Official Ipod Video / Classic 5g+5.5g+6g+6.5g+7g SSD Mod thread - Page 34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xaero252 

Dang, I have two spare 6g iPod classic motherboards, and a 7g iPod classic but no iPod video parts. And unfortunately, I don't know of anyone around these parts with an iPod video that would be willing to let me tinker with it. I'm gonna try rockboxing it and see if I can get rockbox to boot with one of the drives installed. I may end up tinkering around with a hex editor or look into the emcore code to see if I can circumvent what I think is causing the iPod classic's to not recognize ssd's. I have a feeling the lack of SMART reporting on *most* 1.8" drives may have a lot to do with this.

Maybe someone here is willing to mail you one (For testing purposes), I am willing to!

I am located in Orlando Florida.

Okay, time to verify my theory. Can someone with an iPod 5.5g put their iPod into diagnostic mode, and tell me if it lists anything about SMART information?
Or, alternatively can anyone with a working iPod classic with a SSD installed place their iPod into diagnostic mode and tell me if it reports SMART information?

Heres the skinny on this theory:
My iPod classic SEES the drives that I have, but ONLY the stock drive works; Similarly, ONLY the stock drive reports SMART statistics.
After installing emcore and booting the iPod, emCore complains about a failed ATA command (something about BBT; which I imagine correlates to the reallocated sector count from SMART)
iMod 5.5g don't rely on emcore, and therefore won't care about BBT for loading rockbox. Similarly, I doubt Apple included SMART diagnostics information in the earlier model iPods.

More evidence supporting my theory is that Super Talent doesn't list SMART on the least of features for their 1.8" drive series, however PhotoFast DOES list SMART on their specs for their 1.8" ZIF series.
If someone is able to report back supporting my theory I may be able to hack around in emCore's source and see if I can get it to ignore this lack of information.

However, the particular error being thrown, and where its located in the Source, leads me to believe that there may be something else causing the issue.
http://websvn.freemyipod.org/filedetails.php?repname=freemyipod&path=%2Femcore%2Ftrunk%2Ftarget%2Fipodclassic%2Fstorage_ata.c

Also, I may try commenting out all the stuff referencing ATA_BBT in this source file and compiling emcore myself, I'd like to see if I can just disable this feature and move on - its a conditional feature to begin with, and it may be something that SSD's have that the stock Hard Drive doesn't. If anybody knows a good line to get in touch with the emcore dev's I'd love to chat with them about it.
 

Edit: After doing a bit more reading; BBT is a feature that ONLY the SSD's will have. Its basically like reallocated sectors for NAND based devices; and something isn't jiving with the way the emCore ata driver is handling it. I don't know if I have the technical expertise to troubleshoot this, but that is likely the cause of the issue; Smart may or may not have anything to do with it. I need to get in touch with someone more knowledgable on ATA than myself, or find a working source file for another platform... Maybe the BBT is really not present and therefore we are running into the problem. It seems like its more of a feature for devices with JUST embedded NAND memory on an ATA channel (i.e. no controller in between) where SSD's will have a controller to handle this sort of stuff. this is probably because the iPod classic emCore is heavily based on code for iPod Nano 3g which is similar in all but one way to the Classic - internal storage. I may be in over my head here ><

Got in touch with a rockbox/fmi dev who worked on emcore - I was wrong about that, it snot a hardware BBT its software, and its used for both hard drives and ssd's since not all 1.8" drives work as they should. The BBT error I am being thrown isn't Fatal, however it will cause the iPod to never be able to mount the data partition internally; This seems to be more common with the 6g/7g iPods who depend on EmCore and is only worsened by the Solid State Disk which can have an abnormally long initialization time; I'm going to try and make some modifications to emCore and see if I can get my iPod to boot with either of these two SSD's, and if I do, I'll be sure to provide a custom emcore build with NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER.

Thanks for sharing this, you got a lot further than I ever did with my 6G and a Mach X-Treme Nano ZIF SSD 120GB. I'll keep an eye on this :)

Pardon the stupid question, I've had my iPod Classic 160 GB for a few years now and a few months ago I noticed when I play music the sound will suddenly randomly cut out for a half second or so. I've completely wiped the drive and updated to the latest OS and although the cut outs now happen less frequently I still can't get through a couple of songs without audio cutting out. The audio out jack seems to be alright and I even took it to the Apple Store and they said the jack looked fine. They also said they've never heard of this type of problem before and seemed puzzled by it. Everything else on it seems to be working alright and the UI seems responsive although I have noticed the odd quick hang once in a blue moon when navigating around. The few times it's happened has usually been when album art is being displayed. I'm guessing it might be my HDD slowly starting to show it's age and wouldn't mind maybe trying to mod the thing with a SSD of equal or more storage. Problem is I'm not even sure what gen of iPod I have. Is there a site I could maybe plug in my serial number and find out the gen of iPod it is. I remember reading somewhere each gen had it's own distinctive set of serial numbers. If given the choice I'd rather not lose the iPod because the thing still looks as new as the day I bought it. Of coarse if it's unmoddable then I have no choice in the matter

ID your iPod

http://www.ifixit.com/Info/ID-your-iPod/1066

If it is the 6th generation fat iPod classic, I have one that had the same issue. I tired everything that you said and nothing fixed it, the only solution was replacing the hard drive, I went ahead and replaced the drive and then the problem was resolved. The drive I remove from it was a Toshiba drive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DigitalFreak 

Pardon the stupid question, I've had my iPod Classic 160 GB for a few years now and a few months ago I noticed when I play music the sound will suddenly randomly cut out for a half second or so. I've completely wiped the drive and updated to the latest OS and although the cut outs now happen less frequently I still can't get through a couple of songs without audio cutting out. The audio out jack seems to be alright and I even took it to the Apple Store and they said the jack looked fine. They also said they've never heard of this type of problem before and seemed puzzled by it.

Bingo, I have a 6th gen with a 160 GB 4200 RPM ATA-66 hard drive. Now to track down an exact match for this drive or maybe read through the thread and see if anyone's been able to mod a 6th gen. Thanks guys.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DigitalFreak 

Bingo, I have a 6th gen with a 160 GB 4200 RPM ATA-66 hard drive. Now to track down an exact match for this drive or maybe read through the thread and see if anyone's been able to mod a 6th gen. Thanks guys.

Any single platter hard drive will work, don't try the 240GB because it will only see 120GB because that one is a double platter drive.

Maximum addressable space is a consequence of the interface standard, not the number of platters. Disk writes/reads are handled by the drive's own controller logic. The iPod doesn't care how many platters the drive has.

The main risk with multi-platter drives is that the unit could be too thick to fit in the iPod, or have an incompatible power requirement.

Make sure to take notes of the current iPod's drive specs, and get as near a match as possible w/r/t connector type, drive voltage, and drive dimensions. Addressable space is hypothetically a concern, but practically speaking any sufficiently high-capacity drive is going to be incompatible with your iPod in multiple ways.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardgedee 

Maximum addressable space is a consequence of the interface standard, not the number of platters. Disk writes/reads are handled by the drive's own controller logic. The iPod doesn't care how many platters the drive has.

 

The main risk with multi-platter drives is that the unit could be too thick to fit in the iPod, or have an incompatible power requirement.

 

Make sure to take notes of the current iPod's drive specs, and get as near a match as possible w/r/t connector type, drive voltage, and drive dimensions. Addressable space is hypothetically a concern, but practically speaking any sufficiently high-capacity drive is going to be incompatible with your iPod in multiple ways.

That iPod is different... It can only see one platter in two platter drives. Try it yourself, I own one just like I own a 80gb 6th generation iPod classic and two others, a 5.5th generation iPod video with 240gb drive and a 5th generation iPod video with a 160gb drive.

The 6th generation fat iPod is a whole different animal.

I'm starting to wonder if I should just get a HDD that's an exact match to my old drive and forget the bigger storage sized SSD idea. Seems like everyone is having all kinds of troubles moding the 6th gen and above. Anyone here ever thought of posting a step by step tutorial? It would make life a lot more simple for us noobs.

Hmm interesting the 6th gen fat is a dual platter HDD

Quote:

Originally Posted by DigitalFreak 

Hmm interesting the 6th gen fat is a dual platter HDD

 

Yes but the ribbon cable is different from the rest of the iPod videos and Classic.

So you're saying it's the ribbon cable that's causing the iPod to only see one platter when you go for a 260GB?

Quote:

Originally Posted by DigitalFreak 

So you're saying it's the ribbon cable that's causing the iPod to only see one platter when you go for a 260GB?

No the connection is different but you can swap the cable with the one from a 5th generation iPod cable, and install the 240gb drive but it will only see 120gb of the 240gb.

Check this ad:

240GB Hard Drive for iPod Video (MK2431GAH) HDD1905

I think THIS is more in line with what I would want. The thing is I can take my old Classic back and trade it in and get a new one for 200 plus taxes. That price is really out of wack. THIS is more in line price wise.