[ThinWalls]

There is a brand new release that is intended to address issues with iFlash. Have a look at the bottom of this thread: https://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,52561.msg246581.html#msg246581

Also there is a plugin called "PictureFlow". I've never used it, so don't know how it works.

Pictureflow's like a version of the OF coverflow, though it takes a long time to build the picture database before you can use it (and seems like you have to rebuild it after you sync new content), and it's a bit fussy about image formats. It also doesn't work all that reliably on iFlash ipods, for the same reason that syncing is an issue - the problems with writing to the drive.

I was thinking more of the flat thumbnail view of art when looking through albums with the original firmware - ideally rockbox would let you go through albums in a similar way to that. I really wish I was competent enough to add code to Rockbox myself (there are lots of things I'd like to add) - my problem is not so much about programming new stuff as it is about being able to understand the existing codebase. It's kind of overwhelming to look at - decades of different people adding to it, I guess.

 

[Hoegaardener70]

Selling a wonderful iPod 1tb (SD card) with bluetooth module, if anybody is interested

 

[ElectricKaibutu]

It's awesome to see this thread still alive. I have a super beat up iPod video that I bought new back in the day and I love it. I iFlashed it with a 128gb card and also Rockboxed it. I've been using Rockbox for about a year on it now but it's kind of slow and for some reason I still have trouble with navigation some times. I've been thinking about going back to the OG firmware but I'm not looking forward to going back to iTunes to sync now that I use MusicBee for all my tagging..

Any suggestions on how to continue to use MusicBee for my tagging and going back to the original firmware? I'm worried about iTunes messing with my carefully tagged files...

 

[ElectricKaibutu]

So I ended up uninstalling Rockbox and restoring my iPod with iTunes. I synced my 12,000+ songs (took awhile). I noticed one song cuts off early. If there's one song, then there must be more with the same issue. With Rockbox, you just use your iPod as a drive and transfer songs over. I used FreeFileSync which can do error checking, so I was sure no errors would occurred in the transfer. Apparently iTunes doesn't do that.

So now I'm back to not wanting to use iTunes. I need a way to transfer songs to my iPod, preferably with something like FreeFileSync with error checking, and then I need a way for the iPod to update it's internal library to see the new songs.

Edit 8/14: Yeah I'm back on the RockBox train. I couldn't stand using iTunes to sync for the above issues. But beyond that, I forgot that Apple's iPod firmware can't handle Album Artist, which is usually the way I go through my library.

I'm using the PodOne theme now. It's nice and quick since it's not trying to display album art. I would like to see details about the music file that's playing. I'll have to try to figure out how to add that. EDIT: PodTwo is exactly what I was looking for.

I also grabbed the iFixit replacement battery. Install was a snap. Now my battery lasts forever.

I love using this old thing.

 

[zedhed]

Is that from an ebay seller or did you personally paint the housing?

I tried painting some old video and classic housings, but it really didn't go very well! It ended up looking quite amateurish, despite using car spray paint (and sanding it first) it just ended up looking like I'd crudely brush-painted it with wall-paint emulsion - just couldn't achieve a proper high-gloss effect.

Anyway, I notice some Chinese ebay sellers are now offering the classic anodised fronts in colours other than silver/black/red/gold. Got green and blue ones - now feel I have to build another iflash ipod to make use of them!

Edit - this is why I've ended up with a stupid number of ipods. Feel compelled to have every variation. Plus I end up with spare parts left over then feel I have to buy other spare parts to make use of them.

Ebay and AliExpress sellers are selling red 5th gen fronts. It's a nice deep red but a little translucent (the LCD backlight shows through).

The coloured 6th gen fronts that you can get now are great! Nicely machined, too. The clickwheel is a nice close fit, like the original.

And like you, I'm gradually building up an army of coloured iPods (with iFlash, of course!)

 

[ThinWalls]

Ebay and AliExpress sellers are selling red 5th gen fronts. It's a nice deep red but a little translucent (the LCD backlight shows through).

The coloured 6th gen fronts that you can get now are great! Nicely machined, too. The clickwheel is a nice close fit, like the original.

And like you, I'm gradually building up an army of coloured iPods (with iFlash, of course!)

Oddly relieved to hear I'm not the only one with more ipods than ears. Another reason why I've ended up with additional ones is that its so infuriatingly hard to re-open those 6th gen housings without damaging something - which means if I want a higher capacity one it's easier to build a new one than to try and upgrade one of the ones I already have.

 

[Lolito]

can someone point me out to one of those bluetooth hacks? out of curiosity only really.

 

[Glendo90]

Oddly relieved to hear I'm not the only one with more ipods than ears. Another reason why I've ended up with additional ones is that its so infuriatingly hard to re-open those 6th gen housings without damaging something - which means if I want a higher capacity one it's easier to build a new one than to try and upgrade one of the ones I already have.

Dude. You shouldn't be damaging things. The key is to use more than one of those thin metal opening knives (iflash sell them), know the areas to work on/avoid when opening and take your time. Then once open, just take care. Hold the battery connector down when releasing the ribbon to avoid breaking that. The rest is quite robust. Don't force anything, it means you're don't it wrong if too much force needed.

 

[ThinWalls]

Dude. You shouldn't be damaging things. The key is to use more than one of those thin metal opening knives (iflash sell them), know the areas to work on/avoid when opening and take your time. Then once open, just take care. Hold the battery connector down when releasing the ribbon to avoid breaking that. The rest is quite robust. Don't force anything, it means you're don't it wrong if too much force needed.

I've opened literally dozens of the things, but it never works out easily (not with thin 6th gen ones, 5th gen are trivial in comparison and the thick 6th gen ones are also a lot easier). The most frustrating thing about the current one I wanted to open is, I built it once, then succesfully re-openned it to upgrade it with a larger card, now want to re-open it again to change the front from silver to one of the new coloured ones, but nothing will get it to open a second time (got one side to pop out but the other just wouldn't budge - eventually gave up and closed it again).

Mostly I use those plastic guitar-plectrum things, though I have a trusty thin-flat-bladed knife that I resort to sometimes, but I find it's really hard to do without either bending the back plate or (even with the plastic plectrums) scratching some part of the front or back. Also I've had some where eventually the holding bracket bit that's welded inside became detached from the back plate after opening and closing more than once. Worst case was one that, when it finally popped open, I somehow catapulted it across the room as it did so.

It's hugely variable, I find, even with the second-hand 'broken' ipods that one starts the process with - occasionally they come apart really easily, other times I've had to mangle the backplate completely to get the damn thing to come off.

 

[Glendo90]

There's definitely a knack to it, but having at least three thin metal putty knives is definitely the way to go. Make sure you get the knife in the tiny gap sideways before adjusting the angle to go in and down to avoid scratching the metal.

The more ioods i open the more efficient i become, knowing exactly where to wiggle the knife to get the clasps to unclasp. There are printable pdfs of the key opening points which can help. Plus always apply force downwards onto a flat surface to avoid throwing the thing.

 

[zedhed]

I've opened literally dozens of the things, but it never works out easily (not with thin 6th gen ones, 5th gen are trivial in comparison and the thick 6th gen ones are also a lot easier). The most frustrating thing about the current one I wanted to open is, I built it once, then succesfully re-openned it to upgrade it with a larger card, now want to re-open it again to change the front from silver to one of the new coloured ones, but nothing will get it to open a second time (got one side to pop out but the other just wouldn't budge - eventually gave up and closed it again).

Mostly I use those plastic guitar-plectrum things, though I have a trusty thin-flat-bladed knife that I resort to sometimes, but I find it's really hard to do without either bending the back plate or (even with the plastic plectrums) scratching some part of the front or back. Also I've had some where eventually the holding bracket bit that's welded inside became detached from the back plate after opening and closing more than once. Worst case was one that, when it finally popped open, I somehow catapulted it across the room as it did so.

It's hugely variable, I find, even with the second-hand 'broken' ipods that one starts the process with - occasionally they come apart really easily, other times I've had to mangle the backplate completely to get the damn thing to come off.

Sounds all so familiar! I snapped one shut only to realise I'd forgotten to connect the battery. Reopening a newly refurbished iPod is soooo depressing.

I've found having a range of tools helps. I might use 3 or 4 thin blade pry tools on one iPod. Plastic opening tools help but have a short lifespan. I found a very wide opening tool which sometimes helps to get that first little gap. To add a sense of danger, I have been known to use a razor-sharp craft knife where all else has failed.

Have you tried flattening the internal clips before reassembling? Maybe not all of them for fear of the thing falling a part but maybe half of them? That might make future disassemblies easier.

 

[ThinWalls]

Sounds all so familiar! I snapped one shut only to realise I'd forgotten to connect the battery. Reopening a newly refurbished iPod is soooo depressing.

I've found having a range of tools helps. I might use 3 or 4 thin blade pry tools on one iPod. Plastic opening tools help but have a short lifespan. I found a very wide opening tool which sometimes helps to get that first little gap. To add a sense of danger, I have been known to use a razor-sharp craft knife where all else has failed.

Have you tried flattening the internal clips before reassembling? Maybe not all of them for fear of the thing falling a part but maybe half of them? That might make future disassemblies easier.

Yeah, it's my own fault for letting myself get far too perfectionist about the things - you make one that's completely pristine out of new parts and then you almost immediately have to re-open it for some reason and get a small scratch on the housing or the back plate goes slightly out-of-alignment with the front. And you can't swap it for that other still-perfect back plate because that one has the wrong capacity printed on it (and it's unacceptable to have a 1Tb ipod in a case saying 160gb...for, er, reasons)

 

[Lolito]

Happened to me to in the past, better to plan well what to refurbish inside, then close it for the next five years or so. Shame when needs to be reopened, specially with new parts.

 

[eaglesgift]

I hope it's okay to post this question here. I wasn't sure where else I could post it...

Recently, I hear a couple of short bursts of loud white noise at the start of certain songs on my iPod Classic 7G (2.05 firmware). They don't all sound the same as each other but they are always the same for the songs on which they occur...in other words, they sound like the files have been damaged/corrupted in some way and whenever I play those songs, I get a short burst or two of white noise that sounds exactly the same every time. The noises are at a fixed volume - they don't get louder or quieter if I adjust the volume - and they occur whether I'm using an LOD, outputting to a portable amp, or plugging my IEMs straight into the phone socket.

To complicate matters, the options to backup or restore my iPod with iTunes are greyed out so I can't delete all the songs that way and resync. I have removed a couple of the songs that have this problem, synced the iPod, then added the songs back and synced again, but they appear with exactly the same defects... If I play those files on my PC, there are no strange noises in them...

If anyone has any clues what might be up, I'd really appreciate some help. I wanted to format the disk (which is a 256 GB SSD) and see if that helped but I am afraid if I format it with my Windows PC, it will not be possible to restore it afterwards. It recently had a white screen of death too, which might be related. I held down the select and menu butttons until it rebooted and it's not done it again since then...I'm not sure if it's relevant or not tbh. I couldn't swear whether these noises were on the files before that happened or not.

 

[Markus9229]

Hello everyone!

Can someone with a 5g or 5.5g iPod Video tell me if they can comfortably use Pictureflow in Rockbox? I have an iPod Classic that works perfectly fine with Pictueflow, but I wasn't happy with the audio quality so I bought a 5gen.

But Pictureflow on the 5gen is downright unusable, the framerate counter doesn't get past 8 or 10 frames and the covers don't event want to load (using the same files than on the Classic where the covers load fine).

So... if someone can tell me if they have the same issue too or not, that would be very appreciated. Honestly, I kind of refuse to use the iPod if I can't use Pictureflow, I don't like to scroll through long text lists, I like to look at an album and choose...