 exocet_cmWriting
Premium Member
join:2003-03-23
Brooklyn, NY |
[iPod 5G] iPod software OS to RockBoxFew questions about the iPod and RockBox:
I am thinking about using RockBox on my iPod video 5G.
•Is it easy to add RockBox functionality to an iPod?
•How do I transfer music to my iPod using RockBox?
•Can I ditch iTunes???
•Can I revert to the original OS after a RockBox "upgrade"
These questions might be better suited for RockBox's site, but thought I'd give it a shot here first. |
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 M A R S
Premium Member
join:2001-06-15
Long Island |
M A R S
Premium Member
2007-Sep-25 2:45 pm
i did it once and was able to go back |
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 jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI |
to exocet_cm
said by exocet_cm:Few questions about the iPod and RockBox: I am thinking about using RockBox on my iPod video 5G. •Is it easy to add RockBox functionality to an iPod? •How do I transfer music to my iPod using RockBox? •Can I ditch iTunes??? •Can I revert to the original OS after a RockBox "upgrade" These questions might be better suited for RockBox's site, but thought I'd give it a shot here first. • Yes, it is easy to add Rockbox to supported iPods, such as the 5G. The rockbox manual has step-by-step directions to do it under Linux, Windows , and OS X • Rockbox is a filesystem level player, meaning you just drag files on to the device like a hard drive, and Rockbox has a file explorer that allows you to choose what to play, make playlists, etc • Yes, after you put rockbox on you can decide to never use iTunes • The original OS is always on there, because it's required to load music or charge (when you plug in USB, rockbox will reboot to either original firmware or a disk mode) -- Also, activating HOLD when booting the iPod will go into original firmware. An iPod restore or firmware upgrade will undo Rockbox's bootloader, and the iPod patcher used to install the firmware has an unpatch mode too. Rockbox is basically risk-free to try. |
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exocet_cmWriting
Premium Member
join:2003-03-23
Brooklyn, NY |
Wow, I loaded it and love it so far! w00t!
Thanks for the replies. Total time from iPod OS to RockBox = 20 minutes, this included adding custom themes and settings.
Wow! |
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI |
to exocet_cm
Rockbox is a lot of fun to mess with, and its only limitations is the effort/laziness of the user  |
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 HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON |
HiVolt
Premium Member
2007-Sep-25 6:30 pm
Can it play videos in formats other than MPEG/MPEG2? It'd be neat if it could do DivX/Xvid/H.264 as well. |
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI |
jdong
Premium Member
2007-Sep-25 6:32 pm
said by HiVolt:Can it play videos in formats other than MPEG/MPEG2? It'd be neat if it could do DivX/Xvid/H.264 as well. Unfortunately no, and htat is a major limitation of the Rockbox firmware. Video capabilities must decode using the weakling 75MHz ARM cores, which can barely do mpeg2 at 220x176. The native iPod decodes video via a specialized Broadcom chip which is completely undocumented and efforts to reverse-engineer it currently are unsuccessful. |
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HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON |
HiVolt
Premium Member
2007-Sep-25 6:33 pm
I see... no big deal, I never did care much for the video output on mine... I might try it on my 5G for fun. |
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI |
jdong
Premium Member
2007-Sep-25 6:35 pm
said by HiVolt:I see... no big deal, I never did care much for the video output on mine... I might try it on my 5G for fun. Yeah, if you want video, nothing beats booting back to original firmware. That is the only thing I use the original firmware for on my 5G. |
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exocet_cmWriting
Premium Member
join:2003-03-23
Brooklyn, NY |
I'm really diggin this RockBox OS! Good stuff. I have no use for iPod video videos so I'm probably going to stick with RockBox. |
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exocet_cm
1 edit |
(double post) |
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HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON |
HiVolt
Premium Member
2007-Sep-25 7:55 pm
I put it on, its kinda neat.... have to figure out how to work it properly... but im impressed with the featurelist and what you can do. |
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI |
jdong
Premium Member
2007-Sep-25 8:14 pm
said by HiVolt:I put it on, its kinda neat.... have to figure out how to work it properly... but im impressed with the featurelist and what you can do. It's definitely no iPod OS when it comes to UI intuitiveness, but once you get the hang of using Rockbox every other firmware just feels so LIMITING! Now, rockbox compatibility is one of the key things I look for in an audio player. |
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HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON
3 edits |
HiVolt
Premium Member
2007-Sep-25 10:56 pm
Man, this Rockbox is seriously powerful... I'm loving it...
Whats amazing is that you can squeeze so much info onto the screen. 320x240 screen on my 5G ipod is actually useful now!
And holy crap, the EQ in this thing rocks! I made the stock earbuds sound quite amazing! Im mad at myself i havent tried this before...
Pitch control is hilarious!!! |
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| HiVolt |
to exocet_cm
Hey, what kind of theme did you use? I browsed thru the ones in the rockbox utility, and oddly enough the one that looks like Windows Media Player is the one I like the most, simply because it provides the most information... |
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exocet_cmWriting
Premium Member
join:2003-03-23
Brooklyn, NY |
exocet_cm
Premium Member
2007-Sep-26 12:47 am
said by HiVolt:Hey, what kind of theme did you use? I browsed thru the ones in the rockbox utility, and oddly enough the one that looks like Windows Media Player is the one I like the most, simply because it provides the most information... Go to » www.rockbox.org and then to Themes. It is the iPhone theme or Windows Media Player theme, something with one of those names. |
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HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON |
HiVolt
Premium Member
2007-Sep-26 1:50 pm
Yeah I used one of the themes from there, the Aardvark one. The iPhone one has too little info, though it did freak my coworker when I showed him today... He played around with Rockbox and he liked it too. He has a 4G ipod photo so he'll try it on his tonight. |
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exocet_cmWriting
Premium Member
join:2003-03-23
Brooklyn, NY |
Anybody know what FM tuners will work with the RockBox OS? My g/f has a Belkin FM tuner, and it is great for a Belkin product (another topic for another day), but RockBox won't recognize it when it is plugged in, only on the Apple OS does it display the FM freq on the iPod screen.
Any other tuner recommendations? |
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI |
jdong
Premium Member
2007-Sep-26 1:57 pm
AFAIK Rockbox sadly doesn't recognize any plug-in modules for the iPod.... Experiemntal support for the USB host controller necessary is just reaching into Rockbox SVN, so it could come in the near future. |
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HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON |
HiVolt
Premium Member
2007-Sep-26 2:01 pm
Yeah also worth mentioning, that if you have any speaker dock or car connection with play/pause/track controls thru the dock connector, these won't work. Line out thru the dock still does though.
I have my iPod plugged into logitech speaker dock and the remote no longer controls it. But with the EQ in RockBox it sounds a helluva lot better. |
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI |
to exocet_cm
Yeah, Rockbox has its hardware peripheral limitations, similar to the kinds experienced by early Linux (lack of hardware specs, reverse-engineering slow, etc) |
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exocet_cmWriting
Premium Member
join:2003-03-23
Brooklyn, NY |
Well that blows. I like my custom EQ settings, so I guess I'll have to do a line out to my SUV... that option isn't available in my unit though, only tuner through FM.
What about a headphone line out on the iPod to an FM tuner? Or an FM tuner that has a line in option? |
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI |
jdong
Premium Member
2007-Sep-26 2:15 pm
said by exocet_cm:What about a headphone line out on the iPod to an FM tuner? Or an FM tuner that has a line in option? Both of those would work. |
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HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON |
HiVolt
Premium Member
2007-Sep-26 7:04 pm
Did you guys with the 5G iPod find the USB transfers painfully slow? I just dumped a folder with 30GB worth of music and its estimating like 3 hours to copy...
I don't remember how long it took thru iTunes, but I don't think it was this slow... |
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exocet_cmWriting
Premium Member
join:2003-03-23
Brooklyn, NY |
Yes and even for me with iTunes before RockBox I put 10gb of DJ mixes on my iPod and it took a very looooong time. |
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HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON |
HiVolt
Premium Member
2007-Sep-26 8:44 pm
It pisses me off to this day that Apple dumped Firewire from the iPods... |
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to HiVolt
Boot the iPod up in regular iPod firmware mode and then plug it in.. It'll use Apple's USB software, which seems to work just fine. Transferring about 2-3 songs a second right now. |
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jdongEat A Beaver, Save A Tree.
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Rochester, MI |
to exocet_cm
There are reports on some iPods (particularly nanos, but some disk-based ones too) that the disk-mode Rockbox reboots into transfers extremely slowly compared to original firmware. Therefore, it may be better to reboot into Apple firmware then do transfers for large amounts of data. |
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