Trying to install Rockbox on 60gb 5g Video, Mac OS X

[gburnham]

I have a couple of problems.

First: the installation utility gives me an 'installation method not supported' after saying the bootloader already appears to be installed and up to date.

Second, when I finally get to the step to restore the iPod in iTunes, it reformats the iPod to a Mac format, ruining the whole installation process. I don't really want to do this on a PC, but I really don't know what to do from here...

If you have any questions about my installation process, let me know and I'll be happy to give more information in order to get this done.

[saratoga]

iTunes on the Mac uses HFS+, so you cannot use it to convert an Ipod to FAT32.

Did you follow the instructions in the manual for HFS+ formated Ipods?  The HFS+ to FAT32 conversion process is explained in there.

[gburnham]

Yeah, everyone said I can use disk utility to format it to FAT32. Guess that is the problem. I'll try using Windows to set this bad boy up.

[scharkalvin]

Mac's are supposed to be able to use a FAT32 formatted ipod.  They probably won't REFORMAT an ipod to FAT32, but one that is already formated this way should work.

Actually, I don't understand why a Mac wouldn't format an external drive to FAT32 (there should be a utility to do this, has anybody ported Linux/unix mkfs and fdisk to Mac?)

[linuxstb]

The steps required to convert a "winpod" to a "macpod" are here:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodConversionToFAT32

It's not a simple matter of reformatting (of course Macs can format FAT32 disks), you also need to replace the Apple Partition Map with a DOS Partition Table, and ensure that the firmware partition is still being identified in the same location on the disk.