Monday, June 28, 2010

Rockbox is an open source firmware for mp3 players, written from scratch. It runs on a wide range of players:

Stable ports

Rockbox runs well on these players, has a complete manual and is supported by the installer:

Apple: iPod 1g through 5.5g, iPod Mini and iPod Nano 1g
Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
Cowon: iAudio X5, X5V, X5L, M5, M5L, M3 and M3L
iriver: iHP100 series, H100 series, H300 series and H10 series
Olympus: M:Robe 100
Packard Bell: Vibe 500
SanDisk: Sansa c200 series (not v2), e200 series (all models), and Fuze v1 (not v2)
Toshiba: Gigabeat X and F series

Unstable ports

Rockbox runs on these players, but is incomplete, less usable or has problems that limit it to advanced users:

Work has begun on porting Rockbox to these players, but much remains before they are usable:

Cowon iAudio 7, Creative ZVM, Logik Dax, Meizu M6 and M3 Philips GoGear HDD1600, HDD1800, HDD6300 and SA9200, Onda VX747 and VX767, Tatung Elio TPJ1022, Sandisk Sansa m200, c100, c200v2 MPIO HD200

If your player is not listed above, then Rockbox does not run on it.

Entering DFU Mode on the nano is a little tricky. I had done so by doing the following:

Connect the iPod to a PC running Linux.
dd the firmware partition and the MBR to backup files (dd if=/dev/sdX1 (replace X with the letter assigned to the device) of=nano-of.bin; dd if=/dev/sdX1 of=mbr.bin count=1)
dd some random data to the firmware partition to trash it (dd=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX1); let it run until it can't anymore.
Disconnect, reset (MENU+SELECT), then reattach it to the PC.
Reset it again while it's still connected, then immediately hit BACK+PLAY.

A picture of the dock connector cable should appear, along with the Apple support URL. This is DFU mode.