Progression Discussion (Post 2006)

[doommaker]

i read that whole thing and gathered about 3 things....easyh10 like app being considered.... less space and less things rockbox has to do.... which must mean more battery life? and nice gui... which never goes down wrong... bit a shame coz the original firmware has nice organised menus and stuff.. like just the look of them and with the main thing being music, pictures, radio, recording, setting and stuff like that

[itsmeguys]

Originally Posted by doommaker

bit a shame coz the original firmware has nice organised menus and stuff.. like just the look of them and with the main thing being music, pictures, radio, recording, setting and stuff like that

You can organise your stuff like that yourself , except, I don't think you can get a different background for each folder

[midiwall]

Originally Posted by doommaker

i read that whole thing and gathered about 3 things....

(if you're talking about my post then sorry... On topics like these I babble like a developer (oop... I am a developer! )

Please don't read more into my babble than I meant to get across. I am _not_ the guy doing the stand-alone DB rebuilder (if one is being done), but I'm _very_ aware of the differences between writing code for a Windows app versus something like the H10.

I was basically just trying to draw a path from "Seriously it can't be THAT hard, i mean the database is already coded..." to reality. (no offense to iwantanimac)

There're a LOT of differences in the two platforms, and there are pluses and minuses both ways.


I'm happy to babble more, but I don't want to confuse the underlying intent.

[doommaker]

haha you could always babble on... and then go so BASICLY this means this :P and yeaaahh i know i can organise it myself..... but..... ok i got nothin... haha i use the id3 database... just be nice if there was an option to find videos in the db or somethin like that instead of just music.

[iwantanimac]

yeah, and pictures... or maybe a selection to browse HDD, so you don't have to hold <-- and choose all files to do it...

[Jonno12345]

Originally Posted by midiwall

The problem in this case is processor power and memory available for caching. The ARM7 ain't no P4, and having a ton of RAM available is REALLY nice for building hash tables.

The database engine in the original H10 firmware is running in a total of 24k - that's code AND data space, including the data space available for rebuilding. It does fine at retrieval, but it's a dog for rebuilds.

Now starting from scratch with a totally new OS core and real memory management is a HUGE advantage, but then we're back to looking at the horsepower of the ARM7.

Plus, doing an external app lets you have access to a much smoother dev environment, the ability to build a nice GUI, add a bunch of sorting and catalog options, etc.

Heh, don't worry, I understood that .

I see what you mean. The processor speeds and available memory (I was under the impression the H10 features a 32mb buffer or so, please correct me if I am wrong) are of course a major limitation in what can and can't be done, and there is nothing short of a hardware upgrade that can be done to increase those. However, I never saw database construction as a task that I would carry out often, I'm not sure if this is just me, but I don't tend to update my database very often as I am not getting new songs very often. If there is something I am missing, please, let me know, but I can't see that as a good use of channeling time and effort into something that isn't really a major issue. I do understand that a person with a great amount of songs could suffer from the limited amount of memory it contains, however, could this not be solved by optimization to the current database construction coding?

[midiwall]

The 24K number I quoted comes from the original H10 code - I haven't looked at RockBox to see how it's architected so it's quite possible that more memory is available for "sidebar" apps while in player mode (versus want I presume is a game mode which basically opens up all th resources).

The H10 core firmware (again, the original stuff) kept a LOT of stuff in RAM all the time. The firmware was in two basic chunks - the core (event handler, database, file system, display driver, usb, audio drivers, codecs, etc) and then the OEM stuff (pretty colors, GUI, fonts, etc).

The amount granted to the core was VERY small in relation to what the OEM was given. Then within the core, most every byte was negotiated for amongst the component groups, and there were (of course) priorities for the groups. For example, it would be hard to think that the database folks could get an extra K away from the codec folks.

Okay... moving past the history lesson.

Database reorg is a tricky... You basically have to shutdown everything else on the player since the UI and audio engine is generally driven from the DB. Then, once you start into it, you're stuck at finishing. Sure, you can make copies of the DB and indices, but that itself takes time, so generally you bite your lip and go for it.

Now filters back in the processing power issue... If you had access to say, 16mb of RAM, then you can be pretty efficient at parsing tags, building indicies, etc. But it will still take longer to do it on the box than in the outside world. The thing you have to balance is how much longer it will take. Each additional minute is time away from making the user happy with the device, and runs a bit more exposure to trashing the database.


There's another angle that could be looked at for RockBox, and that's to manage tracks "live" such that as new tracks are discovered, they're parsed and added to the DB. This is something that was tried on the original H10 in the early days but was abandoned 'cause of the overhead. This is REALLY tricky to deal with 'cause you need to be totally invisible to the rest of the system - i.e., there is ZERO tolerance for skipping audio.

I suspect that RockBox is better suited to give this a shot - 'specially if (when!) they get the COP running. Like I mentioned before, the original core wasn't designed as a real dual processing environment.


You mention the concept of "channeling time" into the effort. Good point, but I'll guarantee that the dev cycle would be shorter in the outside world than in RockBox native.

[Jonno12345]

Very interesting... Of course, once the COP is implemented, hopefully everything should be a lot greater managed. God speed dev team, god speed .

[backinblackaczdc]

I mentioned making a wiki for rockbox on the h10, and I have made significant progress. Feel free to add/edit pages!

http://iriverh10rocks.wikispaces.com/

[fre65]

@midiwall
You seem to know a lot about the history of the H10 and its firmware. Is there any articles that we can read up upon, or a timeline for nostalgic purposes?

ALSO, I get a *bug* where occasionally (happened twice) the rockbox will increase the volume to the maximum (of course scaring the hell out of the user!) without notice... It will be stuck on that volume for a while and I have to unplug headphones and wait till it unfreezes...

Very strange, and EXTREMELY annoying! Just wondering has anyone else had this happen?

[midiwall]

Originally Posted by fre65

@midiwall
You seem to know a lot about the history of the H10 and its firmware. Is there any articles that we can read up upon, or a timeline for nostalgic purposes?

Not that I know of... Not to the level that you're probably looking for. There's a lot of backgrounder that's locked away in forgotten braincells of the original devs. Some of them don't really wanna remember too much of those days.

[Jonno12345]

ALSO, I get a *bug* where occasionally (happened twice) the rockbox will increase the volume to the maximum (of course scaring the hell out of the user!) without notice... It will be stuck on that volume for a while and I have to unplug headphones and wait till it unfreezes...

Very strange, and EXTREMELY annoying! Just wondering has anyone else had this happen?

Things like that only happened to me when the battery got low, it started taking control of itself. Is this happening with a charged battery?

[fre65]

Originally Posted by Jonno12345

Things like that only happened to me when the battery got low, it started taking control of itself. Is this happening with a charged battery?

Yeah I think it only starts happening on a low battery. At least I'm not the only one having this prob.

[druidfire217]

If you have updated recently, it was supposedly solved by having it automatically shut down when a certain battery level was hit.

[Jonno12345]

Tested last night, when my battery % remaining hit 10, it immediately changed to 0 and a screen came up displaying 'Battery low, rockbox shutting down', or words to that effect. It was only when the battery reached 1 or 2 or similar that it began to mess up for me, now it doesn't get that far.

[druidfire217]

Problem Solved! Now you dont have to worry about blasting your ears. Glad to hear that the bug was solved already, and it wasnt a recurring problem.

[Jonno12345]

20 Jan 01:21 Barry Wardell - On the H10 when we power the disk on again after spindown and poweroff we need to give it a little while to turn back on before we should try to access it. This should fix problems with disk accesses when coming from a disk poweroff state (related discussion in FS#6421).

I never used to be able to have "Disk Poweroff" enabled, as after the disk had powered off, I was unable to open any more songs, it would just sit there, locked out. Doesn't seem to do that anymore

[BiGRED84]

ok i have a problem my h20 was workin fine today and then all of a sudden when i turned it on again it said systems files missing, i reset the player, charged it and even updtaed the build, but it still wont boot past the iriver splash screen before saing systems files missing

update: for some stange reson all i had to do was install another bootloader, yes i am aware that all new builds require a new bootloader, and i had the new bootloader on my h10, but for some strange reson it went 'bad' for lack of a better term. could anyone explain this

[Jonno12345]

Are you sure you didn't remove it? 'System Files Missing' indicates there was no bootloader at all, not just a corrupted or older one.

[BiGRED84]

positive, i have the systems folder set to hidden, so i cant touch it without a computer unless i tried, and idk how it would become currupted suddenly, especially since it happended without any computer interaction in between, the whole thing is jus strange

[Jonno12345]

Very :s... But atleast you resolved it .

The official Rockbox site has been vandalised .

[TheKind_H10]

Someone got news about the syncronisation of sound and video of the mpegplayer ???