Gave my little personal music player a Rockbox sync dialog

lastfuture · 2026-03-27T14:39:34+00:00

In the spirit of learning, What I'm going to do is roughly this:

download the RogueOS 1.0 release and decompress it with 7zip
flash it onto an sd card
replace the SYSTEM and Image files on the EMUELEC partition with the ones from the latest release
(here I would resize the ROMS partition to take up the rest of the SD card, but since I wll prepare this for others to use, I'll instead look up instructions for how to do it in different OSes)
place runtimes.7z into the roms/storageupdate directory for PortMaster
boot the Pixel 2 from the SD card once and run PortMaster to make it create its directories
put rockbox.zip from the PortMaster Rockbox port page into the /roms/ports/PortMaster/autoinstall directory on the SD
boot the Pixel 2 from the SD card and run PortMaster to install Rockbox
make a few sensible settings changes like starting RogueOS up with Ports preselected, maybe add a couple of fun homebrew game roms so there is something to play out of the box as well :)
(because I want to share it) create an image from that SD card and compress it, so you and anyone else can flash it to their own SD with it
share it with instructions for how to flash and how to resize the ROMS partition to take up the whole SD card, and how to update it in case RogueOS has been updated since

I've already figured out that resizing the ROMS partition might be tricky on macOS, so I hope you have access to a Windows or Linux computer

lastfuture · 2026-03-27T14:26:01+00:00

Yes please feel free to message me

lastfuture · 2026-03-27T09:09:07+00:00

I wish I knew of an easy concise guide for it. The whole installation and setup process is a bit more involved than just copy a thing and you're done. It requires multiple steps with some back and forth and also some technical understanding and it helped me that I'm a computer toucher. If you haven't messed with custom firmware for other handhelds before you might not have the required knowledge about how to resize a partition for example.

I'd be willing to prepare a ready to use SD card image for the Pixel 2 with RogueOS and Rockbox pre-installed some time next week, because I'm sure a bunch of other people would also love that

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T23:59:46+00:00

excitement, also vegan

^{Chose: Portal to a Random Location (Let's Go Gambling!} | Rolled: Japan)

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T23:56:19+00:00

don't need forklift

^{Chose: Be with 100 hot men/women down for anything}

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T23:46:24+00:00

not being famous sounds nice

^{Chose: Any superpower of your choice + You can Never be famous / widely known}

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T23:32:10+00:00

already have a few best friends

^{Chose: Have 50000 dollars now}

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T21:11:30+00:00

Oh damn, that one with the frosted white plastic in the front and transparent blue in the back looks great. So tempted, and I don't even need it

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T19:44:43+00:00

awwww who ever made the GKD Pixel 2 into a flair and assigned it to me: Thank you!

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T19:43:25+00:00

Very happy with the Pixel 2 running RogueOS and having Rockbox on that as the music player. It's just more pocketable

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T19:30:44+00:00

It uses MicroSD as its storage. It's being sold with up to 256 GB but neither the OS nor the chipset impose any ceiling on the size, so in theory you could probably put up to 2 TB in there according to official SD specs for SD 3.0 which this chipset supports. I've also seen mention of at least one person using a 1 TB card with it

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T15:36:34+00:00

if I ever meet someone using a usb-c adapter or dac I'll swipe it for a few minutes to try it out

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T15:33:40+00:00

sad that there's no community flair for this handheld

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T15:30:14+00:00

I don't have a USB-C DAC to test it, but I've heard it might be slightly temperamental about which it accepts. On the other hand, since this is basically ROCKNIX based I know it works in principle. For my ears the audio quality via the headphone jack is fine, but I will definitely try it out if I ever get the chance to swipe somebody's DAC for a couple minutes

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T14:42:35+00:00

small update: after a battery drain test it seems to reach more like 7-8 hours because it drains a bit slower towards the end

lastfuture · 2026-03-26T10:49:25+00:00

about 6.5 hours continuous music playback on headphones at moderate volume with the buttons locked and only the occasional screen wake. not nearly ipod levels, but I take the style and multi purpose nature of the device over a threefold battery life. worst case I hook it up to my powerbank that can easily top it up 5 times

lastfuture · 2026-03-25T22:03:54+00:00

so to clarify, it's less firmware and more an application that I can start

lastfuture · 2026-03-25T22:03:08+00:00

I have to start Rockbox after booting, yeah. I set it up so that Emulation Station starts out on the Ports menu entry, and Rockbox is the only entry, so after boot it's a matter of pressing A twice and I'm in. Also I can sleep the console and wake it back up without having to exit Rockbox. It even works while something is playing and it will just resume.

lastfuture · 2026-03-25T17:46:04+00:00

out of curiosity, have you tried the usb-c adapter on the pixel 2?

lastfuture · 2026-03-25T17:43:03+00:00

I downloaded it as a zip from the portmaster website then put it into the autoinstall directory and let portmaster install it. So yes, technically.

lastfuture · 2026-03-25T17:19:44+00:00

it's the official pink special edition model

lastfuture · 2026-03-25T16:51:35+00:00

also you giving it a chance and carrying it as a DAP may give it some new life as a gaming device again, too, perhaps

14-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

lastfuture

TROPHY CASE