gmane.comp.systems.archos.rockbox.devel

DevCon2013: your action needed

Frank Gevaerts — 2013-06-13T22:10:48

Hi,

I'm getting the impression that many people missed last week's email
about DevCon(*), so here's a reminder. Please decide you want to come,
and mark your availability on http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/DevCon2013

In case this isn't clear, current thinking is that Peter hosts in Ghent,
where we've had excellent DevCons in 2009 and 2011.

Frank

* http://www.rockbox.org/mail/archive/rockbox-dev-archive-2013-06/0003.shtml

Roadmap for the imx233 target

Amaury Pouly — 2013-06-12T12:06:23

Hello everybody,
I felt I should disclose some information about the imx233 target and the
roadmap that I have been pursuing in the last months. I'll try to start
from scratch and give you an overview of what I'm doing and why.

For those for don't know about it, the imx233 is a port to the Sigmatel
STMP3780 (aka Freescale i.MX233) SoC. It is used in at least three recent
devices: Creative Zen X-Fi2, Zen X-Fi3 and Sansa Fuze+. The port to the
Fuze+ is close to stable, same for the Zen X-Fi3 and the Zen X-Fi2 is
unstable but already has a solid basis.

The world seemed beautiful and all but then someone came and told us he had
a device based on the STMP3700 SoC for which we didn't have the datasheet
but some Linux code. It was obvious from the start that this chip was
extremely close to the imx233 and that a Rockbox port was possible. At this
point, we realised that some other devices were using another undocumented
chip named STMP3770 and we even realised that the older and documented
STMP3600 family was also very close. Here is a list of devices with those
SoCs to give you an idea of the situation (you can find more information on
http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SigmaTelSTMP3xxx)

* I.MX233: Zen X-Fi Style, Zen X-Fi2, Zen X-Fi3, Sansa Fuze+
* STMP3770: Zen Style M100/300
* STMP3700: Zen, Zen Mozaic, Zen X-Fi, YP-Q2
* STMP3600: Sansa Express, Zen V (Plus), YP-Z5
* Unsure: Zen MX, Zen Style 100/300 (probably STMP3700 and STMP 3780)

To summarise, there are lots of target out there using those chips and I
thought that it would be great to port Rockbox to them. I concluded that it
was possible to handle them all in the imx233 port with a reasonable amount
of modification and with careful handling. A major pain in handling those
SoC at once is that the registers are very similar but not exactly similar
and there are many of them (~500). Another major issue was that we had the
datasheet of the STMP3600 and i.MX233 but not the STMP3700/3770.

I am glad to say today that I solved both issues. I managed to get my hand
on the two missing datasheets, that wasn't exactly easy but I managed to
got them without any NDA or anything! (please contact me if you are
interested).

In order to solve the issue of keeping consistent a set of three big
register set, I decided that the best way was to automatically generate the
headers for them, out of the messy and buggy sigmatel/freescale headers
extracted from Linux ports. This works in two steps: first I produced an
XML description of the register map from those headers and then I produced
the rockbox headers from the XML description. The register set is chosen at
compile time with a switch in the target specific configuration header.
This way we ensure a correct use of registers at all time.
A byproduct of this register map being available is the (wonderful) hwstub
tool: it is a small blob that one can upload to any STMP device and allows
to control the device over USB. Using the shell tool I wrote, one can
identify the chip, load the register description and poke at registers
easily. The tool is scriptable in Lua which makes it easy and painless to
hack and debug early code for a device. The tool itself is not really STMP
specific and could be used on other SoC provided the blob is ported to
those obviously (the TCC and RK27xx are good candidates for it).

This is still work in progress but the majority of the switch to the new
headers has now been done in my personal branch and proven successful. With
the help of Lorenzo we are currently porting Rockbox to the STMP3600 and
specifically to the Creative ZEN V and YP-Z5. I also have some solid
codebase for the STMP3700 with the Zen Mozaic and Zen X-Fi, port to the Zen
is in progress too.

I will start to integrate those changes in the trunk soon. The amount of
modifications outside of the imx233/ subdir should be minimal (mostly
SOURCES, tools and configure) so I don't expect any breakable*.
If you have any comment/objection, please do so quickly before I begin
merging some code. If you would like all/some of those changes to go on
gerrit before being committed so that everyone is given a chance to review,
i'll be happy to do so.

Long life to Rockbox!

Amaury Pouly

PS(*): the only expected potential breakage is the mkzenboot tool which I
improved/fixed for the more recent STMP based devices. It is used by the
Creative ZVM port I think. I have no way to check this though.

USB problems with the 5G iPod

Boris Gjenero — 2013-05-25T16:35:57

For a long time, I was having a Rockbox USB problem with my 5G 30GB 
iPod. If I plugged in USB while the hard drive was spinning, I would 
often get full speed mode instead of the much faster high speed mode. If 
I plugged in after the hard drive spun down, I would always get high 
speed mode.

This was puzzling because it is an obvious and significant problem on a 
popular target, yet nobody else seems to be having it.

Yesterday I finally created FS#12865 and investigated the problem. I 
tracked it down to a workaround for FS#12303 which resets and 
reinitializes the USB controller while the connection is being 
established the first time, causing it all to restart from the 
beginning. Depending on when this happens, it can lead to a full speed 
connection or a high speed connection. Others found some Video iPods 
require this workaround, but mine doesn't, and the workaround only 
causes problems.

The proper fix for this would be a better solution for FS#12303, which 
doesn't cause this problem. I cannot work on this by myself because my 
iPod doesn't have the FS#12303 problem so I cannot test solutions. At 
the moment, all I can do is offer some ideas.

Maybe electrical noise disrupts USB communication around the time when 
USB charging is turned on, and it needs to be totally off while the 
connection is being set up? USB power input capability on my iPod is 
defective and disabled by cutting a connection on the board. Maybe 
that's why I'm not seeing FS#12303. Another possibility is that some 
GPIO pins for connecting USB data lines to the PCF ADC for charger 
sensing are set incorrectly, leaving the ADC connected and degrading 
signal quality. This wouldn't explain why my iPod is unaffected.

As a last resort, I think adding a sleep() before the USB controller 
reset would allow the present workaround to stay in place without 
triggering the problem. That's messy though, adding a workaround to a 
workaround.

Best regards,

Boris

Handling of read-only storage: feeback wanted

Amaury Pouly — 2013-05-06T09:22:51

Hi ,
I'm looking for some feedback on an issue which might not be one: read-only
storage. It appears that since virtually all DAP use micro-sd card we never
ran into this problem but I am porting Rockbox to the Creative ZEN and ZEN
X-Fi which feature a real SD card port and can sense the write-protected
switch of them.
The obvious solution is to completely ignore it of course but this is a bit
of shame. Another option is to simply fail all writes to the storage if it
is write protected (remember that this is completely software handled).
I am wondering if there would be any interest in doing something a bit more
clever, like making the file system code aware of read-only storage.
Indeed, failing all writes will potentially stress all write path, might
trigger bugs or obscure error messages to the user. A simple solution would
be to prevent opening opening a file for writing for example.

Any thoughts ?

Amaury Pouly

Rockbox Ondio

Malte Schmidt-Tychsen — 2013-04-29T08:18:37

Hi there,

who ist responsible for the Ondio port. Ist anyone interested but needs 
a device? I am mainly asking, because the Ondio FM port has problems 
with the radio.

Malte

DevCon

Marcin Bukat — 2013-04-26T09:14:31

Are we going to have one this year?


Marcin Bukat (wodz)

review to show only the chosen file's bookmarks

Richard Quirk — 2013-04-21T19:44:09

This change is a bit larger than my last minor bookmark tweak. Again
autoload bookmarks is set to "ask". Opening a track showed all of the
bookmarks for any track in the current directory, not just bookmarks
for the track you chose to open.

http://gerrit.rockbox.org/r/#/c/428/

The main change was to separate out a filtered count from the visible
count of bookmarks, and then remember to filter again when moving down
the list. This is because the bookmark list is cached, behaviour that
has not changed here.

This forum post asks for a similar feature, but adding it to the "ask"
list is easier and less controversial than adding a new menu entry
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,42815.0.html

Ladies and gentlemen, we have sound on the RCA RC3000A digital boombox

Boris Gjenero — 2013-04-20T18:50:13

Over the last few weeks I've been working on a port to the RCA RC3000A 
digital boombox. I now have flawless playback, including via the 
speakers. The first successfully played song was Mika - Un Soleil Mal 
Luné in FLAC format, from an SD card.

It's based on the TCC760 SoC, which has a USB boot mode allowing 
convenient development without risk of bricking or need to write code to 
storage. The mode is a bit different from later Telechips SoC supported 
by tcctool: the 4th parameter is execution starting address not SDCFG. I 
can still upload to SDRAM by first uploading a small program to set 
SDCFG and then uploading to SDRAM.

Rockbox has drivers for the LCD, tuner and RTC. The LCD only needs a 
different initialization sequence. The SoC has similarities to TCC77x 
and the codec has similarities to CS42L55, but there are important 
differences, so I'm making new drivers for them. I used Archos Ondio 
ata_mmc.c as a starting point for the SD driver because it also uses 
SPI, but it seems I should be using higher level SD code from another 
later driver for SD cards. It's too bad that SD drivers don't separate 
low level communication with the card from higher level code that sends 
commands, like with ATA. I intend to keep the two separate in the SD 
driver, perhaps with an eventual goal of splitting other drivers that 
way. I'm not planning to use the OHCI USB host controller for storage 
access, but the Telechips USB device controller seems easy and I should 
be able to use that for Rockbox USB.

Here's a summary of what the RCA RC3000A contains
CPU: Telechips TCC760 SoC with ARM940T core, which the OF runs at 96 MHz
Memory: 2 MB SDRAM, 2 MB NOR flash with over 1 MB free
LCD: SSD1815, 128x64, 1bpp, white backlight
Storage: 512 MB internal NAND flash, SD card slot with SPI mode access 
using GSIO, OHCI USB host port.
Tuner: TEA5767 radio module with 32767 Hz crystal
CODEC: CS42L51 with radio connected to AIN1 and line in to AIN2, the 
output driving headphones, and a separate class D amplifier chip driving 
the speakers.
RTC: PCF8563

Best regards,

Boris

540e5d1: Forget about fixedpoint.c in any HWCODEC bin.

Thomas Martitz — 2013-04-15T21:43:45



Calling apps/ code from firmware? That's bad!

Why not move fixedpoint to firmware (or into the top level lib folder)?

Best regards

HD targets and multivolume

Frank Gevaerts — 2013-04-13T14:52:05

People seem to be experimenting with 240GB drives in most HD-based
targets these days. On some of them, the OF bootloader won't do
LBA48, so the first partition needs to be smaller than 128GB, which
means you have to have two partitions for it to be fully usable.

I think we should enable HAVE_MULTIVOLUME on all HD targets with at
least 8MB RAM. The overhead is less than 3KB, which I think is
negligible on those devices.

Comments?

Frank

review for minor bookmark ui tweak

Richard Quirk — 2013-04-06T07:27:12

This minor UI change adds a way to cancel out from the bookmark list
that is shown when you have autoload bookmarks = ask.

http://gerrit.rockbox.org/416

Without this change, pressing a cancel button starts the track from
the start, which felt unexpected to me. With the change, cancelling
goes back to the file list.

Debug build break recording

Amaury Pouly — 2013-04-01T14:26:15

Hi all,
While trying to implement recording on the Fuze+ I stumbled upon a very
nasty bug which took me quite a few hours do track, so I would like to make
you aware of it and ask for advise. To cut the long story short: if you
compile rockbox in DEBUG, any attempt to record something will result in a
crash.

If you compile rockbox in debug mode (select Debug in tools/configure), the
following will happen:

* -DDEBUG will be added to GCCOPTS in Makefile
* the codec "vtable" will get an additional field in firmware build:
(lib/rbcodec/codecs/codecs.h):
#if defined(DEBUG) || defined(SIMULATOR)
    void (*debugf)(const char *fmt, ...) ATTRIBUTE_PRINTF(1, 2);
#endif
* the rbcodec makefile will undefine DEBUG:
(lib/rbcodec/codecs/codecs.make):
 CODECFLAGS += -UDEBUG -DNDEBUG
* the codecs will be built without the additional field in codec vtable and
without DEBUG
* the encoder codecs will be broken because all the encoder specific
functions are *after* debugf in the "vtable", but the playback ones will be
fine thus you probably won't notice it.
* this will result in a very hard to debug crash when trying to record

The question I have now is: why on earth rbcodecs.make undefine DEBUG ? The
obvious fix would be to remove this but since I don't understand why it was
introduced in the first place I don't want to break something else.

Thanks,

Amaury Pouly

Soft lock and screen/lcd activation

Amaury Pouly — 2013-03-11T15:42:04

Hi all,
As you know, many of our targets features a "soft-lock" in the WPS which
locks all the keys except the unlock key, to prevent accidental changes.
This is a very useful feature but recent targets like the Fuze+ have shown
that it is too limited in two ways:

1) Only in WPS
This feature only exists in the WPS screen, which kind of make sense if you
listen to music but this is not the only screen where it would be useful.
One of the most asked one is the radio screen where you currently cannot
lock the keys.

2) Doesn't prevent screen activation
Another problem which is more specific to the Fuze+ is that it features a
touchpad which you can easily touch, and thus will constantly activate the
screen/lcd. This is bad for the battery life and this is also very
annoying. That's precisely why most phones on the market just won't respond
to touch events when locked and you'll need to touch a physical buttons to
activate it again. I think it would be very sensible to have such a feature
in Rockbox too.

To sum up, what many *users* would like to see is:
* lock in radio screen (at least)
* lock which disables the screen until a physical button is hit (with a
setting)

Maybe it is time to discuss about these issues and try to fix them. I would
be willing to help but I must say this is mostly related to part of the
code I don't know about so help would be greatly appreciated.

Please share you opinion,

Amaury Pouly

Rocbox 3.13 released!

Alex Parker — 2013-03-08T14:37:55

Hello all,

On behalf of the Rockbox developers, I'm very pleased to announce that 
Rockbox 3.13 has just been released!

Go here to download the installer (individual zips are also available):

          http://www.rockbox.org/download/

Read up on the most noticeable changes in 3.13:

          http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/ReleaseNotes313

Unfortunately the Nano 2g isn't included in this release, but Rockbox 
Utility will offer to install either 3.10 or the latest development 
build for you.

And above all, enjoy!

Alex

Which player to buy?

Domain Admin — 2013-02-25T21:56:52

Hello rockbox-dev.

I've been using Rockbox for a long time (first on my 4th gen iPod, then on
my iPod nano 1G and now my Sansa Clip v2) and lurking on this list for a
short time.

I have a little bit of money to spend on a new MP3 player, and I'd like to
buy one that Rockbox still has issues on so I can (1) have a new MP3 player
and (2) help test Rockbox. I'd like to get a cheap used or refurb SanDisk
player, but that's just because I'm partial to the Sansa players. If
something else small and cheap like that needs a tester more, that's cool,
too.

Any recommendations? Any Sansas need more testing? FWIW, I know how to
build Rockbox from git... I just can't really code. Just want to give back
to Rockbox by testing on a player that needs the attention.

Thanks. And thanks for Rockbox, because it's awesome.

Branched for 3.13

Alex Parker — 2013-02-24T18:11:53

Hi all

We have branched for 3.13.

This means master is open for new features again, but bugfixes of course
remain very welcome.

If all goes well, we'll release in a week.

You can get the new branch using "git checkout v3.13", and changes for
the stable release can be pushed to refs/for/v3.13 if you want them to
be reviewed.

Alex

bulgarian localizator for 3.13

Zahari Yurukov — 2013-02-20T19:21:07

     Hi devs,
I'm sending you the updated Bulgarian localization for the upcoming release.

1. I've rearranged phrases to match the English file.
2. I've translated all untranslated strings.
3. I've corrected some wrong translated strings.
4. I've translated all voice strings, which were missing in previous 
version.

I'm sending you my bulgarian.lang file (attached). It compiles correctly 
, and seems OK in a simulator.
Please include it in the upcoming release.

I'm translating the user manual too, but it is not ready to be released 
yet. If someone would like to join - please send me an e-mail.

Best regards,
Zahari Yurukov

#             __________               __   ___.
#   Open      \______   \ ____   ____ |  | _\_ |__   _______  ___
#   Source     |       _//  _ \_/ ___\|  |/ /| __ \ /  _ \  \/  /
#   Jukebox    |    |   (  <_> )  \___|    < | \_\ (  <_> > <  <
#   Firmware   |____|_  /\____/ \___  >__|_ \|___  /\____/__/\_ \
#                     \/            \/     \/    \/            \/
# $Id$
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
# as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
# of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
# This software is distributed on an "AS IS" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
# KIND, either express or implied.
#
# Bulgarian language file, translated by:
# - ventsi84 at thecrayer.com
# - Nicolay Jordanov
# - Hristo Kovachev
# - Vencislav Atanasov
#- Zahari yurukov <zahari.yurukov< at >gmail.com>

<phrase>
  id: LANG_SET_BOOL_YES
  desc: bool true representation
  user: core
  <source>
    *: "Yes"
  </source>
  <dest>
    *: "Р”Р°"
  </dest>
  <voice>
    *: "Р”Р°"
  </voice>
</phrase>
<phrase>
  id: LANG_SET_BOOL_NO
  desc: bool false representation
  user: core
  <source>
    *: "No"
  </source>
  <dest>
    *: "РќРµ"
  </dest>
  <voice>
    *: "РќРµ"
  </voice>
</phrase>
<phrase>
  id: LANG_ON
  desc: Used in a lot of places
  user: core
  <source>
    *: "On"
  </source>
  <dest>
    *: "Р’РєР»СЋС‡РµРЅРѕ"
  </dest>
  <voice>
    *: "Р’РєР»СЋС‡РµРЅРѕ"
  </voice>
</phrase>
<phrase>
  id: LANG_OFF
  desc: Used in a lot of places
  user: core
  <source>
    *: "Off"
  </source>
  <dest>
    *: "Р

bulgarian localization for 3.13

Zahari Yurukov — 2013-02-20T19:21:51

     Hi devs,
I'm sending you the updated Bulgarian localization for the upcoming release.

1. I've rearranged phrases to match the English file.
2. I've translated all untranslated strings.
3. I've corrected some wrong translated strings.
4. I've translated all voice strings, which were missing in previous 
version.

I'm sending you my bulgarian.lang file (attached). It compiles correctly 
, and seems OK in a simulator.
Please include it in the upcoming release.

I'm translating the user manual too, but it is not ready to be released 
yet. If someone would like to join - please send me an e-mail.

Best regards,
Zahari Yurukov

#             __________               __   ___.
#   Open      \______   \ ____   ____ |  | _\_ |__   _______  ___
#   Source     |       _//  _ \_/ ___\|  |/ /| __ \ /  _ \  \/  /
#   Jukebox    |    |   (  <_> )  \___|    < | \_\ (  <_> > <  <
#   Firmware   |____|_  /\____/ \___  >__|_ \|___  /\____/__/\_ \
#                     \/            \/     \/    \/            \/
# $Id$
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
# as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
# of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
#
# This software is distributed on an "AS IS" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
# KIND, either express or implied.
#
# Bulgarian language file, translated by:
# - ventsi84 at thecrayer.com
# - Nicolay Jordanov
# - Hristo Kovachev
# - Vencislav Atanasov
#- Zahari yurukov <zahari.yurukov< at >gmail.com>

<phrase>
  id: LANG_SET_BOOL_YES
  desc: bool true representation
  user: core
  <source>
    *: "Yes"
  </source>
  <dest>
    *: "Р”Р°"
  </dest>
  <voice>
    *: "Р”Р°"
  </voice>
</phrase>
<phrase>
  id: LANG_SET_BOOL_NO
  desc: bool false representation
  user: core
  <source>
    *: "No"
  </source>
  <dest>
    *: "РќРµ"
  </dest>
  <voice>
    *: "РќРµ"
  </voice>
</phrase>
<phrase>
  id: LANG_ON
  desc: Used in a lot of places
  user: core
  <source>
    *: "On"
  </source>
  <dest>
    *: "Р’РєР»СЋС‡РµРЅРѕ"
  </dest>
  <voice>
    *: "Р’РєР»СЋС‡РµРЅРѕ"
  </voice>
</phrase>
<phrase>
  id: LANG_OFF
  desc: Used in a lot of places
  user: core
  <source>
    *: "Off"
  </source>
  <dest>
    *: "Р

Rockbox on YP-Z5...

Lorenzo Miori — 2013-02-19T11:31:45

Hello guys!

It's me again, this time working on native stuff ^^
Here a self-explanatory screenshot telling you that work has been done on a
new target: Samsung YP-Z5!!
This player has a STMP3650 cpu, quite similar to the STMP37xx port by
pamaury, who in fact helped me a lot...Thanks to him, then.
Wiki for more info: http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/SamsungZ5

In the meantime - lot of stuff has still to be done - see the link below :)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wolr8h2hez1iz07/rockboxZ5.jpg

(Sorry for picture quality + dirty buttons, I bought it in this state :p)

Lorenzo

Call for translations

Alex Parker — 2013-02-16T12:55:09

Hi all,

It's that time again!  We have just gone into feature freeze for Rockbox 
3.13, and it would be nice to ship with as many complete translations as 
possible.  It would therefore be great
if any native speakers out there could take this opportunity to update 
the translation of their language.

We have an excellent translation tool available at 
http://translate.rockbox.org, so please head over, follow the 
instructions, and then post the completed translation to gerrit,flyspray 
or the development mailing list.  For any queries please ask on IRC.

We are not doing badly at present with 18 complete translations, 13 good 
translations (>95% translated), 12 normal translations (>50% translated) 
and 4 bad translations (<50% translated), but with your help we can be 
even better!  Some languages appear to be using English strings in 
places, so if you could check yours that would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance,

Alex

Feature freeze for 3.13

Alex Parker — 2013-02-16T12:52:29

Hi all,

We are now in feature freeze in preparation for 3.13.

The freeze is planned to be for a week, so please try and fix as many 
bugs as possible in that time.  I will post RC builds in a day or two to 
aid bug hunting.

Thanks,

Alex