Topic: iRiver H120 CF Mod Attempt - Success!

[Rapide23]

My first post!

Anyway, has anyone done the CF swap on an H320 yet? I'd quiet like to replace the 20GB HD with a 32GB (or even 64GB) CF card. I tried reading the rockbox pages, but still don't quiet understand what it is that I need to do.

So, basically, do I simply order a CF adaptor like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/SSD-CF-to-ipod-IDE-Adaptor-as-1-8-toshiba-Hard-Drive_W0QQitemZ360022121216QQihZ023QQcategoryZ41993QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem, then put a CF card into the adaptor, then into my H320? What happens afterwards? will the original firmware work with the CF card, and will rockbox be able to boot from the CF card once I copy the .rockbox folder into it? I reinstalled rockbox last week, so my 320 should have the latest boot loader.

I look forward to doing this swap. A flash H320 has me salivating........

[petur]

The adapter you showed is the right one.
After that you need to perform a firmware upgrade from within the original firmware to install a new rockbox bootloader. It is a temporary build by me, not an official release, but it worked for everybody so far. You'll find it on the CFMod wiki page (on rockbox.org)

Beware that the original fiirmware does not work with CF cards, so you first need to upgrade the firmware (flash), then mount the CF. After that, upgrading rockbox itself is just copying to CF. But no more original firmware (it gives a CHECK HDD error)

[Arni99]

I ordered the CF-to-IDE-adapter today and will test it in on of my 2 irivers in the next 2 weeks.
Now I need to find a good CF-card 266-300 x speed.
I guess a 8GB card will do its job...makes 4 times 3h23min(2GB limit)=>13h32min az 16bit 44.1kHz.
Thats more than the internal battery can record without being charged in between.
WAVPACK recordings last even longer regarding battery-life.

[Chuck]

Well, I've had the Transcend 8GB 133x CF card and adapter for a while now. All the hardware part is ready. I just can't figure out how to get the bootloader to recognize the CF card. I get the error message when I try to boot it with my version of RockBox. Can someone (hopefully with a lot of patience) give me a step by step guide to make it work? Including links to the right bootloader to use? I'm good with hardware, not so good with software/ firmware. 

[petur]

I assume you already checked out http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/CFModGuide?

[Chuck]

I assume you already checked out http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/CFModGuide?

Yeah.

[petur]

well, that page explains it :p

I think you're right, the page is rather techy and the stuff about patching and compiling is irrelevant...
I'll check if somebody can update the bootloader.

[Chuck]

well, that page explains it :p

I think you're right, the page is rather techy and the stuff about patching and compiling is irrelevant...
I'll check if somebody can update the bootloader.

It may as well have been written in Chinese! 

Yeah, I noticed the "official" bootloader is pretty old, too.

[Rapide23]

Has anybody got pics of this mod on an H320?? I'm just a bit worried about having to grind down the jumper if its too big, since the H320 has a slimmer casing than the H340s...and being quiet noob at this sort of thing I'm worried about stuffing up my player.

BTW, is it possible to patch the original firmware to work with the CF card? The main reason I need the original firmware is that I need to be able to view unicode, and I haven't found a nice theme that can display chinese characters yet...

[GrandMasterMark]

I have a silly question:

Does this mod eliminate the 10 seconds of hd write time every minute or so?

Also, Petur, if I am reading your rockbox entry correctly, the bootloader that I installed last night (and downloaded last night) will support the cf card without further modification?

So, if my thinking is correct, and it usually isN'T, I can copy my current h120 hard drive to my CF card (.rockbox), shut down, make the hardware modification, and boot directly into a working modded cf iriver h120? Please say YES!

[petur]

Has anybody got pics of this mod on an H320?? I'm just a bit worried about having to grind down the jumper if its too big, since the H320 has a slimmer casing than the H340s...and being quiet noob at this sort of thing I'm worried about stuffing up my player.

Just bend it, works fine

BTW, is it possible to patch the original firmware to work with the CF card? The main reason I need the original firmware is that I need to be able to view unicode, and I haven't found a nice theme that can display chinese characters yet...

Nope. But Rockbox supports unicode, you just have to pick a unicode font. I thought unicatcher did...

[Chuck]

With Alex's help, I got my iHP-120 outfitted with the Transcend 8GB CF card. It's pretty cool that it works at all, but my Real Time Clock mod isn't enabled (no biggie) and the balance meter (from the REP build) is missing. Other than that, it's nice.

petur: what's the odds that the balance meter will be (or could be) incorporated in the daily RockBox builds? The sizable metering is cool, but not critical, but I have come to rely on the balance meters from the REP. I'll continue to use the last REP installed on my HD when making critical recordings for now.

Thanks and +T, Alex, for the help.

[petur]

I'm still waiting for the recording screen redesign....

I myself have little to no time these days, and things do not look better for the future (time-wise only! little kid arriving in 4 weeks)

[Rapide23]

Ordered the CF adapter on ebay over the weekend. Can't wait to try this out, and hopefully it works like a treat!

[eupeptic]

Rapide23, I just installed a 4 GB Transcend 133x CF card in my H320 yesterday, and it works as advertised (meaning Rockbox works perfectly, but the original firmware can't read from the card).

As the CFModGuide that petur linked above is a bit cluttered, note that the first thing you'll need to do is download the H300.zip file from that page (which is a modified version of the 1.29J firmware) and upgrade your iRiver with it (do this while you have the hard drive in it - and both the hard drive and CF work with it). I personally transferred the .rockbox files onto the CF card before installing it, but I believe you can copy those files to the CF card after installing it in your iRiver and plugging in the USB cable (while it's off so it goes into bootloader USB mode).

Also, I personally bent over the pins for the jumper, ground down part of the plastic on the adapter, and cut a little notch in the rubber that sits between the battery and the hard drive so everything would fit better (other people may have done as little as bending over the jumper, but I don't want to risk damaging my battery by squeezing everything in - as it's a tight fit; though it's less than a millimeter too thick after also removing the piece of rubber that sits between the bottom of the hard drive and the circuit board). The pictures below show most of this. (I ground the plastic on the adapter at an angle as it sits at an angle in the iRiver, and the little rectangle in the second picture is where I cut a notch out of the rubber.)

Another thing is that opening up an H300 series iRiver isn't as easy as the H100 series. If you haven't already done this, this page details how to remove the back cover (the rest of the instructions aren't important). I personally started on the top and bottom (which are easier to pry apart than the sides) then moved to the sides using a knife that's beveled on one side and flat on the other (plus a credit card once there was room for it). I had the beveled side facing the back of the iRiver so it would push the tabs back (so they could be unhooked without breaking them).