iPodZilla

[Jerry McBride]

On Saturday 25 June 2005 04:50 pm, James McDonald wrote:
> Any one using the uCLinux port to the iPod? If so, any comments and can
> one play normal MP3's OGG's at normal speed.
>
> www.ipodlinux.org
>
> The amusing thing was someone suggested a beowulf cluster running on iPods.
>
> James
>

Yes!  I've a new HP iPod 4g 40gig that I just installed linux on yesterday. 
Real hoot too. 

As far as playing mp3's, it works perfectly. Maybe oggs' too, but since I 
don't use the format, I'm not sure. Be aware too, there are a lot of rough 
edges in this project still and so definitely NOT something you want to run 
all the time. 

The real hangup is, no power controls. It won't sleep... As long as you are 
running linux the iPod is constantly on. To turn the thing it off/sleep, you 
have to reboot to the apple os first. Blah.

The iPod boots up like any normal linux box with 2.4.24. For as small as it 
is, it's quite snappy too. The provided linux seems quite complete, 
implementing the usual user commands via busybox. During boot, the os is 
setup via one startup script named, "rc". I just wish, really, really wish 
that it had a keyboard! The iPodlinux gui that I use is Podzilla, has the 
same feature set as the Apple app, but with a few more things added in. Lots 
of games included too.

Once you symlink the database folder to the local /mnt point, you can play the 
tunes that you've already installed on your iPod. I haven't ben able to mount 
my iPod when it's running linux, so I reboot to the apple os and make all my 
music database changes using gtkpod... Works like a charm....

And the "Whay Cool" factor is VERY HIGH. I can't wait till Monday to show the 
people at work how my iPod boots up with linux. Tux never looked better.

I can't wait for this project to mature a bit more. The lack of power control 
is very noticeable and it'd be very useful to be able to do some bash 
scripting too.... I'm currently trying to log the dmesg output to the local 
harddrive with no luck so far...

Cheers....

If you or anyone needs help setting up your unsupported iPod 4g, don't 
hesitate to email me.





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