| Q1. What is this NODO document? |
| A1. This is a list of Feature Requests we get repeatedly that we simply |
| cannot do on the Archos. View it as the opposite of a TODO! |
| |
| Q2. Record to WAV (uncompressed) or MP3pro format! |
| A2. The recording hardware (the MAS) does not allow us to do this. |
| |
| Q3. Crossfade between tracks! |
| A3. Crossfading would require two mp3 decoders, and we only have one. This |
| is not possible. |
| |
| Q4. Interfacing with other USB devices (like cameras) or 2 player games over |
| USB |
| A4. The USB system demands that there is a master that talks to a slave. |
| The Archos can only serve as a slave, as most other USB devices such |
| as cameras can. Thus, without a master no communication between the slaves |
| can take place. |
| |
| If that is not enough, we have no ways of actually controlling the |
| communication performed over USB since the USB circuit in the Archos is |
| strictly made for disk-access and does not allow us to play with it the |
| way we'd need for any good communication to work. |
| |
| Q5. Support MP3pro, WMA or other sound format playback! |
| A5. The mp3-decoding hardware can only play MP3. We cannot make it play other |
| sound formats. |
| |
| Q6. Converting OGG->MP3 |
| A6. The mp3-decoding hardware cannot decode ogg. It can be reprogrammed, but |
| there is too little memory for OGG and we have no documentation on how |
| to program the MAS' DSP. |
| |
| Doing the conversion with the CPU is impossible, since a 12MHz SH1 is far |
| too slow for this daunting task. |
| |
| Q7. Archos Multimedia support! |
| A7. The Archos Multimedia is a completely different beast. It is an entirely |
| different architecture, differnt CPU and upgrading the software is done a |
| completely different way. We do not venture into this. |
| |
| Others may do so. We do not. |
| |
| Q8. Multi-band equalizer! |
| A8. The MAS only offers the standard bass/treble settings and we can't do |
| anything about it. |
| |
| Q9. Support other filesystems than FAT32 (like NTFS or ext2 or whatever)! |
| A9. No. |
| |
| Rockbox needs to support FAT32 since it can only start off a FAT32 |
| partition (since that is the only way the ROM can load it), and adding |
| support for more filesystems will just take away valueable ram for |
| unnecessary features. |
| |
| You can partition your Archos fine, just make sure the first one is FAT32 |
| and then make the other ones whatever file system you want. Just don't |
| expect Rockbox to understand them. |
| |
| Q10. Add scandisk-like features! |
| A10. It would be a very slow operation that would drain the batteries and take |
| a lot of useful ram for something that is much better and faster done |
| when connected to a host computer. |
| |
| Q11. CBR recording! |
| A11. The MP3 encoding hardware does not allow this. |
| |
| Q12. Change tempo of a song without changing pitch! |
| A12. The MP3 decoding hardware does not allow this. |
| |
| Q13. Graphic frequency (spectrum) analyzer! |
| A13. We can't access the audio waveform from the MP3 decoder so we can't |
| analyze it. Even if we had access to it, the CPU would probably be too |
| slow to perform the analysis anyway. |
| |
| Q14. Cool sound effects! |
| A14. Adding new sound effects requires reprogramming the MAS chip, and we can't |
| do that. The MAS chip is programmable, but we have no access to the chip |
| documentation. |