Neineon77
@Neineon77

With everyone talking about how shitty Spotify is I thought it be a good idea to remind you guys that iPods can be modded with new batteries and more storage than they were ever shipped with

iPod Minis in particular are really easy to open and service:
https://www.ifixit.com/Device/iPod_Mini

they're also going on ebay for $30-$40 unmodded (get the second gen minis, they can be modded with more storage) and parts for them are cheap:
https://eoe.works/collections/apple-ipod-mini-2nd-generation-replacement-parts-4gb-6gb

FYI: the 2nd iPod Minis can be modded to up to 256GB of storage

Quick edit: you can tell it's a 2nd gen usually by the icon color on the click wheel, they should be matched to the color of the ipod unless they swapped it out. 1st gens all had grey icons on their click wheels and those aren't the ones you should be after

If you looked at the picture you might notice that mine doesn't look like it's running the stock ipod OS, Rockbox is easy to load onto them with their installer and you can add custom themes (this one's called Oscar Cover)

Also with Rockbox you can just drag and drop your music into a music folder you don't need to use iTunes to add music and Rockbox also has flac support:
https://www.rockbox.org/

The cool thing about rockbox too is if you still want to see listen history/stats you can enable your ipod to record it to a scrobbler log that you can upload to last.fm

This way you can support your favorite artists by buying their stuff on Bandcamp

I also understand this might not be for everyone and their are some limitations like using old hardware can be buggy but if you're up for modding it's a really fun easy project to do and the reward is a cute iPod that has all your music in the format you want and still being able to see listen history/stats/likes etc with last.fm


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in reply to @Neineon77's post:

ah dang.. this is really cool. i'm not very confident with doing device mods and maintenance, but my very first mp3 player back in the day was a little 4gb ipod mini, and seeing all this really makes me want to give it a try. thanks for all the info. glad i looked at the "fuck spotify" tag

If it's a barrel connector you can probably find out the spec and order a new, very nice, AC adapter from an electronics parts store ala Mouser.

If it's not a barrel connector then your life gets a lot harder.

My sleuthing says it should be a center positive 1.7mm ID x 4.0mm OD (x 9.something mm length) barrel connector. If you haven't already tried one of these on a multi it'd be worth a shot.

The bad news is I could not find any new 6v adapters with that shape barrel on it. So your solutions are, depending on how fancy you want to be and in order of least complexity to most:

  • Search "AA-R602J" on ebay. This is the correct north american AC adapter for the unit, based on seeing pictures of one in a different ebay listing. (I also used this info to try and find the plug size so I'm a little more sure about the part being right than the plug size)
  • Order a 1.7x4.0 barrel connector plug and wire it up center positive to a 6V power supply yourself, or ask your nearest electronics nerd friend for such a thing.
  • Open up the whole CD player and hotwire it to a different connector. I'm assuming if you were so inclined it would already be done.

Again I could be entirely wrong but if nothing else it looks like there's a few of what should be the correct AC adapter on the bay for ~$15 or so if you wanted to take a punt.

Really nice looking CD player too. Hope you get it working again!

Thank you very much for running all that down for me. :) I just kind of deprioritized getting a replacement adapter after a while, playing CDs in my DVD drive as needed, but I'm sure I'd listen to more CDs if I didn't have to rotate them through my computer.

I'll probably seek a replacement adapter before doing surgery on anything; I considered clipping and resoldering the adapter I have, but the housing is glued shut! I'd probably waste the thing getting inside it.

FWIW I've found rockbox to be buggier than I'd like on old ipods. It's way more stable and functional on other, lesser known devices, but those devices are hard to get cheap nowadays. That is to say, I don't think the ipod itself is old and buggy, rather rockbox on them never quite got polished.

You can also mod the storage and continue to use itunes on it, if you like the original firmware. I think on 'nix there's various third party softwares which will happily do the syncing for you.

MP3 players of any form are great and I think everyone should have one. I do not understand how anyone is not immediately driven into a fit of rage when their music volume is ducked down for a notification sound to play over it.

I replaced the hard drive with SD cards, and also replaced the battery. Mine's a thick-back iPod so it could fit a larger battery; from what I can tell there's a little less flexibility if you've got one of the thin-back ones, but there's still options.

sorry I didn't see this earlier but yeah I actually got a 5th gen ipod and have been using that and plan on setting up the mini for my wife

The 5th gen set up was a bit buggier but it's been solid since the setup, I haven't had to wipe it.

I still think it's a good way to breath new life into an ipod if you wanted a music player that supports flacs and lastfm scrobbling

Good to hear! I wanted to use a 5th as my main as well but at the time rockbox would... I forget if it'd crash every now and then or the battery usage or what. It gave me issues. Sounds like you had a much better time than I did.

What did you do for the storage on it?

oh yeah I had to install one of the daily builds but it's worked ever since, this one also has a new battery so it probably works better bc of that. part of the reason I reccomended the ipod minis and still think they're a good option is bc they're easy to get into and I generally recommend the battery be replaced.

I have 500GB in this ipod so I can store my music as flacs