[michael.conner]

After briefly having a 32GB Creative Zen (couldn't deal without gapless), I decided to go the DIY route and got a 5.5g iPod off of eBay, a ZIF to CF adapter from Tarkan, and a 32GB AData CF card from newegg.

Awesome. Copying to the CF card is a little slow compared to the old hard drive, but I'm not complaining. Now... to Rockbox it!

 

[uraflit]

nice! any problems???

 

[NeObliviscaris]

Interesting, how does that work in terms of the iPod's software?

 

[michael.conner]

No problems so far, although Rockbox didn't want to play nice with it (yet.)

In terms of the Apple software, once you reconnect the battery, you get the "Use iTunes to restore your iPod" message. iTunes tells you that it's detected an iPod in "recovery mode," downloads the most up-to-date firmware for it, and restores it. It reboots and voila -- it's as if it you'd just restored a HD-based iPod.

 

[philthy]

How much is the CF card?

 

[Chrisboff]

Newegg.com - A-DATA 32GB Compact Flash (CF) Flash Card Model SPEEDY CF 32G - Retail

 

[Elluzion]

Nice! looking good. Don't know if the extra money spent for a CF is worth it compared to moving parts, but sounds good.

 

[philthy]

Quote:

Nice! looking good. Don't know if the extra money spent for a CF is worth it compared to moving parts, but sounds good.

True. Debating whether to throw one into the Mini or a 5.5.

 

[warrior05]

I did this to my 5.5 iMod and love it. The only thing that has been odd is that if my iMod has been off for awhile - something like 24 hours or more - when it turns on I get the need to connect to iTunes and restore message. But if I reboot (Select + Menu) then it goes into the Apple firmware fine. Otherwise, it has been flawless, dead quiet and battery runtimes are definitely better. I'll be holding on to my 32gb flash based iMod for quite some time!

 

[michael.conner]

Glad to hear it's not just me. Mine did this for the first time yesterday (the "Connect to iTunes to Restore" message after being off for a while) -- but a hard reboot fixed it.

If that's the only bug there is, I'm not going to complain too much.

 

[warrior05]

Thought I would bump this thread with some info. I posted to the site of the creator of the CF adapter about the restore screen I get on occasion after my converted iMod has been off for awhile. He posted back the following:

"The issues you noticed is sadly a bug in the apple firmware.

When you turn the iPod off it goes in to a sleep mode - it stays in this sleep mode for anything from 8 hours to 36 hours (time is dependent on battery level and battery condition), after which it switches to a deep sleep.

When the iPod is resuming from the deep sleep it reloads the operating system from the drive, I’d say something like a soft reset - however it is this which is the problem. The firmware polls the CF card and does not wait long enough or is not told to wait by the CF card - so it throws an error. The funny things is this problem sometimes occurs with the hard drives as well, it seems the time-out for the resume from deep sleep is very aggressive.

I am still experimenting with this issue but I think UDMA and certain very fast CF cards have the speed and communication skills to ask the iPod to hang on while it gets ready (like the hard drive would do). So they do not seem to be effected by this bug.

As a side note, when this restore message occurs the iPod will switch off after a few seconds and hitting the menu button will get it to restart normally - you do not have to initiate a hard reset.

I will have an article up once I have investigated this further."

Makes sense to me. Again, I find this to be a very minor annoyance considering the advantages of now having a flash based iMod. Just thought I would post for informational purposes.

 

[michael.conner]

Thanks for that info! I do appreciate it.

I've had a minor annoyance with my iFlash -- was putting in a replacement battery and managed to snag and cut the ribbon cable from the hold switch. Headphones are unaffected, but looks like I'll be opening it up AGAIN.

 

[philthy]

Has anyone used this adapter with the iPod?

SSD flash adapter, for iPod 1.8 ZIF VERSION to CF - eBay (item 290253063967 end time Aug-20-08 09:57:07 PDT)

It's 1/4 of the price for Tarkan's adapter. Any reviews on it?

 

[philthy]

Just did the mod and it works great. The iPod is much lighter, the menu system and music playback are much faster/snappier due to not having to queue up the hard drive.