[Hayduke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oicdn /img/forum/go_quote.gif According to various sites, my silver Mini should be a model number: M9801LL/A (6 GB Silver) But mine says MP5002, and it has the HP logo on the back (in addition to the Apple logo). Will this mod still work on the HP iPods? My nephew just gave me his and I'm just debating on 16gb or 32gb...

All 6GB are 2nd gen. And all of the HP products are 2nd gens.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JTori /img/forum/go_quote.gif I upgraded my Mini a couple of days ago with the 32GB A-Data, new Ipodjuice 750mA battery and Rockbox. The card arrived before my battery so I decided to pop it into my Canon EOS 30D for kicks. When I hitched it up in my Mini and booted up, I received the unhappy-send-in-your-dead-Ipod-for-support screen. After reconfirming correct connection, scratching my head for a couple of hours and doing some research, it dawned on me the card was reformatted when I placed it in my camera. I popped the card into my card reader, reformatted it to FAT 32, reconnected it and, voila, I was back in action. Could have saved myself the trouble had known this. Then, after Rockboxing (a verb?), I attempted several times to initialize the database .... with unsuccessful results. Again, more research. On my own, I changed the one of the database settings to load to RAM. Success! A few learnings from this fun exercise; I'm sure there will be more.

You will need to patch your Rockbox to use the CF card. The Rockbox builds for Mini's are built to use a hard drive. There is a patch that makes the Mini version of Rockbox use the same code the Nano does. It has to do with sending sleep signals to the hard drives, but these commands arent needed for flash based storage.

The .diff can be found here:
MiniCF < Main < TWiki

You will have to compile your own Rockbox, but it isn't hard. I don't have my mini yet (but I should have it this week), so I don't know that my recompile worked yet

I ordered the Transcend card since the A-Data is out of stock. The Transcend is faster (x133) so I'm hoping it will help with transferring the data to the card.

 

[Mr. Tadashi]

Just to clarify it the A-Data cf cards work with rockbox with out using the patch. The transcend and other brands are going to require the patch to work with rockbox.

 

[oicdn]

FWIW, after doing a LITTLE research, I found a couple bits of useless info on speed of the chips:

A-Data - 40x
Pretec (1st company with hi-capacity cards) - 80x
Transcend - 133x
QMemory (uses Samsung memory) - 150x
Sandisk Extreme III - 20mb/sec (~140-145x)

You can get the QMemory for $79 at:
16GB CompactFlash, Shop for Large Capacity Compact Flash at FlashMemoryStore.com

Transversely, you can get the 32gb version there as well for $100 more:
32GB Compact Flash - Flash Memory Store

Best price I could find sans eBay where there are too many fakes.

 

[Hayduke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Tadashi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Just to clarify it the A-Data cf cards work with rockbox with out using the patch. The transcend and other brands are going to require the patch to work with rockbox.

Are you sure they wouldn't all benefit from the Rockbox patch? Based on my understanding of the patch, I would think any CF card would need it. The patch tells your Mini to use the same code as a Nano for storage management. This makes sense since the Nano is flash based and your modded Mini is too.

I should have all my parts this week (used Mini, 32G Transcend CF, new 800maH battery). Can't wait to try this out. I also did some Googling and found out how to make the aluminum shell black

I'm gonna have a 32G Black Mini. Woohoo! I'll be sure to post pics when it's finished.

 

[davidcotton]

Curious really, how much should I be looking at paying for a mini anyway?

 

[Hayduke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidcotton /img/forum/go_quote.gif Curious really, how much should I be looking at paying for a mini anyway?

I think this mod has increased the demand for used Minis a bit and therefore raised the price. Including shipping, they have been going for $60-$70 and up on eBay. If you're patient and keep watching, you can get one under $50. I got mine for $39.99 plus $5 for shipping, but I watched for a couple weeks to get it. And it works! If you look for broken ones, you can get them for much less. I'm going to start watching for the broken ones myself as I have a couple friends that are interested in them, so I am going to make them one too.

 

[BlindTiger]

If anyone is getting a battery for the mini,
can a member order an extra one for me? edit Ordered one 850mah to test.
I just got a 1gen, heard the battery life sucks but I'll
get used to it. I had a 3rd gen Ipod.

I'm currently using an Iriver E10 and when that dies, I may try
the CF mod on that. The mini is larger than my Iriver.

 

[oicdn]

eBay also has 950mAh batteries for sale for like $6 shipped for the mini. Should mate well with a flash based memory, battery life should be well over 20 hours with 950mAh...

 

[Hayduke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oicdn /img/forum/go_quote.gif eBay also has 950mAh batteries for sale for like $6 shipped for the mini. Should mate well with a flash based memory, battery life should be well over 20 hours with 950mAh...

950?!?! Do you have a link. I could only find 850 as the largest and none of them had pictures where I could actually read that it was an 850. I went with a vendor selling 800maH because the battery label actually read that as well.

I'll have to see what I end up with hehe

 

[FallenAngel]

Hmm... nice to know as I bought an 850mAh replacement battery from ebay seller EverydaySource and I just realized, it really doesn't say any mAh rating on the battery photo!

I'm going to do this flash card mod tomorrow evening, just finished the diyMod today

, hopefully the battery shows up tomorrow as well, would be interesting to actually do a discharge to see how long it lasts.

 

[Hayduke]

Fallen,

Did you wire your DIYmod to the original line outs? I'm planning to do this to a Mini as well, but I'm still undecided on whether to use the original line out pins or the unused ones.

The advantage of using the unused pins is that I still have the original line out using a normal LOD to compare to the mod with my custom LOD (I'll have to build that too, but that's not a problem).

I'm building a Mini^3 soon (parts are ordered), so until I have an amp I don't need the docks or the mod

I should get my Mini in a couple days and I'll just be putting in the new battery and the 32GB CF card. The method I wanted to use to make it black is too costly. I might get it anodized though, but not right away. I may send the body out for that while I am doing the mod.

 

[FallenAngel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hayduke /img/forum/go_quote.gif Fallen, Did you wire your DIYmod to the original line outs? I'm planning to do this to a Mini as well, but I'm still undecided on whether to use the original line out pins or the unused ones. The advantage of using the unused pins is that I still have the original line out using a normal LOD to compare to the mod with my custom LOD (I'll have to build that too, but that's not a problem). I'm building a Mini^3 soon (parts are ordered), so until I have an amp I don't need the docks or the mod I should get my Mini in a couple days and I'll just be putting in the new battery and the 32GB CF card. The method I wanted to use to make it black is too costly. I might get it anodized though, but not right away. I may send the body out for that while I am doing the mod.

I wired it to the the normal output pins as I built myself a few LODs with caps already. If you were to wire the output to other pins, you would need to take keep all of the parts intact (C53, C54, C69, C70, L7, L8) and take the contacts from the Anode of C53/C54. You can see photos of the mod in this thread.

I'll be making the case black as well, but the traditional way - sandpaper and paint.

 

[oicdn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hayduke /img/forum/go_quote.gif 950?!?! Do you have a link. I could only find 850 as the largest and none of them had pictures where I could actually read that it was an 850. I went with a vendor selling 800maH because the battery label actually read that as well. I'll have to see what I end up with hehe

There used to be a couple.... but if you just search eBay for:

"900mah ipod mini"

There are a couple on there currently.

 

[Exapno]

It seems that I've arrived slightly too late for this party. The price of an iPod mini on eBay (UK) seems way too high, even broken ones are fetching decent money.

 

[davidcotton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Exapno /img/forum/go_quote.gif It seems that I've arrived slightly too late for this party. The price of an iPod mini on eBay (UK) seems way too high, even broken ones are fetching decent money.

Know what you mean. The average price seems to be around the £45 mark which makes it a tad high. Seen it go as high as £55 at one point. Kicking myself as I missed out on a reasonable condition one at a "buy it now" of £35 inc p+p. As I was hesitating on getting it it went!

I refuse to pay much over £35 as it won't be worth it (thats what I was going to spend on a shuffle or clip).