[GAD]

I *loved* Rockbox. I really did. I was very excited to see it available for the 5.5G so I slapped it on my 80G.

Unfortunately, it just didn't work well enough for me.

I have about 9000 songs. The scrolling issue I asked about earlier was a huge problem for me. I refuse to change my habits for a device.

The battery life, while initially not a big deal, quickly became a big deal when I realized that I needed to charge sometimes twice a day. The combination of lower battery + huge flac files was too much I think. Of course I wanted Rockbox BECAUSE of flac support, so that sort of sucks. While I could leave it plugged into the wall, I need the dock connector for that. I use a LOD to connect to my amp.

The fact that Rockbox does a complete boot every time it times out was annoying too, but the real deal breaker for me was that it kept crashing. Not super frequently, but once or twice a day it would either crash or completely lock up.

I think Rockbox is an absolutely awesome idea, and I look forward to the continued improvement of the product. I firmly believe that these issues will be resolved in the future. When they are, I'll be an eager user once again.

The process of loading Rockbox was super easy, and removing it was even easier. For those wondering if they should try it - have no fear. If nothing else it's worth seeing what all the fuss is about.

GAD

 

[MrFaust]

I am a HUGE lover of Rockbox. However I have yet to Rockbox my 80gb 5.5g iPod simply for the fact that it's so new it hasn't had enough to to even being to work out the issues related to it. I'll probably give it till Jan 2008 before I go that route. I too am anxious because of the FLAC support. But I have actually grown quite fond of the Apple firmware and it's operations. I used to hate iTunes, but since it became a necessary evil, I've learned to deal with it.

Just give it time and I'm sure Rockbox on the 80gb iPod will be fantastic. Just as it is on the iRiver H1XX and H3XX series DAPS.

 

[GreatDane]

I was planning to try Rockbox too for some features but the battery life issue killed that quickly. I also don't use flac on my iPod. I use iTunes and like my 5.5 G iPod as is.

 

[epaludo]

The ROCKbox for the H340 use to have a lot of problems in the beggining. The battery was a LOT lower than the original firmware, but now with all the improvements done, it's better than the original firmware.
So they supose to improve the battery life shortly ...

 

[Hardwired]

Rockbox does have its quirks but for what it does, it's pretty cool. No one I've showed it to is interested in changing from the iPod OS and iTunes, but I like it.

The Mikeage build stopped the crashing for my 4th gen iMod. Hasn't crashed once since. You might try one of the unsupported builds for the 5.5 gen.

And I created 2 .cfg files, one called plugged and the other called unplugged. In the plugged one I turned off the idle timeout so it will sit paused forever and not reboot itself. If I ever go unplugged, I change to the unplugged profile and it's set up to conserve battery life as much as possible. It only reboots if plugged into power, so when it times out unplugged it just shuts down.

You'll be back.

 

[bellsprout]

how many hours can your player last with rockbox? how many hours do u use your ipod a day? i only use it for the return trip to and from town every day so it barely sees 2 hours of use. if rockbox would last that long i'd be happy (but it doesn't even do that)

oh yea another gripe with rockbox is sometimes:
ok - the music would pause for no reason, then i restart and sound comes out of the left channel, and does so until i reboot the ipod.

when that happens, sometimes, i reboot and it says "low battery" whatever the battery life is and it turns off, and it won't turn on so i have to manual reset.

i found a fix to this problem by not leaving it in the "now playing" and exiting back to the menu while a song is playing. it's probably just a bug in my version...

 

[krmathis]

I gave up on Rockbox as well!
As a Mac and HFS+ formatted iPod user it took me half a day to install Rockbox. When I finally got it up and running it consumed battery power like nothing else.

I might be back when/if Rockbox get HFS+ support.

 

[bluey_02]

Have faith guys! I used to use Rockbox on my iriver H320 and the battery was craptacular as it is on the iPod atm. But now it has better battery time than the normal firmware, it's only a matter of time till that happens to the iPod's version.

 

[h-man]

I will be back to rockbox too when the battery life improves on the ipod. It isn't such a big issue now that my nano does gapless playback as well

 

[3X0]

That's a shame.

I probably would have chosen an iPod if Rockbox hadn't hampered its battery life, FWIW.

 

[warrior05]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bluey_02 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Have faith guys! I used to use Rockbox on my iriver H320 and the battery was craptacular as it is on the iPod atm. But now it has better battery time than the normal firmware, it's only a matter of time till that happens to the iPod's version.

I'm a Rockbox fanboy as well and have been using it for awhile. I'm curious, bluey_02 - how long did it take the developers to resolve the battery issue on the H320?

 

[Febs]

It took a few months. The issue was solved when one of the developers (amiconn) when used an infrared thermometer to discover which component was using too much power. It turned out to be the USB controller, if I remember correctly. Unfortunately, from what I understand, the same approach is not likely to be successful with the iPod, because the general feeling is that it's the PortalPlayer chip that's the problem, since the problem persists on all PP targets. Using an IR thermometer would just tell reveal what the developers already suspect: It's the PP chip.

There is some additional information available in this thread if you're interested in reading further: http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=10645.0

 

[epaludo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by warrior05 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm a Rockbox fanboy as well and have been using it for awhile. I'm curious, bluey_02 - how long did it take the developers to resolve the battery issue on the H320?

It took a while, can't precise how much time though. All i know is that, with my upgraded battery, my last H340 battery test lasts for more than 30 hour, yes 30 HOURS ...

 

[warrior05]

I've been using Rockbox for over 6 months on my 4g iMod and they have yet to come up with a solution. I must admit I'm getting a bit frustrated myself. I'll never load iTunes on my system but I'm considering getting the 5.5 iMod because it supports gapless playback which is a priority for me. Guess I'll hold out a bit longer but the 5.5 has me tempted to use Apple's firmware.

 

[krmathis]

Since the developers fixed the power consumption issues on the other players (H320, ...) I assume they will fix it on the iPod's as well.
But who knows when. Maybe tomorrow, or maybe in 2010...

Until that happens and they add HFS+ support I am more than happy with the Apple firmware.