I "caused" Rockbox, being the original firmware developer for the Archos Jukebox 6000. apparently the firmware I wrote was so bad around playlist handling and our CEO unwilling to open source the code so that the boys and girls wrote their own.<p>at times it was one of the rather large open source SW projects in terms of users, developers, testers, translators, doc writers. I'm kinda proud to have caused that :)<p>AMA
I used to run this on a Sansa Clip+. It was an amazing combination: great audio quality, expandable storage via microSD, playback of a huge array of formats natively, it ran DOOM, and it only costed around $40 when it was new.<p>Now I just use my phone and streaming, but I sort of miss that era.
I've used Rockbox since I was pretty much a child. It had pretty good accessibility support, and a sansa Clip + was an order of magnitude cheaper than all the players made specially for the blind. I remember being so proud of that purchase and my tech knowledge to actually install Rockbox onto the player. A lot of my friends were impressed that I could achieve something like that for such a low price. I remember using Balabolka[1] to convert text ebooks to mp3, with a speech synthesizer, and then reading those books on the Sansa, for the lack of a build-in TTS. I switched to streaming and reading on my phone in like 2014. I never looked back, though I still have the Sansa lying around on my desk.<p>[1] <a href="http://cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm" rel="nofollow">http://cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm</a>
I remember loading Rockbox on a Archos Jukebox back in the early 2000's[0] as being one of my first real exposures to using open source software. It was glorious, thanks for the hard work!<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archos_Jukebox_series" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archos_Jukebox_series</a>
I really wish I had more of the know how to make a Kickstarter/Crowd Supply for this. I imagine an mp3 player with native Rockbox support would be very popular, especially in the form factor of an iPod and/or a Sansa Clip.
Remember using it a lot in mid 2000s. On iPod Mini and the HP Player. Also Sansa.
IIRC , on iPod it let you play more codecs and then there were a few games thrown in.
Loved it and that is what switched on my "change the native firmware" mode. Before this I did not know it could be done. I also realized how OEM hobble the hardware with restrictive firmware.
Now I try not to buy Hardware (phones, routers etc) that can't be flashed with custom firmware.
As a student I learned C and how OSS projects work through hacking Rockbox to add features to my iRiver H320. Fond memories and a very valuable learning experience.
Man that name brings back memories. Was anyone here involved in the iPod Wizard community? I was one of the guys that worked on mapping hex string locations to sprites and characters in each new firmware release. I wouldn't be surprised if I spent more time bricking and salvaging my iPod G4 with Rockbox, iPod Wizard, iPod Linux, and the iPod Wikipedia port than actually playing music on the thing. I ended up doing the same thing with the MacThemes community, specifically in mapping and documenting the iTunes files and enabling that to be themed. I really miss the time spent trying to figure out how to change a single black pixel on the screen that we missed somewhere or figuring out how to display gradients and images when all you have is black, white, and two shades of gray
I had both an Archos and a Cowon MP3 player back in Middle/High School that I loaded Rockbox onto one of (can't remember which). I remember being able to play Doom, watch pirated Family Guy, and listen to my music all on one device and thinking this was the pinnacle of technology.
It run great for years on my two old Sansa Clip Zip, and now that the only barely surviving one is about to go (dead keys, defective phones connector, reduced battery life etc) and attempting to open it is a nearly destructive operation, Those of us who wouldn't use a cellphone for multiple reasons need an alternative, but most modern players are either costly due to being niche market products or can't run Rockbox for having not enough resources.<p>I think Rockbox badly needs to be ported to other architectures. The cheap and powerful Esp32-WROVER modules (4MB Flash + 8MB PSRAM) could probably be a capable candidate, and i2s for the external DAC is already supported. Not an easy task though.
I‘ve been through the „I‘ll just use it as it comes from the factory“ -> „let me tweak every little thing about this and take it as far as I can“ -> ... cycle more times and with more devices than I care to admit.<p>This was that moment with my old 30GB iPod, thanks for the trip down memory lane!
Much love for Rockbox. I used to run this on the iriver h120 and use it for amazing lossless recording on the cheap. This was one of the earliest things that got me interested in open source.
I fondly remember the days of loading this on my 4th gen iPod, having access to games and such.<p>I think this sort of behavior should be embraced by manufacturers, but I get it; everything needs its own app store these days for a continuous stream of revenue.
For those interested, it can run fine on currently produced AGPTRocker/Benjie T2, although it's not officially supported as of yet. More bulky than Sansa, but there's no options left anymore.
I loved it on my Cowon iAudio X5. Sadly it was never available for my J3.<p>Nowadays I use my phone and really miss the physical buttons that I could use blindly while it's in my bag.
Still running Rockbox on an iPod Video for tunes in a car that doesn't speak Bluetooth but has an aux jack. Considering an upgrade, having recently discovered there are new devices that can run Rockbox, including this one: <a href="https://fiio.com/m3k" rel="nofollow">https://fiio.com/m3k</a><p>Hats off to the Rockbox developers. This project has been so solid for so long, I kinda take it for granted.
I used Rockbox a lot, I even made my own build so I can configure some buttons to tigger specific actions. Sansa Clip+ with Rockbox has been my music player for a long time.<p>The problem now is that mobile phones have killed multimedia players and it's hard to find new players with Rockbox support :-(
For those interested in helping to make Rockbox on new hardware a reality checkout this earlier comment from the PinePhone developers:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21021001" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21021001</a>
Relevant thread: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20977788" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20977788</a><p>Again, as mentioned in the original thread: the idea is cheap, light+small, Free/Open, extensible hardware. Sansa were on the right track with the Clip. Not everything has to be touchscreen/hi-res display. It just needs to be reasonable in price and robust enough to withstand adventures, sleeping and some water.
I learned C and open-source through hacking on this. Fond memories!<p>PS: We have a Quake port - <a href="https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/PluginQuake" rel="nofollow">https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/PluginQuake</a> :)
Used to run this on my old iPod 4G and later on iPod Video. Those were the days. Play whatever audio/video format you want, could run video games. Those were the days -- can't believe it was only 12 years ago.
Wanted to weigh in here, I've got a 5g iPod (Wolfson DAC) with an SSD, upgraded battery and rockbox. It's fantastic, I use it to listen to podcasts before bed. I have something like 200Gb of music on it and I think the last time I charged it was over a month ago.<p>I think the interface could use a little polish, but that aside there is still no mobile listening experience that surpasses having all of your music on you all the time and knowing that when you're at 50% battery you've still got close to two days straight of listening at max volume.
Installed this on a now-ancient Toshiba Gigabeat 40GB MP3 player waay back in 2010. The default firmware and UI for a lot of non-iPod players were awful, despite having good hardware.<p>Rockbox had DOS-like graphics but it's functionality was amazing. I remember installing it because I wanted to calculate how much battery life my 5-year old Toshiba had left. It actually had a counter where it'd play music till the battery died, and when you rebooted it, it'd show you exactly how long playback lasted. Really nifty feature.
A few of my friends and I went on a FLAC kick back in the late '00s and I remember installing Rockbox on a Gen 4 or 5 iPod in order to play my FLAC files.
Loved having Rockbox on my Toshiba Gigabeat F20. Ogg Vorbis playback, lots of battery time and stable as hell.<p>Thank you for the trip down the memory lane.
I remember installing Rockbox on an original iPod for a blind friend of mine, just because with the right settings it would read out the name of the song to her. It took me about two hours, because we were working on a WinXP PC with JAWS and the iPod wasn't exactly Windows-compatible, even in mass-storage mode.
I used to use this and a few other open source firmwares on my iPod when I was at high school, so I could listen to FLACs. When my school friends (I was in the musical crowd) saw it, they all wanted it too, so I'd install it for them. That would've been in 2009-2010. Those were the days.
I still have a working iRiver iHP-100 (40 GiB) with Rockbox on it! Switched to it soon after purchase, as the original firmware was limiting.<p>Of course, I keep it around for the memories as this was my first buy with money earned from RentACoder.com when I was in college. Fond memories :)
I have this on an old iPod Video - easily the best media player I've ever had. I think this was my first exposure to the idea of running non-Apple firmware on Apple devices (loathe to call it a jailbreak, but it feels sorta like one).
I still remember the neuros HD.<p>- multiple swappable storage/battery backpackd<p>- built in fm transmitter<p>- Linux based firmware / iTunes like music management that was Linux native<p>- mp3 ogg Flav support<p>- radio support plus scheduled recording<p>- Shazam like feature called "hear it see it" when plugged in<p>- ridiculously long battery life<p>In 2003
ipod 5.5 80 Gig + Rockbox! Those days still beat today, when you don't have a good network connection for your phone with unlimited data.<p>I wrote this software for messing about with rockbox back then: <a href="http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~davison/software/dbm/" rel="nofollow">http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~davison/software/dbm/</a> (Not sure if the stats department know they're hosting it...)
I use Sansa Clip Zip with Rockbox daily and mostly for audiobooks.
My favorite feature is possibility to increase playback speed while keeping pitch intact