Tepiloxtl @ Nekoweb~: iPod
Created: 04.09.2023
Updated: 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