iAudio X5 with Rockbox

Posted on Monday, 29th May, 2006 by ianmacd

Back in July of last year, I wrote about the open-source replacement firmware project called Rockbox. For a year now, I’ve had it running on my trusty iRiver iHP140 and, in that time, have seen the code grow to maturity.

For a while, though, the iHP140 has been feeling cramped. I really needed a 60 Gb player, but no suitable player existed. Most of my music collection is encoded using the Ogg Vorbis codec, so any player that can’t handle that immediately falls out of consideration.

For the last few months, I’ve had my eye on the 60 Gb Cowon iAudio X5, but was put off by reports of its suffering from poor firmware. I consequently decided to hold off until Rockbox was ported to the device.

Well, Rockbox played an MP3 file for the first time two months ago and development has been forging ahead since then. There’s actually less work to do than one might imagine, because the X5 uses the same Coldfire CPU as some of the iRiver players, amongst which the ever-faithful iHP140. Most of the work, therefore, is in the bootloader, making the remote-control work, etc.

Once I saw that Rockbox was coming along in leaps and bounds, I decided the time was right to complement my iHP140 with the purchase of a 60 Gb X5, so I ordered one from MP3shop.nl, along with a remote control, a case and a desk cradle. They turned up on Friday, as did our friend Geoff, so there wasn’t any time to play with them. I plugged it in, flashed the firmware to version 2.10, started an rsync of my music repository and then went to bed.

On Saturday, I found some time to compile Rockbox and its X5 bootloader. I applied the dual boot and album art patches, merged the official Cowon firmware with the bootloader and then reflashed the device. Finally, I unzipped the Rockbox files onto the hard drive. Sure enough, after holding down the REC button whilst turning on the device, the familiar boot screen of Rockbox scrolled by. I tried a couple of the plug-in games, satisfied myself that everything was working, then went to bed again.

Rockbox is still at quite an early stage on the X5. For one thing, the power management work has scarcely started, so a battery charge lasts only a fraction of the time that it does when running the official firmware. That’s a major problem, so I’ll be booting into the official firmware until the Rockbox team gets the power management under control.

Still, it’s great to see it already running and know that great things are just around the corner. Rockbox is so good, that it’s hard to imagine considering any DAP for purchase that would remain unsupported; especially one that didn’t support the Ogg Vorbis codec by default.

I think the Rockbox project is destined for great things. The goal of the project is of great widespread interest: to create high-quality open-source firmware that supports all of the major codecs and fully utilises the power of the hardware of each platform on which it runs. It’s made the iHP140 a much better player than it ever was with the official iRiver firmware, for example; and it was a great player to begin with.

With the iPod port firmly underway, I predict that the project will soon explode and achieve widespread recognition and acclaim. An iPod with decent battery life and the ability to play Ogg Vorbis files would be a player worthy of consideration, perhaps. Of the people who already own one, I suspect that enough people will try Rockbox and like it for the necessary word-of-mouth advertising to rapidly ensue.

Posted in Music | 2 Comments

Loose Ends

Posted on Thursday, 25th May, 2006 by ianmacd

We’re busy tying up the loose ends in preparation for our trip to Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, which starts next week.

That means paying all of our bills, getting an annoying vibration removed from the dashboard of the car, making sure we have a bottle of engine oil and windscreen wiper fluid for the journey, giving spare keys to the neighbours, arranging travel insurance, etc., etc.

Sarah has been busy planning the route, reading masses of information on the places we will visit and sticking coloured markers to the map, so that we can get an overview of the areas we want to cover.

Our Baby Boardrent order turned up today, just one day after placing it. We bought a Marco hanging chair and a swimming nappy.

The hanging chair is so that we can place Eloïse at our table while we eat, even if the restaurant in question has no high chair available.

The swimming nappy is so that Eloïse can enjoy public pools and spa baths. Without such a device, she either wouldn’t be allowed in or we wouldn’t be able to relax, out of fear that she could drop a load at any moment.

Unfortunately, the hanging chair stinks of cigarette smoke. In fact, as soon as I opened the cardboard box containing our order, I noticed the vile smell coming from within. Obviously, the stock at the shop is kept in a smoky environment, which is very offputting. Still, it’ll be OK once it’s had time to air.

Other things that were delivered today were our dining chairs. Finally, we have some lovely, comfortable chairs to go with our nice dining-room table.

I wonder if we’ll find any nice items for the house in Czechia, Slovakia or Hungary. Next week, we’ll start to find out. In preparation for our trip, I’ve booked our first night’s stay in Leipzig and programmed the route into the car’s sat-nav system. Just a few more days and we’ll be on our way.

Posted in Children, House, Travel | 4 Comments

Holiday Season Approaching

Posted on Tuesday, 23rd May, 2006 by ianmacd

The summer is nearly here, although you wouldn’t know it. While Sarah’s folks were here, we had ten days or so of shorts and sandals weather. The last week, however, it’s been very capricious weather. It’s a brave (or naïvely optimistic) man that leaves the house without the security of a brolley at the moment.

Last Friday, Geoff, Jason and Vivian pitched up and spent the weekend here. Jason and Vivian like it raging hot, so they really missed the mark by a few days. They’d spent the week before in Delft, where Jason and Geoff were attending SANE 2006, and pretty much arrived on the day that the mini-heatwave gave way to more restless climes.

That fact meant that we didn’t do an awful lot outside the house, so we mostly just chatted and drank coffee. I do hope they weren’t too bored.

Geoff took the train to Paris today, but will return on Friday to spend one last weekend with us before returning to the evil empire.

That’s pretty much the only reason we’re still in town at the moment, actually, because next week, we’ll be driving to Czechia (or the Czech Republic, as Sarah still prefers to call it) via Leipzig and probably Dresden.

I’m really looking forward to heading out east. We have no firm plans, other than to go to Prague and eventually head further east into Slovakia, paying a visit to the High Tatras. I daresay we’ll turn Budapest on its head on the way back, but other than that, we’ll be playing it by ear.

With no jobs to return to, we’ll be returning home when we run out of traveller’s steam — and not before! We expect to be back in late June, but who knows? We’ve been waiting a long time to be unbeholden and at liberty to travel freely; I’m happy to say that moment has now dawned.

So this week is being taken up with belated research and planning. Proper travel is always a lot of work beforehand; otherwise you miss things and fail to appreciate and understand the things you do see. It really enhances the experience to have a good understanding of your destination, its history, culture, people and — if there’s time — language, too.

With nothing else on the calendar for this summer, we can travel at will. Denmark, Sweden and Italy are all vaguely on the schedule. It’s going to be a fun summer, that’s for sure.

Posted in Travel | Leave a comment

Rampaging Infant

Posted on Tuesday, 23rd May, 2006 by ianmacd

Nothing is safe in this house any more.

In the last couple of days, Eloïse has started climbing out of her high chair and onto the dining-room table; but that’s not all.

She climbed the stairs for the first time a couple of days ago; under supervision, yes, but still. You just can’t turn your back on her any more. Before you know it, she’s off and running.

She crawls around the house at high speed now and can scramble up onto the couch from the floor. She then stands on the couch, leaning forwards onto its back, and jiggles up and down with enthusiasm. It’s only a matter of time before she climbs over the back of the couch and falls freely to the ground.

She used to be content to sit and play with toys, but not any more. She still does that sometimes, of course, but as often as not, she’ll pull herself to her feet, lean against the couch and then walk around its perimeter to the side-tables we have, where she proceeds to help herself to anything we’ve been foolish enough to leave on them.

Yes, the time has come to babyproof the house, although it’s rather daunting knowing where to start. I need to find some kind of expert to come in and assess the place.

On the eating front, she’s doing well with lots of fruit and vegetables. The consultatiebureau told us to give her bread, because the masticatory action would supposedly expedite the path to speech, but this seems to be nonsense as far as we can tell. There’s so little nutritional value in bread and so much potential for allergies of one kind or another, that we’re holding off on introducing too many grains at once.

Speaking of speech, she’s still babbling like a loon at regular intervals; anything from LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA to BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA to PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA-PA. It’s easy to think Papa is in there somewhere, but that’s just egocentrical wishful thinking.

Posted in Children | Leave a comment

Bad Hardware Day

Posted on Tuesday, 23rd May, 2006 by ianmacd

The site seems to be running nicely on the old server in the cellar. I’m sure browsing photos isn’t a terribly fast experience any more, but until I can find a reasonably priced hosting provider I can trust, this is the way it has to be. As detailed here, my last dedicated hosting provider turned out to be less than dedicated and not much of a host to his paying guest.

As I’ve mentioned before, the new hardware that Web Host Plus put me on after managed.com sold my hard drive to them was less than reliable. I suspected a few causes, one of which was bad RAM. This theory now seems to have been borne out by an experiment I did. Before I rsynced our photo gallery across the Atlantic, I rebooted the problem box in New Jersey and reduced its operational RAM from 2 Gb to 512 Mb. In that new configuration, I was able to spend many a joyous hour copying my precious data over the transatlantic pipe without the originating box going AWOL. QED, I’d say.

I’ll be cancelling service with managed.com, Web Host Plus or whoever’s running the show now as soon as my next invoicing cycle starts. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as they say.

In the meantime, any DNS oddness you may have been seeing should now be a thing of the past. All slaves are in sync and handing out correct data. Incorrect data in the caches of other DNS servers should now also have expired. Normal service has now been resumed.

Posted in System Administration, This Site | Leave a comment