Rockbox firmware

Has anyone tried this?  How is it?  I’m trying to get the Zip to display the track time and tracks remaining in an album.

Yes.

Fine.

Have you tried searching or reading up on it on the Rockbox site?

I’ve just been reluctant to try it since I wouldn’t want my player to crash or lock up.

If you do it right (let the automatic installer do its thing), it won’t. And it’s always reversible if you decide you don’t care for it. But give it a chance; a lot of people are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options, settings and customizations Rockbox offers. The first time I tried it, I didn’t like it and removed it immediately. A few months later and after reading up on it and researching some more, I re-installed it. Sometimes I use it, sometimes I don’t. It’s nice that’s it’s dual-bootable so you can either use Rockbox or the original firmware at will. :smiley:

@tapeworm wrote:

If you do it right (let the automatic installer do its thing), it won’t. And it’s always reversible if you decide you don’t care for it. But give it a chance; a lot of people are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options, settings and customizations Rockbox offers. The first time I tried it, I didn’t like it and removed it immediately. A few months later and after reading up on it and researching some more, I re-installed it. Sometimes I use it, sometimes I don’t. It’s nice that’s it’s dual-bootable so you can either use Rockbox or the original firmware at will. :smiley:

I second Tapeworm’s assesment and advice on how to install Rockbox.  It takes a bit of getting used to the different interface and vastly larger number of features (which can be confusing sometimes) but once you get used to it you won’t look back.

One thing I love about Rockbox is you get true gapless playback.  Using the stock Sandisk firmware you can hear an ever so slight pause between tracks (ex: mutiple tracks on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) but it’s flawless in Rockbox.  That alone was worth the initial learning curve for me.

Another nifty feature I found can be done using Rockbox that you can’t with the stock firmware: you can remove/re-install a microSD card and not have the player refresh the database when you power up in Rockbox.  That comes in handy when you don’t use the player for a long time and you’ve got a card.  The hardware will drain battery faster when off and a card is inserted compared to no card (which is virtually nil).  With the stock FW it’ll refresh when you fire it up, not so with RB.

@tnmats wrote:

The hardware will drain battery faster when off and a card is inserted compared to no card (which is virtually nil).

Really.  Haven’t noticed this, or the effect is fairly small.

@miikerman wrote:


@tnmats wrote:

The hardware will drain battery faster when off and a card is inserted compared to no card (which is virtually nil).


Really.  Haven’t noticed this, or the effect is fairly small.

Me neither. All of my players have memory cards inserted and a few of them go for months at a time without use, or even me remembering to check them for a charge. I’ve never had one be completely dead when I finally turned them on. Yes, they’re down a little, maybe even by half, but after several months I consider that normal and not out of the ordinary.

Clip+, 4GB 16h 30min No SD card, sd variant 0 by saratoga

Clip+, 4GB 16h 15min 8GB SD card, album on internal storage, sd variant 0 by saratoga

If your SD card uses more power, it could be something wrong with the card.