The 32Gb Compact Flash Ipod
Rockbox
Rockbox is an alternative open source operating system for various media players. You can find more information here.
I last tried Rockbox several years ago and it’s about time I gave it another try. I downloaded the latest version for the Apple Video Ipod (version: r16170).
Installation is pretty simple, you copy over the whole .rockbox folder to the root folder of iPod drive and then you run the iPodpatcher which modifies the Apple boot loader to start-up Rockbox instead of the normal iPod operating system.
I had some problems getting it installed – on start-up I kept getting a load error and the card size was being misreported as 7720MB. I tried several times restoring with iTunes and then re-installing Rockbox, but each time it would fail.
Placing the card in to my card reader – microsoft windows was also reporting that it was only 7.5Gb in size, even though when used in the iPod – iTunes reported 30.15Gb capacity.
I gathered that the partition table on the card must have been corrupted so it would need resetting, to fix this you can use various partition programs but I opted for a much simpler option.
Card went straight in to my Nikon D200 camera and I formatted the card in the camera, this works because the camera clears all the partition data and writes it’s own partition data.
Card was put back in to the iPod, iTunes was used to restore the iPod and then I re-installed Rockbox – this time it worked and I was greeted by the Rockbox boot up logo.
I did some listening tests, played a game or two and even viewed some of the demo’s – everything seemed to work as you would expect if installed on a normal hard drive based iPod.
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