New life for H120 DAP's !

[sweetspot]

Let's start : HERE

Now, let's take a look at some useful information as well as instructions HERE

And if you're all interested in where I got that link from, it's Head-fi which supplied the link. Never heard of that place before, but it all looks legit, and I'm going to look for the largest capacity CF card available. Type I II or micro apparently work, I belive.

Ok, so there aren't any 40 gig CF cards, but 32 gigs will do just fine for my dated H120, and given the nature of the media, it will also lengthen the battery life as well.

When I have the time, this looks to be a nifty lil' project to undertake, and breathe some new life into a golden oldie !

Doug

[Lsportline43]

Looks interesting... no more HDD connection problems!

[Lsportline43]

Ok just read the link and it looks like a freakin' cool idea! I think I'll try it out if I can get my daugther board properly connected to my mainboard again...

32 gb CF card on ebay.com for $160 shipped!

[BBD]

The guy wants $1.99USD for that adapter!?! A STEAL!

[sweetspot]

YES ! BBD's buyin' for EVERYBODY ! !

I'll take 2 please..

[jeff]

I've got this adapter:

LinITX.com - Compact Flash to 1.8" Toshiba HDD Adapter

and this CF Card:

Newegg.com - Transcend 32GB Compact Flash (CF) Flash Card Model TS32GCF133 - Retail

Took the hard drive out of my iHP-120 with Rockbox and installed the adapter and card, formatted card FAT32.

When trying to boot into Rockbox get the following error:

ATA error: -80

Apparently there is an issue with sleep mode and the ata.c file needs to be recompiled in Rockbox?? Not sure if that is my issue or not but i cannot boot. I can load content onto the card including Rockbox files but the player will not boot.

[BBD]

Originally Posted by sweetspot

YES ! BBD's buyin' for EVERYBODY ! !

I'll take 2 please..

Now, now--we all know you would only hurt yourself, so none for you, I'm afraid.......

[Dunno]

Originally Posted by jeff

ATA error: -80

Apparently there is an issue with sleep mode and the ata.c file needs to be recompiled in Rockbox?? Not sure if that is my issue or not but i cannot boot. I can load content onto the card including Rockbox files but the player will not boot.

if my HDD goes, this is the mod that I would do as well.

[sweetspot]

I'll have a look into it when I get home Jeff. Apparently some cards work and some do not, and it could just be pot luck. On the other hand, I remember reading that the guy on that other forum had a similar issue, but forget how it was resolved. Have you tried other ROCKbox builds aside from the one you're getting errors with ?

Doug

P.S. And stop cross posting or you'll be reported !

[Lsportline43]

Someone needs to get a sticky on this. We need a list of exactly what needs to be done to get this particular mod to work.

[sweetspot]

Well, once one of us Mrivians gets said supplies, we'll do that. Until then, I'd suggest bookmarking that first forum I linked, as I have done. I'll probably get the stuff, but I first have to find a friend who actually uses eBay/Paypal, because I refuse to use either service, since having been scammed by PP. (and I do believe it was an inside job.)

[jeff]

Success at last!

I can confirm that the A Data 32GB CF Card works fine.

Direct Link:

Newegg.com - A-DATA 32GB Compact Flash (CF) Flash Card Model SPEEDY CF 32G - Retail

No alterations to the bootloader. Just did a quick format under windows, loaded the latest Rockbox files and all is golden.

Two observations:

1. Booting into stock iriver firmware gives the "check hdd connection" error but the player does eventually get there, however, you cannot access any files or navigate the player once there.

2. With the player on, plugging into a USB cable gives you the USB icon on screen but the computer does not see the player. Removing the cable does nothing and the player must be shut off. So the only way to get into USB mode is to start with the player off, plug in the USB cable and turn the player on.

Transfer speeds are a bit slow. It took approx. 15min to transfer 6GB of music onto the card. Other than that and the above mentioned items, it is sweet to have 30GB of flash based music in my iHP-120! ;D



ps - i'm thinking that the Transcend and other cards that give an error are giving it due to the sleep command. If someone could compile the bootloader altering that command, i'd test it.

[larry_llama]

The adapter is also available for pretty cheap (probably cheapest online after shipping is taken into account) at dealextreme:
DealExtreme: $5.30 Toshiba CF to 1.8-inch Bilateral IDE Hard Drive Converter

$5 with free international shipping, no minimum order! i'm getting one this week and trying it in my 120, 110, 320 and ipod mini. Can't wait!

CF spec goes up to 137 gigs so give it a year or two and we will probably be able to up these players to 128 GB for $100

[jeff]

Very cool...

I'm into this mod for approx. $150 for the card and adapter.

[sweetspot]

Sweet Deal Jeff Ol' boy ! I'm very glad to hear of the success you've had. How are seek times once files are loaded ?

[sweetspot]

Originally Posted by larry_llama

The adapter is also available for pretty cheap (probably cheapest online after shipping is taken into account) at dealextreme:
DealExtreme: $5.30 Toshiba CF to 1.8-inch Bilateral IDE Hard Drive Converter

$5 with free international shipping, no minimum order! i'm getting one this week and trying it in my 120, 110, 320 and ipod mini. Can't wait!

CF spec goes up to 137 gigs so give it a year or two and we will probably be able to up these players to 128 GB for $100

Awesome ! Now I don't have to bug anybody to use their ebay account, which is great. It would be so much better if we could see larger capacity CF cards NOW.

Edit. They only do Paypal. Oh well. Back to the drawing board. Still a good price, despite the 2-3 week wait time from Japan to here in the States.

Edit 2: There's also This card which is slightly cheaper than the Transcend

[Lsportline43]

This mod is making me want to get another h120!!! I actually already purchased the adapter off ebay... hmm maybe I'll stick with iriver...

[jeff]

Originally Posted by sweetspot

Sweet Deal Jeff Ol' boy ! I'm very glad to hear of the success you've had. How are seek times once files are loaded ?

Almost instantaneous... you know with the hard drive in the player when you go from song to song, skipping forward or backward there is a pause as the hard drive spins up. With the CF card, it's VERY quick, almost instantaneous.

Originally Posted by sweetspot

Edit. They only do Paypal. Oh well. Back to the drawing board. Still a good price, despite the 2-3 week wait time from Japan to here in the States.

Edit 2: There's also This card which is slightly cheaper than the Transcend

Doug, if you need help obtaining the adapter, i'll help ya out.

In regards to the CF card, make sure you get the A Data that I linked to above. The Transcend card will not work.

[Packgrog]

Ah, excellent. Was hoping there would be a thread here for this.

I also noticed the various threads via Head-Fi for this mod. I suspect I'll be trying this eventually. Still nervous about cracking open my beloved H120 (which I've had since they first came out, as evidenced by the paint flaking off), but this may well be worth it. Especially once the 64GB CompactFlash chips come out. Finally a way to get past the space limitations! Sweet!

I know the flash cards are slower, but by how much? Is lossless recording still possible? It would be good to know if certain features are no longer workable after this mod.

This is an especially nice mod for the sake of people using lossless files. FLAC doesn't take much CPU to decode, but the files are big, so the drive accessing alone eats up more battery life. Switching the Flash should eliminate that issue entirely. And again, if the recording is fast enough, battery life for that should be greatly improved as well. Awesome.

Time to start scrounging money for this!

PS: Please post pics of your mods! More info is helpful to everyone!

-Packgrog

NP: Conception - In Your Multitude (FLAC 1.2.1, H120 -> Monica 2 DAC -> Ray Samuels Tomahawk - > Future Sonics Atrio m5 == sonic nirvana)

[jeff]

I'll work on pics/vid and trying a 10-15min .WAV recording to see if the card can keep up without error during the write sequence.