Do you need the ipod firmware to run rockbox?

[scharkalvin]

I picked up a dead ipod mini on ebay.  On power up it shows the dead battery
icon and then (when connected to a usb power source) it shows a !folder icon.
I plugged the ipod into my Linux computer and waited a while for the battery to
absorb some charge.  I then forced the ipod into disk mode by holding the select and
play buttons and it then showed the "do not disconnect" message.
A quick check showed that /dev/sdc was now present, but NOT /dev/sdc1.
I then ran fdisk /dev/sdc and discovered no partition table on the drive, BUT
the size was reported as 4096mb.  So it looks like I have a good disk interface, and
the disk itself might be good, but needs low level formating.

Is it possible to put a partition table on the drive (what is required in the way
of partitions?) and format it with a vfat (fat32) file system and just install
rockbox WITHOUT the ipod firmware on the drive?

[linuxstb]

You need a working ipod to install Rockbox.  See this page:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodManualRestore

[scharkalvin]

OK this makes sense.  However, the ipod disk does NOT even have a partition table!
I need to partition it before I can even format a file system on it.
Does anybody know what the partition table looks like on an ipod mini so I can use
fdisk to create it first?

Janus:/home/ken# fdisk /dev/sdc
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdc: 4095 MB, 4095737344 bytes
126 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 7812 * 512 = 3999744 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

Command (m for help):

[Llorean]

If you follow those instructions, you should have a partition table. As long as your iPod is one of the ones we have an MBR for.

[scharkalvin]

yes I figured that out after the second reading!
I followed the instructions and it looks like the ipod may have been restored!

Yes!  There is the main menu!

(I didn't realize that a DD command to the raw disk could be the same thing as
fdisk! logical actually.....)