Episode: 59
Title: HPR0059: Interview with scorche
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0059/hpr0059.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 10:52:01

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Music
Packer Public Radio. This is Clat 2. I'm sitting around looking through some files on my
big super computer here that runs Linux. And I'm just sort of scanning through some
old stuff that I've got. And there's a file here that I used to, that I meant to use
for a podcast that I do. And I just never find a place for it. And I think it's a really
great little interview. And it should be heard. And so it's going to be heard on Hacker
Public Radio right now. It is with a guy named Scorch or Scorchie or Scorshe. He's with
the Rockbox project. And he's one of those programmers that you read about. I mean this guy
knows this stuff. And he's hacking away actively on the Rockbox project. So give this interview
a listen. I was speaking with him myself on IRC and he told me to mention something. And I,
for the life of me, do not remember what it was. It was something about companies that have
contacted Rockbox. Something like that. I don't remember. So if you have any questions about
the interview, you can either ask me on IRC or you can go over to Rockbox and talk to Scorch
or Scorchie or Scorshe, the man himself. He hangs out there a lot. He's very helpful. I was
talking to Austin, aka Scorchie, of the Rockbox project. And Rockbox, of course, is, well, what is
Rockbox? It's an open source firmware for audio players like iRiver's, iAudios, iPods, gigabit,
that sort of thing. So people quite like it a lot. I mean, especially with iPods where you don't
have to deal with iTunes, we enable a whole bunch more features such as, I mean, a five-band
paramedic equalizer, a whole bunch of games, massive codex support, especially compared anything
else without there for a digital audio player. So is anyone actually shipping with Rockbox?
No, however, there have been a few companies that have been sort of talking. There was one
portable electronics. I mean, they really were quite small. I don't even, I had actually never heard
of them before that. But they kind of disappeared from the face of the earth.
Let's think. Sansa actually approached us as saying, you know, we would like you to write this
firmware for us. And that, I mean, they gave us a few devices. They gave us a prototype with a
JTAG port on it. But beyond that, I mean, that was pretty much it. Actually, regarding companies,
there was one that, or there is one, I should say, that has been really kind to us, Austrian
microsystems. They make the DAC for the Sansa devices. Basically, we needed their help
for, see, quite a few months, we actually were running on the Sansa devices without sound,
because we needed, you know, some data sheets in regards to that. We actually approached them.
They offered to give us, you know, a tour of their facilities. And we actually did sign an
NDA to get data sheets that device. Recently, Sansa has upgraded their line to V2s. And they're
actually using an Austrian microsystem system on a chip as well. So a port actually hasn't
been done to that, because no one has actually made the effort quite yet. But I'm sure a port
would probably be incoming, although who knows when. I mean, like I said, it's up to individual
people to take it up. So, but Rockbox strikes me as just being like phenomenally, I don't know,
intuitive and logical in terms of the interface that you use with your portable media player.
And I haven't actually used that many different portable media players. The ones that I have used
essentially have all really, really been terrible in how you interface with it. Is Rockbox not
being adopted because maybe it's too open or something? Well, part of the difficulties is, of course,
DRM. You can't have DRM in an open source world, of course, because then the DRM's algorithms and
everything would be out in the open. Again, back to the intuitiveness. That's really our main
gripe. I mean, the project started on our coast devices sometime around December 2001-ish,
and just the firmware's horrible. And as opposed to a computer, these are embedded systems that you
really don't have a choice about what's running on here. You can't change anything and with Rockbox,
so I mean, that really drives a lot of people to say, hey, you know what? This is our really
our only option for media players, and there really isn't anything worth getting anything
besides something that will run Rockbox. And what is Rockbox on a technical level? Is it using
a Linux kernel or something, or is it just completely different? Actually, no, we did write the
kernel from scratch, which is nice considering we don't have all the cruft of a full Linux kernel,
or even UC Linux or anything like that. So it's optimized. It's mainly in C with some assembly,
of course, for optimization purposes. Wow. And you guys have done a lot of different devices.
How many of you are there? There's probably around 60-ish developers. I don't really like to give
numbers to Core, but I would say probably around 20 to 30, although, you know, I may be way off on
that. Right. Okay. But it is quite an active developer base. So, I mean, you'll see, we probably do,
I mean, we're ranging where we're between two to 20 commits a day, so. Right. Okay. And you have
nightly builds of, well, you have nightly builds, I guess is the thing. We do have nightly builds,
however, typically when we talk to people, we say, you know, you're better off just using the
Bleem builds, who's really, I mean, they are no more stable than the daily's. So. Okay. It is
relatively stable. Right. Yeah. I mean, I installed the open source. Right. No warranties come
expressly implied. Yeah. So I think I installed the nightly build, and I actually did a walk through
on installing Rockbox on this podcast, and you were mentioning to me that maybe the Rockbox manual
might be a better way for people to install this. Yeah. I mean, the main reason for that is, you know,
sometimes install methods can change, as well as people, I'm not saying you did, but, you know,
a lot of people have gotten things wrong, and then, of course, people listen to these podcasts,
or read these things, and do something wrongly, and then come to us and say, why is this working?
So if anyone listens to my podcast and does the Rockbox install from that, yell at me, not at
the IRC channels that you guys are in. I mean, I wouldn't say yell at him. I mean, he's great for
talking about Rockbox. I'm just saying a lot of times, you know, just consult the manual. Yeah,
and I have to say that manual, the official manual is like really well written, and that's just how I,
that's exactly, it got me through the installation pretty easily. So yeah, I was. I hope so. Yeah, yeah.
It's a great product. Thanks for talking, and I encourage everyone to check it out. Where can they
find it? They can find it at www.rockbox.org. If you have more, if you will have more questions about
it, or wonder more precisely exactly what it does, there is a link on the front page to, I think it
says something like what is Rockbox, which is a link to the Y Rockbox Wiki page. That'll detail
some more of our features, that sort of thing. Also on the front page is a list of all the targets
that we support, and keep in mind you're always free to come on Pass Rockbox on our free notes.
Cool. All right. Thanks a lot, Austin. All right.
Thank you for listening to Half Republic Radio. HPR is sponsored by tarot.net.
So head on over to C-A-R-O dot-E-C for all of those of you.