[Jim_MDP]

I'm more interested in Rockbox but that could change. There aren't any recent comments here, so if you're using one or both, tell me about it.

I understand I would have to reformat (my gen 5.0 vid30) to Fat32 so a couple questions to start:

This can be done on my Mac (no PC avail) and would wipe the music. Does it wipe ALL data on the HD?

Second... Speed. Has the slower speed of FAT32 on the Mac improved? Has iTunes 7 helped?

Ok another... Anyway to do the (FAT32) firmware updates from the Mac?

Thanks.

[shifuimam]

Wiping the iPod to FAT32 via iTunes should remove all the music and reinstall the iPod firmware - basically to factory state but FAT32-formatted.

Don't know about the Mac stuff. I avoid plugging my iPod into my iBook for the most part, since my iBook is only 466MHz and would have a coronary trying to copy music to my iPod. That and I hate iTunes.

I'm assuming the firmware question is about whether or not a Mac can update a FAT32-formatted iPod. AFAIK, yes.

Now, as far as Rockbox goes...

I currently have it installed on my 60GB iPod photo (second gen that didn't come with all the accessories..$#!*@). It works *okay*. There's a few things I really like about it - you can totally change the appearance and font size and stuff of the interface and the screen that displays when music is playing, which is nice. The games are awesome. Rockbox comes installed with versions of Tetris, Bejeweled, Snood (called Bubbles - it's the one that comes with a lot of Linux installations), solitaire, two versions of the snake game, and even Doom. I think there are some other games in there, as well - I don't remember off the top of my head. It supports gapless playback as well (why Apple didn't include that until now, and even then only for m4a files on 5G iPods is beyond me...), and you can use any classic Winamp skin with its interface.

The three really crappy things about Rockbox: no remote control support. I have a Griffin Airclick that I use in my car every morning, so that pretty much kills my ability to use Rockbox on my forty minute drive to work. Also, no fast scrolling support. This also sucks when you're like me and have seven thousand songs on your iPod. You don't appreciate fast scrolling on the iPod until you realize it's not there in Rockbox. Third, it randomly crashes while playing music. Sometimes it freezes and I have to do a hard reset. Other times it displays some scrolling error messages and either resets for me or I have to do a hard reset. Searching for songs has been relatively unsuccessful, but I've never actually read the manual yet on how to use all of Rockbox's features.

Keep in mind I haven't updated Rockbox since I installed on my iPod sometime last October. The freezing issues may be fixed later. Not only that, but Rockbox is only (I think) 100% supported on the 3G iPods. AFAIK it doesn't work at all on the 5.5G videos and nanos. The Rockbox wiki makes it clear that the developers are not interested in providing remote control support for iPods. I think fast scrolling is coming in a future release of the application.

Battery life I think is decreased some when using Rockbox - I haven't really tested that much myself. I mostly use Rockbox to play games when I'm waiting in line for something or sitting at the airport for an hour before a flight.

There is an alternative Rockbox bootloader that will load the iPod firmware by default, and the Rockbox firmware if you force it (by holding the Menu key as the iPod boots). The official Rockbox bootloader will only load the iPod firmware if you force it to do so.

Rockbox is a fun thing to play with, but it's not fleshed out enough yet to fully replace the original iPod firmware. I'd recommend playing around with it, though. Installing it is a breeze, and removing it isn't much harder.

[Jim_MDP]

shifuimam,

Thanks, major post there and I appreciate it.

First... I'm stuck for now with my very old (2000) Pismo 400 G3 and with a USB 2 PC Card I move music and data at 12-15 Mb/Sec so I'm not sure what you call slow on your iBook. Firewire would make me happier but, alas...

Second... I've only just finished looking over the Rockbox docs (many, many pages of features) and they do support all new iPods except the 80Gb. Obviously many new builds since you last updated so possibly your stability/scrolling issuses have been addressed.

Some quick items:
"I'm assuming the firmware question is about whether or not a Mac can update a FAT32-formatted iPod. AFAIK, yes."
This is wrong AFAIK. I can use a terminal to manually reformat to FAT on the Mac and I wondered if I could get the firmware patches and install them manually as well. iTunes will only push the same same OS it's running on. Again... AFAIK.

This is still a critical question for me...
"This can be done on my Mac (no PC avail) and would wipe the music. Does it wipe ALL data on the HD?"

My HD was 95% full so I moved what I could (a few gig) to the iPod. Ideally, I'd like to strip out all the *NIX crap I played with a couple years ago (KDE, Gnome etc.) and just leave X11 and OOo but I lack the CLI skills (sorry - SKILZ) to know what to remove. A complete wipe/reinstall may be in my future. Not good.

re: bootloaders...If I go forward with this, I'd probably triple boot if possible so hopefully someone with PodLinux experience will chime in.

Thanks again,
Jim.

[Jim_MDP]

btt... Would still like to hear from NN'ers about IPodLinux.

[kick52]

i've used it..
it depends what you want to use it for..
it has many games and utilities, but is the worst at playing music

http://ipodlinux.org