[dr408517]

The TeraPod has reached 500g.
 
It's been a week, but loading a little each night I have managed to reach the half-way point with the TeraPod. There are over 70K songs on the TeraPod in more than 6500 folders. The test database is a mix of AAC and 128 and 160.MP3 songs.
 
The specs are what you already know:

1. Samsung 1T 840EVA mSata and that ugly ill-fitting green mSATA-to-Zip adapter from China
2. V5.5 64mb RAM logic board and new LCD screen purchased from idemigods.com
3. Battery (old stock Apple) 850mAh salvaged from used iPod 60g
4. BeyondWind's Rockbox mod firmware
5. All other parts recovered from various left-overs

 
It has been built. Road testing begins next week!

 

[Peridot]

I think the real sentiment in this well-known corporate self-promotion can be properly applied to the stars of this thread who have developed the hardware and software solutions up to this point.
 
A 1TB iPod? ... whose first response would not be "that's crazy"?
 
Respect guys 

 

 

[bulletdodger]

Sir Dr, you complained a few pages ago that the battery life made the terapod useless or did I missinterpret and you were talking about syncing music time and that you had to babysit the iPod while it was loading music ?

Secondly, does Rockbox has an albums playlist view like in the Apple firmware ? Or you would have to search through folder for every single album like in Windows Explorer for eample ? I presume that at such a large amount of data even Rockbox would crash at creating a database.

Thank you so much for keeping us in the loop.
As a side, the TeraPod sounds so cool that I think even Apple would use the term heh

 

[dr408517]

Yes, at the time i was working with the so-called high output batteries. These 1300 mAh batteries proved to be duds. I tested an even higher mAH battery, thinking the problem was current draw. This did not appear to be the case. Dminor had good luck with an 850 mAh battery, so I began testing those. I found a old Battery previously in a V5 iPod that was holding charge without a problem, and it worked excellently.

I did babysit the loading process, first loading in blocks of 2g, then 5g, then 10g at a time.

I am new to RB. I think the are plug-ins to make it look more like iTunes with cover searching, etc. because it does not need to load the db to the RAM, i expect better stability. Road testing begins next week.

 

[DR650SE]

I'd love to have a 1TB iMod, but all my music is only like 90GB lol. I may see if one of my old slim batteries from an old galaxy phone will work in the iMod. I'm getting the itch to play and mod something.

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[dr408517]

I'd love to have a 1TB iMod, but all my music is only like 90GB lol. I may see if one of my old slim batteries from an old galaxy phone will work in the iMod. I'm getting the itch to play and mod something.

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Batteries are still a big issue for the big GB mSata upgrades. I have found that the standard RB does not correctly report the remaining life of the battery. This is quite problematic, since a fail in the battery during the load requires one to start the whole process over again from a full re-format of the chip. Having been through this process at least a dozen times, I can say it is very frustrating.
 
From a reliability standpoint, the BP4 256g has been the big winner. Low heat, zero fails so far.  The Samsung 1T 840EVO is a near second, though to be fair, I have really been pushing this chip to the limit in my testing. I want a 1T iPod and I want to know how to handle it.
 
I am now able to upload 30g at a time. Takes about an hour. I load two blocks of 30g each, then charge the iPod before loading anymore. On three loads, I had a battery fail. I am doing this on both the 480g and the 1T. I have also abandoned the "Initialize Database" feature. I tested it this morning, the it crashed at 67,000 songs. It may have been the battery, however.  When you are driving blind it is difficult to know what you hit.
 
This morning I installed a USB3.0 on my computer - but the transfer rates are the same: approximately 7 MB/sec, with peaks in the 7.5 MB/Sec range. I need to check my install because I was really expecting to double the transfer rate.

 

[DR650SE]

I think the transfer rate is going to be bottlenecked by the iPods logic board.

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[DMinor]

So what's next after the Terapod? It seems we finally running out of options.

 
I had never expected that we could throw in a 480GB let alone a 1 TB and rockboxed. Again thanks to Beyondwind and the RB developers  who have made this possible for us to enjoy. With the monster storage, we can now swim freely in the ocean of music everyday.
 
By the way, I recently compared two types of diymods - one traditional mod (aka, imod by RWA) and the other " direct-out" mod (lifting LOD pins off board). Both without caps to my amp. To my ears the direct-out mod sounds distinctly more transparent and cleaner, which has just confirmed what I have been believing.

 

[bulletdodger]

Yes. I would actually want to make some donations afterc I build mine. I have been dreaming about a terapod ever since 2012. But I never believed it can actually be done. Or this soon for that matter.

My next project after that would be to buy a sealed 5.5g iPod. Last year they would pop up for around 500$.
Unfortunately everything in computing/tech is going cloud.
The new Microsoft CEO's field has been cloud services before promotion

Apple btw wants.to release iTunes for Android and also a Spotify-like service because the music downloads business is shrinking.

Oh boy

 

[DR650SE]

DMinor, what kind of wire did you use for the mods? I know RWA uses a copper wire from DAC to output pads. I'm interested in trying silver from DAC to output, with a silver LOD. Then I'd like to recable my DT880S with a silver cable

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[DMinor]

DMinor, what kind of wire did you use for the mods? I know RWA uses a copper wire from DAC to output pads. I'm interested in trying silver from DAC to output, with a silver LOD. Then I'd like to recable my DT880S with a silver cable

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I used all silver wires for the traditional mod while I have a few direct-out mods with silver wires and copper wires. I found the direct-out mods either with silver or copper wires all sound about the same, transparent and clean, without dc blocking caps.
 
I now believe whatever caps you put there, there will be some loss in transparency. Then you also have the external amp designed differently, with or without caps implemented in the audio path, which can make quite difference in the final audio output to your phones.
 
The direct-out mod is conceptually cleaner since it bypass the board completely from where the Z caps are removed, with the lod channel pins lifted off board.

 

[dr408517]

So what's next after the Terapod? It seems we finally running out of options. :wink_face:

I had never expected that we could throw in a 480GB let alone a 1 TB and rockboxed. Again thanks to Beyondwind and the RB developers  who have made this possible for us to enjoy. With the monster storage, we can now swim freely in the ocean of music everyday.

By the way, I recently compared two types of diymods - one traditional mod (aka, imod by RWA) and the other " direct-out" mod (lifting LOD pins off board). Both without caps to my amp. To my ears the direct-out mod sounds distinctly more transparent and cleaner, which has just confirmed what I have been believing.

My kids joke that i should build a gas powered iPod. I've actually given it some thought.

The TeraPod is still a series of compromises for me. I want to build a solid state V7 iPod with storage of 500g to use in my car. I have successfully reached 120g SSD V6 and V7. So far, I have not found an SSD above 128g that works well in the V7. The 256g SD+Tarkan was unreliable. I suspect CF cards are the way to go, but the prices are out of reach for my accounts.

 

[DR650SE]

What about a CF adapter to SDXC card?

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[cmarti]

What about a CF adapter to SDXC card?

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That's a good solution for up to to 130 or 140gb.

The reason is that you get IO errors after you reach that limit and the card corrupts, Tarkan thinks it's because of the SD to CF adpater and he currently sent this 256gb Lexar card to his card adapter manufacturer for testing and research.

 

[DR650SE]

Ahhh OK, that makes sense.

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