Tepiloxtl @ Nekoweb~: iPod

Created: 04.09.2023
Updated: 08.03.2024

  1. Magic charger
  2. RockBox
  3. iPod on Linux
    1. Amarok
    2. Strawberry
    3. libimobiledevice
    4. Rhythmbox
    5. Other ideas
  4. Update 08.03.2024

I have this iPod. It's an iPod Mini 2nd generation


Make a better picture during day lol

It's not really important how I've come to own it, but at the time I've replaced the battery with an aftermarket one and flashmodded it with SanDisk High Endurance 128GB mSD card. High Endurance I guess because thats what I had on hand at the time?

Well, shortly after that I've lost interest, probably got enchanted by something else and promptly forgot about it and stashed into a drawer for like, 2 years? I've kinda had it in mind every now and then but didn't want to act on it, you know...

Well, recently it was on my mind, as well as an idea of owning a dedicated music player, so I've brought it back from the drawer and try to charge it.

It doesn't work

Magic charger

I never owned an Apple device before, and got this just a few years back. With the player I had a dock and cables, both USB and FireWire. No charger bricks or anything of this kind. Years ago USB was all it needed to wake up and charge, but now it would not budge.

Tried with a normal "modern" USB charger, old 1A charger without any kind of PD/FastCharge support, and charging from PC, and all I would get was angry electronic noises from inside...

Figured that that aftermarket battery maybe wasn't as stable as the original one I've got this iPod with, and maybe after it went flat it completely died...

Then I remembered some certain Australian iPod Youtuber words about how you can frequently bring those older iPods back to life by using a FireWire wall charger, as USB would not provide enough power juice. Worth trying, I guess, only problem was that obviously, I don't own a FireWire charger

[maybe pull a youtube vid here]

Anyway, asked some friends, some long time Apple users, but nobody really kept their old cables and chargers around, so in the end I had to order one, paid like 10€ for it. Figured that at best it will be able to wake the iPod up but the battery will be completely shot.

Well, it worked. Not only that, but the battery seemed to still be able to hold a charge, so I was happy. I'll come back to battery life later on though

RockBox

Last time I was using this iPod I was trying to use RockBox, so I could avoid using iTunes or other compatible software to upload music. I think I might have been already using Linux full time at that point and thought about that, turns out uploading songs onto iPod from Linux is a pain.

It did not work. No idea why, I've tried asking around on RockBox irc channels but never got any answers. For the record, I've flashed RockBox from Linux iirc. It did flash successfully, or so I thought. But anytime I would try connecting it to my PC it would royally freak out, started being unresponsive and even glitching whatever was on screen on occasions. You might imagine it was hard getting music onto it when it hangs at the first sight of USB connection. It would charge fine from a charger and would not hang then, so it's something about USB data that was wrong.

After I restored it recently, I've booted it into disk mode and reflashed the device with official iPod software, and so it works now!

iPod on Linux

So, what's my solution for syncing with iPod on Linux?

Uh, nothing, lol. For now, I'm booting back into my Windows partition and use iTunes there. For FLACs and other audio formats that aren't supported, I use foobar2000 with LAME plugin to convert them to 320kbps CBR MP3s

Inability to operate iPod on Linux wasn't from my lack of trying though. Well, it kind of is, I haven't tried that many approaches yet...

My philosophy is, it should be fairly easy to upload the songs to iPod. I'm not against converting them myself if the application don't offer it itself, but if it does, it better work well. I was also initially against creating a library on PC to work with, opting to only use applications that let me upload sparse mp3 files, or entire directories, but I might change my mind on that and actually create one...

Amarok

No idea, actually, I've tried it a long time ago and don't remember much about it other than it didn't work for some reason

Strawberry

This one I also tried a long time ago. It's a Clementine fork, and it had the most potential hampered with one serious problem. So yeah, it did discovered my iPod, I was able to drag-and-drop files straight into its library without having to create one on PC, and it did support directly transcoding unsupported files... and it's this function where it all falls apart.

For one, it I recall correctly it seemed like it wanted to transcode every file I threw at it, even the mp3s that should be supported by the iPod itself.

Secondly, I think that transcoding settings were in some way really confusing? I remember having some problems with that, but no details. By default output quality was quite low

Thirdly, the issue that completely condemned the application for me: it seemed like files it created... my iPod didn't like them. I would have issues playing them on the iPod, they would either not play in it's entirety, have inaccurate playtime, or I would be unable to scrub across the file...

libimobiledevice

This is first of recent ones. Someone recommended trying it to me. It only seems to support iOS devices, not classic iPods

Rhythmbox

This one also was tried recently. It did discovered the iPod, but it doesn't seem to support drag-and-dropping sparse files. Also managed to wipe what already was on iPod by accident, so I'm kinda soured for now. As I said, I might try actually creating a music library on my PC and then trying to sync it across. No idea if the app supports transcoding unsupported formats on the fly

Other ideas

There is still a lot of software on the Arch Wiki page about iPod thats there to try out. I will focus specifically on GUI apps, but will try CLI tools if none works, I guess.

Another option is making a small Windows VM and plugging my music directory into it via shared directories, and iPod over USB emulation. I might even be able to get away with using Windows XP for maximum, or, well, minimum, footprint and memory usage.

...or Ill get a Mac, just for shits and giggles, you know

Update 08.03.2024

Well, it has been some months since I've touched this site again, and there are some updates to be had...
Firstly, and most importantly, I don't use my iPod for the time being. I found out, while it is novel and real joy to use, in 2024 with an entire computer in your pocket it also gets a little bit too fiddly to bring and use both. I guess if I had/wanted to downgrade to a dumb phone, it would be a perfect companion. For now though, I'm giving it time to rest...
On topic of curating your own music library, I'm still interested in doing so, for now I've spun up a Navidrome server that now serves me music on my phone, and use Soulseek to look up new music. I've also made myself a LastFM account that I seldomly use. Also trying to weight pros and cons of using streaming services like Spotify and Tidal. I guess its all still evolving, even though the initial experiment of using iPod is dead. For now, at least.

I'll come back to talk about music later, too