Toshiba Rockbox F Series User manual

The Rockbox Manual
for
Toshiba Gigabeat F Series
rockbox.org
December 23, 2008

2
Rockbox
http://www.rockbox.org/
Open Source Jukebox Firmware
Rockbox and this manual is the collaborative effort of the Rockbox team and
its contributors. See the appendix for a complete list of contributors.
c
2003-2008 The Rockbox Team and its contributors, c 2004 Christi Alice
Scarborough, c 2003 Jos´e Maria Garcia-Valdecasas Bernal & Peter Schlenker.
Version r19569-081223. Built using pdfL
A
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X.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sec-
tions, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license
is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.
The Rockbox manual Toshiba Gigabeat F Series

Contents 3
Contents
1 Introduction 9
1.1 Welcome ..................................... 9
1.2 Getting more help ............................... 9
1.3 Naming conventions and marks ........................ 10
2 Installation 11
2.1 Overview .................................... 11
2.2 Prerequisites .................................. 12
2.3 Installing Rockbox ............................... 12
2.3.1 Automated Installation ........................ 12
2.3.2 Manual Installation .......................... 13
2.3.3 Enabling Speech Support (optional) ................. 15
2.4 Running Rockbox ................................ 15
2.5 Updating Rockbox ............................... 15
2.6 Uninstalling Rockbox ............................. 16
2.6.1 Automatic Uninstallation ....................... 16
2.6.2 Manual Uninstallation ......................... 16
3 Quick Start 17
3.1 Basic Overview ................................. 17
3.1.1 The player’s controls .......................... 17
3.1.2 Turning the player on and off ..................... 18
3.1.3 Putting music on your player ..................... 18
3.1.4 The first contact ............................ 18
3.1.5 Basic controls .............................. 19
3.1.6 Basic concepts ............................. 19
3.2 Customising Rockbox ............................. 20
3.3 Charging .................................... 20
4 Browsing and playing 21
4.1 File Browser ................................... 21
4.1.1 File Browser Controls ......................... 22
4.1.2 Context Menu ............................. 22
4.1.3 Virtual Keyboard ............................ 24
4.2 Database .................................... 25
4.2.1 Introduction .............................. 25
4.2.2 Initializing the Database ........................ 25
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Contents 4
4.2.3 The Database Menu .......................... 26
4.2.4 Using the Database .......................... 27
4.3 While Playing Screen .............................. 28
4.3.1 WPS Key Controls ........................... 29
4.3.2 Peak Meter ............................... 29
4.3.3 The WPS Context Menu ....................... 30
4.4 Working with Playlists ............................. 32
4.4.1 Playlist terminology .......................... 32
4.4.2 Creating playlists ............................ 33
4.4.3 Adding music to playlists ....................... 34
4.4.4 Modifying playlists ........................... 35
4.4.5 Saving playlists ............................. 36
4.4.6 Loading saved playlists ........................ 36
4.4.7 Helpful Hints .............................. 36
5 The Main Menu 37
5.1 Introducing the Main Menu .......................... 37
5.2 Navigating the Main Menu .......................... 38
5.3 Recent Bookmarks ............................... 38
5.4 Files ....................................... 38
5.5 Database .................................... 38
5.6 Now Playing/Resume Playback ........................ 38
5.7 Settings ..................................... 39
5.7.1 Sound Settings ............................. 39
5.7.2 Playback Settings ........................... 39
5.7.3 General Settings ............................ 39
5.7.4 Manage Settings ............................ 39
5.7.5 Theme Settings ............................. 39
5.8 Playlist ..................................... 39
5.9 Plugins ..................................... 40
5.10 System ...................................... 40
5.11 Quick Screen .................................. 41
6 Sound Settings 42
6.1 Volume ..................................... 42
6.2 Bass ....................................... 43
6.3 Treble ...................................... 43
6.4 Balance ..................................... 43
6.5 Channels .................................... 43
6.6 Stereo Width .................................. 43
6.7 Crossfeed .................................... 44
6.8 Equalizer .................................... 45
6.9 Dithering .................................... 47
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Contents 5
7 Playback Settings 48
7.1 Shuffle ...................................... 48
7.2 Repeat ...................................... 48
7.3 Play Selected First ............................... 49
7.4 Fast-Forward/Rewind ............................. 49
7.5 Anti-Skip Buffer ................................ 49
7.6 Fade on Stop/Pause .............................. 49
7.7 Party Mode ................................... 49
7.8 Crossfade .................................... 49
7.9 Replaygain ................................... 51
7.10 Beep Volume .................................. 51
7.11 Auto-Change Directory ............................ 51
7.12 Pause on Headphone Unplug ......................... 52
7.13 Last.fm Log ................................... 52
7.14 Cuesheet Support ................................ 52
7.15 Skip Length ................................... 53
8 General Settings 54
8.1 Playlist ..................................... 54
8.2 File View .................................... 54
8.3 Database .................................... 56
8.4 Display ..................................... 56
8.5 System ...................................... 58
8.5.1 Start Screen ............................... 58
8.5.2 Battery ................................. 58
8.5.3 Disk ................................... 59
8.5.4 Idle Poweroff .............................. 59
8.5.5 Limits .................................. 59
8.5.6 Car Adapter Mode ........................... 60
8.5.7 Button Light Timeout ......................... 60
8.5.8 Button Light Brightness ........................ 60
8.6 Bookmarking .................................. 60
8.7 Language .................................... 61
8.8 Voice ....................................... 62
9 Theme Settings 64
10 Plugins 66
10.1 Games ...................................... 66
10.1.1 Blackjack ................................ 67
10.1.2 BrickMania ............................... 68
10.1.3 Bubbles ................................. 70
10.1.4 Chessbox ................................ 71
10.1.5 Chopper ................................. 72
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Contents 6
10.1.6 Dice ................................... 72
10.1.7 Doom .................................. 73
10.1.8 Flipit .................................. 75
10.1.9 Jewels .................................. 76
10.1.10 MazezaM ................................ 77
10.1.11 Minesweeper .............................. 78
10.1.12 Pacbox ................................. 79
10.1.13 Pegbox ................................. 81
10.1.14 Pong ................................... 82
10.1.15 Robotfindskitten ............................ 83
10.1.16 Rockblox ................................ 84
10.1.17 Rockblox1d ............................... 85
10.1.18 Sliding Puzzle .............................. 85
10.1.19 Snake .................................. 86
10.1.20 Snake 2 ................................. 87
10.1.21 Sokoban ................................. 88
10.1.22 Solitaire ................................. 90
10.1.23 Spacerocks ............................... 91
10.1.24 Star ................................... 92
10.1.25 Sudoku ................................. 93
10.1.26 Wormlet ................................. 95
10.1.27 Xobox .................................. 98
10.2 Demos ...................................... 99
10.2.1 Bounce ................................. 99
10.2.2 Credits .................................100
10.2.3 Cube ...................................100
10.2.4 Demystify ................................101
10.2.5 Fire ...................................102
10.2.6 Logo ...................................102
10.2.7 Mandelbrot ...............................103
10.2.8 Mosaique ................................104
10.2.9 Oscilloscope ...............................105
10.2.10 Plasma .................................106
10.2.11 Snow ...................................107
10.2.12 Starfield .................................108
10.2.13 VU meter ................................109
10.3 Viewers .....................................109
10.3.1 Shortcuts ................................110
10.3.2 Chip-8 Emulator ............................111
10.3.3 JPEG viewer ..............................112
10.3.4 Midiplay .................................112
10.3.5 MPEG Player ..............................113
10.3.6 PPM viewer ...............................114
10.3.7 Rockboy .................................115
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Contents 7
10.3.8 Search ..................................116
10.3.9 Sort ...................................116
10.3.10 Text Viewer ...............................116
10.3.11 VBRfix .................................118
10.3.12 ZXBox ..................................118
10.4 Applications ...................................120
10.4.1 Battery Benchmark ..........................120
10.4.2 Calculator ................................122
10.4.3 Calendar ................................122
10.4.4 Chess Clock ...............................123
10.4.5 Clock ..................................125
10.4.6 Disk Tidy ................................127
10.4.7 Keybox .................................128
10.4.8 Lamp ..................................128
10.4.9 md5sum .................................128
10.4.10 Metronome ...............................128
10.4.11 Random Folder Advance Configuration ...............129
10.4.12 Stats ...................................130
10.4.13 Stopwatch ................................131
10.4.14 Text Editor ...............................131
11 Advanced Topics 133
11.1 Customising the User Interface ........................133
11.1.1 Getting Extras .............................133
11.1.2 Loading Fonts .............................133
11.1.3 Loading Languages ...........................133
11.1.4 Changing Colours ...........................133
11.1.5 Changing Filetype Colours ......................134
11.1.6 Loading Backdrops ...........................134
11.2 Configuring the WPS .............................134
11.2.1 WPS – General Info ..........................134
11.2.2 WPS – Build Your Own ........................134
11.3 Managing Rockbox Settings ..........................137
11.3.1 Introduction to .cfg Files. ......................137
11.3.2 Specifications for .cfg Files. .....................138
11.3.3 The Manage Settings menu ....................139
11.4 Firmware Loading ...............................139
11.4.1 Using ROLO (Rockbox Loader) ....................139
A File formats 140
A.1 Supported file formats .............................140
A.2 Supported audio formats ............................141
B WPS Tags 142
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Contents 8
B.1 Status Bar ....................................142
B.2 ID3 Info .....................................142
B.3 Power Related Information ..........................143
B.4 File Info .....................................143
B.5 Playlist/Song Info ...............................144
B.6 Runtime Database ...............................144
B.7 Sound (DSP) settings .............................144
B.8 Virtual LED ..................................145
B.9 Repeat Mode ..................................145
B.10 Playback Mode Tags ..............................145
B.11 Changing Volume ................................145
B.12 Settings .....................................146
B.13 Images ......................................147
B.14 Alignment ....................................148
B.15 Conditional Tags ................................148
B.16 Real Time Clock ................................149
B.17 Other Tags ...................................149
C Config file options 150
D User feedback 154
D.1 Bug reports ...................................154
D.1.1 Rules for submitting new bug reports ................154
D.2 Feature ideas ..................................154
D.2.1 Rules for submitting a new feature idea ...............154
D.2.2 Features we will not implement ....................155
E Changelog 156
E.1 What is new since v3.0? ............................156
E.1.1 New features ..............................156
E.1.2 Enhancements .............................156
E.2 What is new since v2.5? ............................156
E.2.1 New features ..............................156
E.2.2 Enhancements .............................158
E.2.3 New codecs supported .........................158
F Credits 160
G Licenses 163
G.1 GNU Free Documentation License ......................163
G.2 The GNU General Public License .......................171
The Rockbox manual Toshiba Gigabeat F Series

Chapter 1. Introduction 9
1 Introduction
1.1 Welcome
This is the manual for Rockbox. Rockbox is an open source firmware replacement
for a growing number of digital audio players. Rockbox aims to be considerably more
functional and efficient than your device’s stock firmware while remaining easy to use
and customisable. Rockbox is written by users, for users. Not only is it free to use, it
is also released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which means that it will
always remain free both to use and to change.
Rockbox has been in development since 2001, and receives new features, tweaks and
fixes each day to provide you with the best possible experience on your digital audio
player. A major goal of Rockbox is to be simple and easy to use, yet remain very
customisable and configurable. We believe that you should never need to go through a
series of menus for an action you perform frequently. We also believe that you should
be able to configure almost anything about Rockbox you could want, pertaining to
functionality. Another top priority of Rockbox is audio playback quality – Rockbox,
for most models, includes a wider range of sound settings than the device’s original
firmware. A lot of work has been put into making Rockbox sound the best it can, and
improvements are constantly being made. All models have access to a large number
of plugins, including many games, applications, and graphical “demos”. You can load
different configurations quickly for different purposes (e.g. a large font for in your car,
different sound settings for at home). Rockbox features a very wide range of languages,
and all supported models also have the ability to talk to you – menus can be voiced and
filenames spelled out or spoken.
1.2 Getting more help
This manual is intended to be a comprehensive introduction to the Rockbox firmware.
There is, however, more help available. The Rockbox website at http://www.rockbox.org/
contains very extensive documentation and guides written by members of the Rockbox
community and this should be your first port of call when looking for further help.
If you cannot find the information you are searching for on the Rockbox website there
are a number of support channels you should have a look at. You can try the Rockbox
forums located at http://forums.rockbox.org/. Another option are the mailing lists which
can be found at http://www.rockbox.org/mail/. From that page you can subscribe to the
lists and browse the archives. For searching the list archives simply use the search field
that is located on the left side of the website. Also you can ask on IRC. The main
The Rockbox manual Toshiba Gigabeat F Series

Chapter 1. Introduction 10
channel for Rockbox is #rockbox on irc://irc.freenode.net. A bunch of helpful developers
and users are usually around. Just join and ask – if someone knows the answer you’ll
usually get an answer pretty quickly. More information including IRC logs can be found
at http://www.rockbox.org/irc/. We also have a web client for joining the rockbox IRC
channel so there is no need for you to install additional software to your computer.
If you think you have found a bug please make sure it actually is a bug and is still
present in the most recent version of rockbox. You should try to confirm that by using
the above mentioned support channels first. After that you can submit that issue to our
tracker. Refer to section D(page 154) for details on how to use the tracker.
1.3 Naming conventions and marks
We have some conventions especially on naming that are intended to be consistent
throughout this manual.
Manufacturer and product names are formatted in accordance with the standard rules
of English grammar, e.g. “Toshiba playback is currently unsupported”. Manufacturer
and model names are proper nouns, and thus are written beginning with a capital letter.
This manual has some parts that are marked with icons on the margin to help you
finding important parts or parts you could skip. The following icons are used:
Note: This indicates a note. A note starts always with the text “Note”. For easier b
finding of notes we have put this an icon in the margin like here. Notes are used to
mark information that could help you or indicate a possible “weirdness” in rockbox that
would be explained.
Warning: This is a warning. In contrast to notes mentioned above, a warning should be !
taken more seriously. While ignoring notes will not cause any serious damage ignoring
warnings could cause serious damage. If you are new to rockbox you should really read
the warnings before doing anything that is warned about.
This icon marks a section that is intended especially for the blind and visually impaired. ¸
As they cannot read the manual in the same way sighted people do we have added some
additional descriptions. If you are not blind or visually impaired you most likely can
completely skip these blocks. To make this easier, there is an icon shown in the margin
on the right.
Links to the wiki are abbreviated by the name of the wiki page. Those names are still
linked so you can simply follow them like any other link in this manual. If you want to
access a wiki page manually go to Zhttp://www.rockbox.org/wiki/ and type the page
name in the “Go” box at the top of the page. Links to wiki pages are also indicated by
the symbol Zin front of the page name.
The Rockbox manual Toshiba Gigabeat F Series

Chapter 2. Installation 11
2 Installation
2.1 Overview
There are two ways of installing Rockbox: automated and manual. While the manual
way is older, more tested and proven to work correctly, the automated installation is
based on a nice graphical application that does almost everything for you. It is still
important that you have an overview of the installation process to be able to select the
correct installation options.
There are three separate components, two of which need to be installed in order to
run Rockbox:
The Toshiba bootloader. The Toshiba bootloader is the program that tells your player
how to load and start the original firmware. It is also responsible for any emergency,
recovery, or disk modes on your player. This bootloader is stored in special flash
memory in your Toshiba and comes factory-installed. It is not necessary to modify
this in order to install Rockbox.
The Rockbox bootloader. The Rockbox bootloader is loaded from disk by the Toshiba
bootloader. It is responsible for loading the Rockbox firmware and for providing
the dual boot function. It directly replaces the Toshiba firmware in the player’s
boot sequence.
Note: Dual boot does not currently work on the Gigabeat. b
The Rockbox firmware. Similar to the Toshiba firmware, most of the Rockbox code is
contained in a “build” that resides on your player’s drive. This makes it easy to
update Rockbox. The build consists of a directory called .rockbox which contains
all of the Rockbox files, and is located in the root of your player’s drive.
Apart from the required parts there are some addons you might be interested in
installing.
Fonts. Rockbox can load custom fonts. The fonts are distributed as a separate package
and thus need to be installed separately. They are not required to run Rockbox
itself but a lot of themes require the fonts package to be installed.
Themes. The view of Rockbox can be customized by themes. Depending on your taste
you might want to install additional themes to change the look of Rockbox.
The Rockbox manual Toshiba Gigabeat F Series

Chapter 2. Installation 12
2.2 Prerequisites
Before installing Rockbox you should make sure you meet the prerequisites. You may
need some additional tools for installation. In most cases these will already be available
on your computer, but if not, installing some additional software might be necessary.
USB connection. To transfer Rockbox to your player you need to connect it to your
computer. For manual installation/uninstallation, or should autodetection fail
during automatic installation, you need to know where to access the player. On
Windows this means you need to figure out the drive letter associated with the
player. On Linux you need to know the mount point of your player.
Warning: During installation, do not connect your player using the cradle but !
plug the USB cable directly to the player.
For manual installation and customization additional software is required.
ZIP utility. Rockbox is distributed as a compressed archive using the .zip format. Your
computer will normally already have a means of handling such archive files. Win-
dows XP has built-in support for .zip files and presents them to you as directories
unless you have installed a third party program that handles compressed files. For
other operating systems this may vary. If the .zip file format is not recognised on
your computer you can find a program to handle them at http://www.info-zip.org/
or http://sevenzip.sf.net/, both of which can be downloaded and used free of charge.
Text editor. As you will see in the following chapters, Rockbox is highly configurable.
In addition to saving configurations, Rockbox also allows you to create customised
configuration files. If you would like to edit custom configuration files on your
computer, you will need a text editor like Windows’ “Wordpad”.
2.3 Installing Rockbox
2.3.1 Automated Installation
To automatically install Rockbox, download the official installer and housekeeping tool
Rockbox Utility. It allows you to:
•Automatically install all needed components for using Rockbox (“Small Installa-
tion”)
•Automatically install all suggested components (“Full Installation”)
•Selectively install optional components
•Install additional themes
•Install voice files and generate talk clips
The Rockbox manual Toshiba Gigabeat F Series

Chapter 2. Installation 13
•Uninstall all components you installed using Rockbox Utility
Prebuilt binaries for Windows, Linux and MacOS X are available at the ZRockboxUtility
wiki page.
Warning: When first starting Rockbox Utility run “Autodetect”, found in the con- !
figuration dialog (File →Configure). Autodetection can detect most player types. If
autodetection fails or is unable to detect the mountpoint, make sure to enter the correct
values. The mountpoint indicates the location of the player in your filesystem. On Win-
dows, this is the drive letter the player gets assigned, on other systems this is a path in
the filesystem.
Note: Rockbox Utility currently lacks some guiding messages. Please have a look at the b
manual installation instructions if you are stuck during installation.
2.3.2 Manual Installation
Choosing a Rockbox version
There are three different types of firmware binaries available from the Rockbox website:
Release version, current build and daily build. You need to decide which one you want
to install and get the appropriate version for your player.
Release. The release version is the latest stable release, free of known critical bugs. The
current stable release of Rockbox, version 3.1, is available at http://www.rockbox.
org/download/.
Current Build. The current build is built at each source code change to the Rockbox
SVN repository and represents the current state of Rockbox development. This
means that the build could contain bugs but most of the time is safe to use. You
can download the current build from http://build.rockbox.org/.
Archived Build. In addition to the release version and the current build, there is also
an archive of daily builds available for download. These are built once a day from
the latest source code in the SVN repository. You can download archived builds
from http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml.
Warning: Because current builds and daily builds are development versions which !
change frequently, they may behave differently than described in this manual, or they
may introduce new (and maybe annoying) bugs. If you do not want to get undefined
behaviour from your player, you should stick to the current stable release if there is one
for your player. If you want to help with project development, you can try development
builds and help by reporting bugs. Just be aware that these are development builds that
are highly functional but not perfect!
The Rockbox manual Toshiba Gigabeat F Series

Chapter 2. Installation 14
Installing the firmware
1. Download your chosen version of Rockbox from the links in the previous section.
2. Connect your player to the computer via USB as described in the manual that
came with your player.
3. Take the .zip file that you downloaded and use the “Extract all” command of
your unzip program to extract the files onto your player.
Note: The entire contents of the .zip file should be extracted directly to the root b
of your player’s drive. Do not try to create a separate directory on your player
for the Rockbox files! The .zip file already contains the internal structure that
Rockbox needs.
Note: If the contents of the .zip file are extracted correctly, you will have a directory b
called .rockbox, which contains all the files needed by Rockbox, in the main directory
of your player’s drive. If you receive a “-1” error when you start Rockbox, you have not
extracted the contents of the .zip file to the proper location.
Installing the fonts package
Rockbox has a fonts package that is available at http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml or
from the extras link in the menu on the Rockbox website. While the current builds
and daily builds change frequently, the fonts package rarely changes and is therefore not
included in these builds. When installing Rockbox for the first time, you should install
the fonts package. The release version, on the other hand, does not change, so fonts are
included with it.
1. Download the fonts package from the link above.
2. Take the file that you downloaded above, and use the “Extract all” command
of your unzip program to extract the files in the .zip file onto your player. As
with the firmware installation, the entire contents of the fonts .zip should be
extracted directly to the root of your player’s drive. Do not try to create a separate
directory on your player for the fonts! The .zip already contains the correct
internal structure.
Installing the bootloader
Installing the bootloader is only needed once. It simply requires you to replace a file
on your player with the Rockbox bootloader. To be able booting the original firmware
please make sure to rename the original file properly. If you ever wish to uninstall
Rockbox you should keep a backup copy of the original file.
•Download the Rockbox bootloader from http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/
gigabeat/
The Rockbox manual Toshiba Gigabeat F Series

Chapter 2. Installation 15
•Starting at the root directory of your player browse into the directory GBSYSTEM
and from that into the subdirectory FWIMG. These directories are hidden. Make
sure that you have configured your browser to show hidden files or you may be
unable to see FWIMG.
•In that directory you’ll find a file called FWIMG01.DAT. This too may be hidden.
Rename the file to FWIMG01.DAT.ORIG. Make sure you spelled that name correctly
as it is needed for booting the Toshiba firmware.
•Now copy the file FWIMG01.DAT you downloaded to that directory. Make sure the
spelling is correct.
Warning: After installing the bootloader you need to power-cycle the player by doing !
the following steps. Failure to do so may result in problems.
•Eject / unmount USB drive and unplug the USB cable.
•Unplug any power adapter.
•Hold the Power button to turn off the player.
•Slide the battery switch located on the bottom of the player from ‘on’ to ‘off’
•Slide the battery switch back from ‘off’ to ‘on’
2.3.3 Enabling Speech Support (optional)
If you wish to use speech support you will also need a voice file, English ones are available
from http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml. Download the “voice” package for your player
and unzip it directly to the root of your player. You should now find an english.voice
in the /.rockbox/langs directory on your player. Voice menus are enabled by default
and will come into effect after a reboot. See section 8.8 (page 62) for details on voice
settings.
2.4 Running Rockbox
Remove your player from the computer’s USB port. Unplug any connected power supply
and turn the unit off. When you next turn the unit on, Rockbox should load. When
you see the Rockbox splash screen, Rockbox is loaded and ready for use.
2.5 Updating Rockbox
Updating Rockbox is easy even if you do not use the Rockbox Utility. Download a
Rockbox build. (The latest release of the Rockbox software will always be available
from http://www.rockbox.org/download/). Unzip the build to the root directory of your
player like you did in the installation stage. If your unzip program asks you whether to
The Rockbox manual Toshiba Gigabeat F Series

Chapter 2. Installation 16
overwrite files, choose the “Yes to all” option. The new build will be installed over your
current build.
Note: If you use Rockbox Utility be aware that it cannot detect manually installed b
components.
2.6 Uninstalling Rockbox
2.6.1 Automatic Uninstallation
You can uninstall Rockbox automatically by using Rockbox Utility. If you installed
Rockbox manually you can still use Rockbox Utility for uninstallation but will not be
able to do this selectively.
2.6.2 Manual Uninstallation
If you wish to clean up your disk, you may also wish to delete the .rockbox directory
and its contents. Turn the Toshiba off. Turn the player back on and the original Toshiba
software will load.
The Rockbox manual Toshiba Gigabeat F Series

Chapter 3. Quick Start 17
3 Quick Start
3.1 Basic Overview
3.1.1 The player’s controls
Throughout this manual, the buttons on the player are labelled according to the
picture above. Whenever a button name is prefixed by “Long”, a long press of approx-
imately one second should be performed on that button. The buttons are described in
detail in the following paragraph.
Additional information for blind users is available on the Rockbox website at ZBlindFAQ.¸
Hold the player with the screen on top and the controls on the right hand side. Below
the screen is a cross-shaped touch sensitive pad which contains the Up,Down,Left
and Right controls. On the top of the unit from left to right are the power socket, the
Hold switch, and the headphone socket. The Hold switch puts the player into hold
mode when it is switched to the right of the unit. The buttons will have no effect when
this is the case.
Starting from the left hand side on the bottom of the unit, nearer to the front than
the back, is a recessed switch which controls whether the battery is on or off. When this
switch is to the left, the battery is disconnected. This can be used for a hard reset of
the unit, or if the player is being placed in storage. Next to that is a connector for the
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Chapter 3. Quick Start 18
docking station and finally on the right hand side of the bottom of the unit is a mini
USB socket for connecting directly to USB.
Finally on the right hand side of the unit are some control buttons. Going from the
bottom of the unit to the top there is a small round Abuttton then a rocker volume
switch with of the Volume down button below the Volume up button. Above that is
are two more small round buttons, the Menu button and nearest to the top of the unit
the Power button, which is held down to turn the player on or off.
3.1.2 Turning the player on and off
To turn on and off your Rockbox enabled player use the following keys:
Key Action
Power Start Rockbox
Long Power Shutdown Rockbox
On shutdown, Rockbox automatically saves its settings.
If you have problems with your settings, such as accidentally having set the colours to
black on black, they can be reset at boot time. See the Reset Settings in section 11.3.3
(page 139) for details.
In the unlikely event of a software failure, hardware poweroff or reset can be performed
by holding down the battery switch until the player shuts off or reboots.
3.1.3 Putting music on your player
With the player connected to the computer as an MSC/UMS device (like a USB Drive),
music files can be put on the player via any standard file transfer method that you would
use to copy files between drives (e.g. Drag ’n’ Drop). The default directory structure
that is assumed by some parts of Rockbox (album art searching, and missing-tag fallback
in some WPSes) uses the parent directory of a song as the Album name, and the parent
directory of that folder as the Artist name. While files may be organized however you
like, the ZAlbumArt wiki page explains the requirement for Album Art to work properly,
and WPSes may display information incorrectly if your files are not properly tagged, and
you have your music organized in a way different than they assume when attempting to
guess the Artist and Album names from your filetree. See section A.2 (page 141) for
a list of supported audio formats.
3.1.4 The first contact
After you have first started the player you’ll be presented by the Main Menu. From
this menu you can reach every function of Rockbox, for more information (see section 5.1
(page 37)). To browse the files on you player select Files (see section 4.1 (page 21)), and
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Chapter 3. Quick Start 19
to browse in a view that is based on the meta-data1of your audio files, select Database
(see section 4.2 (page 25)).
3.1.5 Basic controls
When browsing files and moving through menus you usually get a list view presented.
The navigation in these lists are usually the same and should be pretty intuitive. In the
tree view use Down and Up to move around the selection. Use Select or Right to
select an item. When browsing the file system selecting an audio file plays it. The view
switches to the “While playing screen”, usually abbreviated as “WPS” (see section 4.3
(page 28). The dynamic playlist gets replaced with the contents of the current directory.
This way you can easily treat directories as playlists. The created dynamic playlist can
be extended or modified while playing. This is also known as “on-the-fly playlist”. To
go back to the File Browser stop the playback with the Power button or return to
the file browser while keeping playback running using Select. In list views you can go
back one step with Left.
3.1.6 Basic concepts
Playlists
Rockbox is playlist oriented. This means that every time you play an audio file, a so-
called “dynamic playlist” is generated, unless you play a saved playlist. You can modify
the dynamic playlist while playing and also save it to a file. If you do not want to use
playlists you can simply play your files directory based. Playlists are covered in detail
in section 4.4 (page 32).
Menu
From the menu you can customise Rockbox. Rockbox itself is very customisable. Also
there are some special menus for quick access to frequently used functions.
Context Menu
Some views, especially the file browser and the WPS have a context menu. From the file
browser this can be accessed with Long Select. The contents of the context menu vary,
depending on the situation it gets called. The context menu itself presents you with
some operations you can perform with the currently highlighted file. In the file browser
this is the file (or directory) that is highlighted by the cursor. From the WPS this is
the currently playing file. Also there are some actions that do not apply to the current
file but refer to the screen from which the context menu gets called. One example is the
playback menu, which can be called using the context menu from within the WPS.
1ID3 Tags, Vorbis comments, etc.
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Chapter 3. Quick Start 20
3.2 Customising Rockbox
Rockbox’ User Interface can be customised using “Themes”. Themes usually only affect
the visual appearance, but an advanced user can create a theme that also changes various
other settings like file view, LCD settings and all other settings that can be modified
using .cfg files. This topic is discussed in more detail in section 11.3 (page 137). The
Rockbox distribution comes with some themes that should look nice on your player.
Note: Some of the themes shipped with Rockbox need additional fonts from the fonts b
package, so make sure you installed them. Also, if you downloaded additional themes
from the Internet make sure you have the needed fonts installed as otherwise the theme
may get displayed garbled.
3.3 Charging
The player can be powered over USB without connecting to your computer by holding
Menu while plugging in. This allows you to continue using the player normally.
The Rockbox manual Toshiba Gigabeat F Series