print $$5}’ | sort -n | tail -1`” > $(HEADER)

becomes

$(SILENT)echo “#define MAX_LANGUAGE_SIZE `ls -ln –block-size=1 $(OBJDIR)/* | awk ‘{print $$5}’ | sort -n | tail -1`” > $(HEADER)

or

$(SILENT)echo “#define MAX_LANGUAGE_SIZE `LS_BLOCK_SIZE=1 ls -ln $(OBJDIR)/* | awk ‘{print $$5}’ | sort -n | tail -1`” > $(HEADER)

Suggestion four; just tell people that they are not allowed to have commas in their core utilities output (and be prepared to be bitten badly if the default block size ever changes).

BTW I *like* having thousands separators on my command line, so I have

export BLOCK_SIZE=\'1
export DF_BLOCK_SIZE=\'M

in my /etc/bashrc file.

Tested with r19410

If I boot with the headphones plugged in, sound always works (at least I didn’t have it fail yet). If I boot without headhones plugged in, and plug them in later, sound often doesn’t work. This may also depend on whether the player was turned off for a long time, whether the previous boot was USB mode, and whether the headphones were unplugged before or after shutting down.

After upgrading from 3.0 to 3.1, the “Beep” sound (enabled in Settings / Playback Settings / Beep Volume) now sounds very distorted and fuzzy.

It sounds this way on any setting. Strong, Moderate or Weak and with the player’s volume on any setting. It definitely sounded like a normal clean beep with 3.0

This is on an 80gb Ipod 5.5 with Rockbox r19569-081223

I’m not sure if this should be under “Music Playback”, as I don’t seem to hear the distortion and fuzziness when playing mp3’s.

Mike

“First Keypress Enables Backlight Only” doesn’t work on the 5G iPod. For example, if that’s enabled, the backlight is off and I press next track while at the WPS, Rockbox will go to the next track.

It seems like clickwheel event(s) generated when I touch the wheel turn on the backlight. When the button is pressed, the backlight is already considered to be on and the button press performs its usual action. If I carefully hold my finger still on the clickwheel, let the backlight fade, and then carefully press a button without moving my finger on the clickwheel, I am able to turn on the backlight without causing anything else to happen.

I don’t know what to do about this. Requiring a physical button press might be annoying. Removing this option on affected targets might be okay, because it’s easy to turn on the backlight by touching the clickwheel (and that doesn’t seem to cause anything else to happen). Another possibility is to require more or specific wheel events.

I set player type to iPod 5G because that’s all I have, but I expect this problem also exists on other clickwheel iPods. This problem exists on r20079 and r20033.

The H10 5G MTP needs a different bootloader than the UMS version (see http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IriverH10PortDevInfo#Build_a_Rockbox_Bootloader).
I’m not sure about the correct way to do this in configure, so I’ll leave it to someone who is.

I’ve been reliably informed that Rockbox should stop scrolling when it gets to the bottom or top of a menu, only to wrap around when you initiate a new scrolling gesture. On a 2nd Generation iPod, however, it just keeps scrolling.

See http://bertram.bourdrez.org/buggyrockbox.avi (the video is recorded with an old Rockbox, but 3.2-090323 does the same thing)

Also, the bug tracking system is overcomplicated. I have to register an account?!
“Why the hell should *I* set up an account? It’s not like any bugs will be assigned to me or anything. Just store my e-mail address and move on. It’s completely fucking bogus that I should have to go digging through my mail for confirmation passwords.” (http://zork.net/~sneakums/fortunes/gar/215)

Then I have to click a link with a magic number in it *as well as* having to enter a confirmation code from the same email (!?) and then when I’ve finished, I’m not even logged in! I have to log in with the same password I just set! Can’t it just set a cookie?

This IS a duplicate of  FS#6904 .

My iaudio x5 hangs when changing directories via short+long direction button presses. It switches to the next directory, but no audio plays, and the WPS shows that it stops at 0:02 of the track.

Sometimes when I shut my unit off and then turn it on again and resume playback, RB resumes from a different place than where it left off, and even though when I resume shuffle is on (as indicated by its icon), it isn’t. It’ll play the current track, then the next track in the playlist (which in my case is in order by track number, so it’ll play the next track on the album), and so on.

If I turn shuffle off and then on again, shuffle works correctly again.

I’m using a build from January 19 (19800-090119) on an Archos Recorder. I
noticed this bug occurring in the 3.1 build as well.

It seems to happen randomly – I can’t figure out anything specifically that I can do to always make it happen.

firmware/export/usb_ch9.h comes from linux (include/linux/usb/ch9.h) with only trivial changes. The original doesn’t mention a specific license, so it probably is GPLv2
file basically contains only structure declarations and defines for things straight from the USB specification though, so I’m not sure if there is a real problem.

If LCD_SLEEP is put on the backlight queue immediatly after BACKLIGHT_ON, the LCD will go to sleep immediately after the backlight turns on. On the 5G iPod, the next backlight_on() call will wake it, but on some other targets it might not wake again.

For example, consider the following sequence of events:
1) backlight_on() is called, putting BACKLIGHT_ON on the queue
2) The LCD sleep timeout from the previous backlight shutoff puts LCD_SLEEP on the queue
3) BACKLIGHT_ON is received and the backlight is turned on. The call of backlight_lcd_sleep_countdown(false) does nothing about the LCD_SLEEP on the queue.
5) The LCD_SLEEP is received, putting the LCD to sleep again.

This patch causes LCD_SLEEP to be ignored by backlight_thread() when the backlight is on. It also removes a workaround from 5G iPod LCD sleep code.

This issue is theoretical and very improbable. I am not able to trigger this bug in r20774.

Setting the Idle Poweroff setting seems to work just fine initially because the player ceases to respond to any input. However, when you push the power button back up to turn it on, the screen lights up and says “Shutting down…” for a few seconds before actually powering off. You then have to push the power button back on to turn it on proper.

Build 21245

I have ''Start Screen' set to 'Resume Playback'.

When connecting the Ipod (from OFF) to the PC the Ipod boots and USB mode starts but also playback (the play > sign is display on the title bar).

The Ipod is not shows and not mounted on the PC.

On disconnecting USB I get 'data abort' and have to hard reset.

I know that the folks that added recording functions to the PP targets only did it as a proof-of-concept, which rteally works well already. I am curious if anyone has looked into the bizarre noise that is generated on the right channel, I have tested this on two different 4g grayscale ipods and on 5.5g ipod. The noise level is lower in the 5.5g than the 4g's. I have attatched a png of jamin running a "silent" recording (no mic connected) and the wavpack file. I amplified the sound to get it to register higher on my spectrum analyzer.

Recipe:
1) Play an album. Wait until buffering completes.
2) Skip from track 1 to track 2. No buffering occurs.
3) Skip from track 2 to track 1. No buffering occurs.
4) In the playlist viewer, select track 2. Rebuffering occurs, even though the track is buffered.

The same problem occurs in the opposite direction (e.g. after step 2, it should be possible to switch to track 1 using the playlist viewer without rebuffering).

I have experienced a fade in reception with my sansa e260. If I tune to a station, the longer I listen, the more static becomes present until the station is all static. I have found however that if I navigate to another station and go back. The station is clear again. This does not happen on the original firmware and does not seem to be location specific.

So the firmware seems to be seeing a degrading signal, but the signal is not actually degrading. Or perhaps the frequency to which the FM tuner is tuned, begins to deviate until it reaches a point of all static, even though the tuner still displays the original frequency.

Thanks.

Currently running r19940 but there doesn’t seem to have been any chage in the power code for the gigabeat S recently.

The issue is that there is a regular clicking noise heard if DC power is connected while the battery is fully charged. This noise is not heard while the battery is charging. The same power adapter doesn’t cause the same noise on an F.

The uisimulator cannot be build by using the source of the latest version on MinGW.

I send this bug’s patch.

It is necessary to apply the patch of FS#10021 to build the firmware on MinGW.

Using a bootloader from  FS#9955 , a USB connection is not made if Start Screen is set to WPS, and the user boots Rockbox by inserting a USB cable.

This is possibly also true for other values of Start Screen.

Tested on e280, but I expect it’ll likely be the case on other PP targets with USB

I installed release 3.3 on my Sansa e260. 3.2 worked. On 3.3, volume controls work fine in normal playback mode, but when I switch to FM Radio, they are ignored. If I switch back to normal playback mode, I can set the volume level again, just not while listening to the radio.

I noticed, that every time I’m in the car listening to music, and I disconnect the iPod 30G (5th gen), while its playing, and I then try to shut it down, it’ll jump to the main window and will not move away from it.

From this point on, I cannot turn off the device nor more away from the main window. Only a HR will resolve this and let the iPod come back to normal working order.

Further more, while it is in that situation (which it is right now, while I write this), the device won’t even go on sleep or turn off the monitor. So basically, it’ll stay with the screen wide awake and lit up.

The two only buttons that will work are the Hold button, which will in turn, turn off the screen and the scroll will allow me to scroll up and down and around on the main window.

Q: What sort of car connection do you use? Line-out+power, or MSC? Or the accessory
I’m not familiar with these connection and their types. All I know is that it is connected to the car stereo from back (ie. the stereo was pull out and the adapter was connected in the back). Also, that it is a connection that connects to the bottom of the iPod (ie. flat and wide connection). It gives me control from the car’s stereo and the steering wheel. When I bought it and then they hooked it up, they told me this is an iPod adapter.

This DOES NOT happen if first stop the music and go to another menu BEFORE I disconnect it from the adapter.

Build is r23841 and earlier.

Occasionally when I reboot to the iPod firmware, something has caused the previously unset alarm setting to be enabled and the playback mode is set to shuffle. This doesn't happen with every reboot, but does more than 50% of the time.

Steps to duplicate:

1. Disable the alarm and set the shuffle mode to "None" in the iPod firmware.
2. Reset and boot into Rockbox
3. Listen to a few tracks
4. Reboot into the iPod firmware and check the shuffle mode and alarm settings.

I can't confirm 100% yet as to the time on the alarm being reset as well, but it does seem to consistently read 6 AM - which is a bit of a shock if I've been listening in Rockbox during the day and then I reboot into the Apple firmware and dock in my iHome, expecting to sleep in late on the weekend.

Rockbox hangs if the disk gets full during database creation.

Duplicate table and some text found in manual/main_menu/main.tex in section Recent Bookmarks, and in manual/configure_rockbox/bookbarking.tex in section Bookmarking.

These duplicate code sections should be joined, and the two files should share it.

(sansa fuze)
for some games (such as pokemon)
when you walk around alot;
it is difficult because even the slightest movement of the wheel activates the pause screen;
I have tried multiple controls setups;
and whatever is setup to use the scrollwhell is always extremely sensitive;
a sensitivity setting should be added, to allow a change in the threshold required to count as a button press

Hi,
There is a problem in the Chinese voicing. It says "number, bai fen ji" (number %), but it's supposed to say "bai fen ji number) (% #). I don't know if it happens in text because I'm blind. Could this be fixed?

ROLO currently fails on these targets unless a Rockbox image is being loaded that is sufficiently similar to the one already in memory.

The sequence goes like this:

- rolo_load() loads the new image to
rolo_restart() copies the new image to the start of DRAM (to achieve this without crashing, this function is in
rolo_restart() tries to call invalidate_idcache(), but since invalidate_idcache() is in DRAM this fails as the function has been overwritten.

There are several solutions to this:

1) Move invalidate_idcache() into .icode (easy but won’t fix all targets, esp. those that don’t use IRAM)

2) Create a new .safecode section at the end of DRAM, and move these functions into it (lots of work to update every app.lds and crt0.S, and test every target)

3) Introduce target-specific rolo_restart() functions, as per imx31/rolo_restart.S (less work, as only one should be required per architecture, eg ARMv4/5 etc.)

I’m not sure which of those options is “best”. 1) is certainly the easiest, but 2) and 3) should also allow ROLO to work on targets that don’t use IRAM.

I like to keep the equalizer on with the precut set to -24db, as a volume limiter. I also like the fade on stop/pause set on. When I pause there is a noticeable ‘click’ sound after the music fades out. Also a click before fading in when I resume.

This was not always the case, but I am not sure how old the version I was using, that did not do this.

By the way, this also occurs on the Gigabeat S, as well as Gigabeat F. I don’t know about other models.

Let me know if you need more information.

rockbox 3.5: ipod doesn’t recognize the connection of usb. i understand that rockbox doesn’t support usb on a 3G ipod, but it would be nice to boot into disk-mode like it does for firewire.

charging isn’t monitored on ipod 3G. it just goes up to 100% very quickly and stays there.

When loading a saved Brickmania game, the game is loaded corrupted. Please see screenshot attached to see for yourself. There is one brick in the right side which is shown corrupted, and one corrupted rectangle in the left side of the screen which drops like a power object, and stays at the bottom of the screen.

This issue happens on Cowon D2 target. It doesn't happen on the D2's simulator.

Looking at the code and comparing the loading/saving function against the Bubble's game functions, I can see that the return value of file operations is not checked (I'll fix that).
In Bubbles, there's a single file operation of reading/writing the game context struct. In Brickmania there are several consequent file operation to read/write each variable. Maybe the drivers doesn't handle this well on this target. A workaround for that could possibly be to join all saved variables under one game context struct as in Bubbles, but that could mask a real bug somewhere else.

Currently with r24775-100219 on a Gigabeat 20
Checked that it isn’t something to do with the HDD
sometimes after USB transfer or just right after startup, after pressing “Resume playback” it just halts there,showing the album art and sometimes you can change songs/volume but it isn’t playing,then it just freezes and you cannot control anything that needs to be turned off via power switch, and sometimes it requires certain trials before it can normally startup and play.
Additionally, if that happens during startup, it is noticeable that a normal startup produces sort of a background noise,while a buggy startup is simply silent in my headphone.

Sorry for this article. I am a Chiness boy and my english is poor.But i love rockbox.My MP3 Player is onda vx747.I can’t open any .txt files which larger than 1M on the rockbox system.I don’t know how to solve it and i hope some could send me a message if he could solve the problem.My E-mail:724279694@qq.com.Thanks!

Using the latest revision (r20001 - but its been broken since I started using Rockbox) the iAudio M3 does not recharge the battery using either the USB or the Power adapter.

The only way I can get the iAudio M3 to charge is to use Cowon’s firmware.

Can't load Rockbox from my SDHC 32 GB A-Data Turbo Class 6.
Get “ATA mount File not found”. Cowon FW loads well.

sansa fuze v1 scroller doesn’t obey ‘first button press enables backlight only’

rockbox 3.5.1

Steps to reproduce:

1. Start listening to a series of podcasts, say 1-5
2. After listening to >1 plug player into computer during playback of subsequent podcast
3. Delete the podcasts you have already listened to (not what your currently listening to)
4. Eject/Unplug player from computer
5. Attempt to resume playback

This fails for both resume and Recent Bookmarks functionality. I assume this is somehow tied in with playlist support as files from the playlist have been deleted.

Where does Recent Bookmarks keep it's information? Should the bookmark also keep the individual file referenced so it can resume in this case?

Tested on R21184M-090604

Will test on latest version once my main machine is back on internet.

When Playing with rockboy on sansa e200 V1 , Rom that have a size of more than 1m Bug and Rockbox often shutdown. And even if these roms run, the speed isn't playable.

Stereo width of >0% can cause stutter in the form of an audible click.

Bypassed by setting stereo width of 0% or monophonic channel configuration.

Tested on r24190-100105

To reproduce:
- Start Rockbox, default setting
- Play a file with ID3 tags which are encoded in some non-Latin locale (In my case, Hebrew). Notice that the strings are shown in Gibberish.
- Change Default Codepage to the other locale (e.g. Hebrew).
- Go back to WPS

Expected result: All strings that are encoded in the other locale are shown properly.
Current result: All these strings are shown in the original locale.

Workaround: Restart the player. The new locale is applied.

I will not have time to fix this myself, so I'll appreciate if someone else can take responsibility for this bug. Thanks.