Will rockbox be on the fuze?
They’re working on it, but it could be a long time (6-12 months or more) before they have a working build.
Not yet. Rockbox has eluded toward trying to develope a Fuze compatable firmware but it has not been listed as a development (As of 2 weeks ago)
My mistake. I must have been thinking of the View.
You may be right. I havent looked in about 2 weeks. And you are right about the Time table for things like that.
I haven’t seen anything for the Fuze. But i saw a picture of a CLIP with a beginning Rockbox screen, The artical said it was not functional only in developement. Some very smart programmers and a cool project. It’s very interesting and i love to tinker with things like this. I also already like both the CLIP and FUZE’s interface, well layed out and functional. I am not sure I want to risk bricking the Fuze. Maybe if its released for the CLIP i will risk bricking one.
They have quite a lot for the Fuze and seem to be almost done with the Clip. See here. The main problem with the Fuze seems to be that they have problems with SDRAM init. and/or storage I/O, which leads to some unxepected crashes. Also storage seems to only work up to 1 GB and the home button does not work. I didn’t test it yet, but from what I read, they already have quite a lot. That doesn’t mean though, that they will be done soon, because some (undocumented) hardware related stuff can be quite hard to figure out.
It would be nice, if someone from Sandisk (who works on firmware development) could invest 10 or 15 minutes a week talking to rockbox people on their IRC channel, I think that would speed up development by magnitudes. As far as I know, the Sansa line would be the only players supported by rockbox that are still available (wow!).
Message Edited by calv on 01-29-2009 06:07 AM
Message Edited by calv on 01-29-2009 06:08 AM
Yeah. Imo it would just be good for sandisk marketing-wise if they cooperated with the people developing Rockbox. Imagine sandisks mp3’s labeled as "Rockbox ready
- open source". Would make at least a few potential buyers drewl ;).
Message Edited by rizzly on 01-29-2009 07:51 AM
What calv said is exactly right. I have compiled a working Fuze build and my only 2 big issues are the home button doesn’t work and I can’t access anything past the first GB. There are a few smaller problems like bitmaps not displaying right, but those will be fixed soon. I would estimate maybe a month to three months until we have Rockbox for the Fuze in the main build.
@calv wrote:
It would be nice, if someone from Sandisk (who works on firmware development) could invest 10 or 15 minutes a week talking to rockbox people on their IRC channel, I think that would speed up development by magnitudes. As far as I know, the Sansa line would be the only players supported by rockbox that are still available (wow!).
Nice maybe, but not likely to happen. Most, if not all software developers have to sign & abide a contract stating they will not discuss ‘company secrets’ or participate in any other software development for any other project that is similar to what their employer creates now and sometimes for some period of time after they leave the company.
There was a thread on the RB forums regarding this exact subject. Someone knew how to fix something to do with RB, but couldn’t for fear of not only losing his job, but being sued by his employer on top of it.
I guess you’re right about that :(. Well, it’s all about wich angle the company views it from, I guess they could choose to release information that’s vital to the development but nothing more.
Well if there’s really a Sansa developer who is willing to do this, then maybe its easier for him to present this idea to the management, if he has paying customers on his side… anyone…? 
@tapeworm wrote:
Nice maybe, but not likely to happen. Most, if not all software developers have to sign & abide a contract stating they will not discuss ‘company secrets’ or participate in any other software development for any other project that is similar to what their employer creates now and sometimes for some period of time after they leave the company.
There was a thread on the RB forums regarding this exact subject. Someone knew how to fix something to do with RB, but couldn’t for fear of not only losing his job, but being sued by his employer on top of it.
Companies vary on this. If they see it as non-competing and there’s a public service angle, or even a benefit to the company, they are sometimes ok with it. One big example is IBM with Linux development.
Rockbox is a 3rd party devleoper in this whole thing will most likely not get help from Sandisk directly. Now I know that for past players SanDisk has embraced Rockbox (At least on here), but realize that Firmwares are proprietary for certain players. For Rockbox to go to SanDisk and say can we have your firmware code for the fuze, would be like Popeyes Chicken going to KFC and Can we have the Recipe for your Secret Herbs ans Spices so we can make the same breading. It is not smart for SanDisk to do that. What I imagine Rockbox Does is to breakdown the file that we all can download, for the firmware. So we have to wait for the programmers at Rockbox to work thru what the programmers at Sandisk have been working on For years.
Everyone that’s so anxious for rockbox, why not buy one of the discontinued Sansa’s that rockbox already works on? Some of them have to be pretty cheap.
The lawyers always have to complicate things. Sansa has nondisclosure agreements with all of their employees along with non-compete agreements. It is necessary so proprietary information, trade secrets and potential patents remain their property under their control.
There have been some historical collaborations between open source groups and corporate companies, that have worked out to everyone’s benefit. It’s possible.
The rockbox team has gifted programmers who are capable of disassembly of the firmware and reverse engineering, and they will deny it. I won’t tell you what I did as a teen, I’m sure Blizzard lawyers frowned on it ><. Inspired programmers will get the job done. 
Cheers to Rockbox
Some of it is probably not SanDisk’s IP to give to RB anyway - since the V2 use a bought in AMS solution, I expect they’d need AMS’ permission also. Not likely to happen, since it would undercut AMS’ position when selling to other player makers.
Actually, if I recall correctly AMS was more co-operative and forth-coming about their specs and what-not than SanDisk when approached for information by Rockbox reps when beginning their quest to port to the v2 models…
Yeah, I think once rockbox comes onto the Fuze, I’m going to get it on my Fuze. I’ll just backup my files before I do it though, cause it might screw it up…
http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2009/06/12/install-rockbox-on-your-sansa-fuze/
rockbox is here
Message Edited by THEKOOL on 07-04-2009 05:53 AM
