Fuze v1 died, Rockbox to blame?

[jupitreas]

My Fuze v1 died. At first, it began to refuse to read microSD cards that were readable on the PC (in both Rockbox and in the OF). Later on, I got a dead pixel on the LCD. Finally, it seems that the internal storage got corrupted or otherwise died (I assume it had some bad sectors or something, no way of really checking for that).

The question I have is - could Rockbox have caused this? I had the player for about 1.5 years and only started using rockbox with it about 5 months ago. Is it possible that Rockbox has some bugs that makes it kill the internal storage while writing to it?

It is also entirely possible that I simply banged up the Fuze too much. I didn't really take good care of it, it spent its lifetime in my jacket pocket without any case or anything. I am sure it fell on the floor a number of times.

I'm not about to start blaming the Rockbox devs for my Fuze dying - I knew the risks of installing it. Besides, it was a cheap player and frankly, I got much more out of it than I thought possible, particularly after installing Rockbox.

Nevertheless, I'd like to ask other Fuze v1 and Rockbox users if they had any problems with their internal storage dying since it might just be a bug.

[WalkGood]

I honestly don’t think so, although I don’t have a fuze, been running rockbox on e260 for a few years and no issue. Also started running rockbox on 3 v1 Clips over a year ago when it wasn’t released and had bugs, those 3 Clips are running fine today with the latest releases. I believe it’s more the abuse you stated that caused your problem …

[funman]

Note that the internal storage use SD (like SD/microSD cards), so the wear levelling and bad blocks are handled by hardware. If you see filesystem corruption and formatting doesn't fix it then it means pretty bad news.

[jupitreas]

Originally Posted by funman

Note that the internal storage use SD (like SD/microSD cards), so the wear levelling and bad blocks are handled by hardware. If you see filesystem corruption and formatting doesn't fix it then it means pretty bad news.

So do you think it was caused by me not being very careful with my Fuze and dropping it a few times? Or is there a possibility that Rockbox is somehow to blame?

And yeah, formatting fixed nothing and neither did running scandisk.
The OF still runs but it won't play many tracks (I'm assuming they are located on the bad sectors) whereas Rockbox doesnt load at all (once again, guessing the files are located on the bad sectors)

[sunami88]

I wondered if Rockbox had messed up my ClipV1 the day it died. I had just updated to a daily, disconnected the player and sat it beside my computer. Grabbed it the next morning for the drive to work and it didn't turn on.

Turns out it was just the one time that the battery terminals came loose. Totally coincidental, but I had wondered if Rockbox had done something too.

It's probably just a coincidence, but who knows eh.

[saratoga]

If the flash memory stops working its probably just defective. As funman said thats all handled in hardware, its not really something the software can change.

[jupitreas]

Originally Posted by saratoga

If the flash memory stops working its probably just defective. As funman said thats all handled in hardware, its not really something the software can change.

Ah, I didnt understand this from funman's post. So all Rockbox does is it sends commands to the Fuze hardware, am I correct? Can't one of these commands be potentially harmful to the storage? If I am completely asking nonsense here, please tell me, I'm no programmer.

As I said before, I fully expect that it was my abuse of the player that caused its death. I still got more than enough value out of it and am now enjoying my brand new Clip+.

Was just wondering if it is possible for Rockbox to damage the storage by sending some wrong 'command' to the hardware. I thought if it was possible, perhaps my player's death could have at least been useful to one of the devs looking for bugs.

Either way, keep up the good work, Rockbox devs, that Fuze was by far the best mp3 experience I've had both in terms of software features and sound quality. Still waiting for the Clip+ firmware to become a little more stable and then I'll be using RockBox with that as well for sure!

[funman]

Originally Posted by jupitreas

Was just wondering if it is possible for Rockbox to damage the storage by sending some wrong 'command' to the hardware.

Rockbox doesn't send "wrong" commands (by the way, those are really commands like "READ MULTIPLE BLOCKS", "SEND CARD INFORMATION (size, speed..)").

If sending wrong commands could damage hardware, we would have seen reports of badly written software damaging SD cards, but I'm not aware of them.

I can't tell rockbox is bug-free (without lying), but I hope it is good quality and that means there are devices out there with drivers written more badly than rockbox ones, still those devices won't destroy the SD cards you put in them.

[jupitreas]

Well, I guess the only lesson learned from my Fuze's death is that one should not treat it like a haptic ball. Thanks for the feedback guys, it was quite informative! Cheers.

[HankB]

Hi jupitreas,
I'll add one more comment to what funman said. The bulk of the writing to the flash is copying files to the Fuze via USB. Since Rockbox does not yet support USB on the Fuze, that is always done using the OF. In other words the files that you cannot now play were written by the OF so that reduces the chance of Rockbox involvement even more.

Sorry to hear that your Fuze is malfunctioning. My wife's V1 is also kaput too, but it is a broken scroll wheel. At least she can still use it as USB storage.

(And since funman may be tracking this thread - Thank You for your efforts with Rockbox!)