iRiver H120 CF Mod Attempt - Success!

[scharkalvin]

Hey look at this!  It ain't cheap, but probably might work better than an unknown CF card and an adapter.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147021


You can find lots of ipod mini's that are "broken" and all that is wrong with them is a bad
hard disk or dead battery.  Either way, it's an easy repair, especially if you are going to pop a CF in there.  If the ipod shows the !folder icon then it is a dead HD for sure.  I bought one like that cheap on ebay and the HD wasn't even dead, just needed to be reformated.  It now has a 16gb CF in there and my wife is using it (as an iPod, not rockbox'd).

[LambdaCalculus]

Hey scharkalvin, Newegg has a New Year's surprise for you:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211244

Now $179.99! If it drops down by $30 more then I'm getting one. My sister gave me her old iPod 4G color (she got a Classic for Xmas), and I was thinking of installing a CF card into it.

[scharkalvin]

If it gets cheap enough, I'll replace the 16gb card in my Gigabeat with the the 32.  So far only one feedback on Newegg, I'd like to hear at least one success story there on that card working in an iPod, but from the specs I'm sure it will work.

After changing the spindown time to 254 seconds my CF Gigabeat seems to work much better, but it still locks up in USB disk mode whenever I plug it into my computer and I have to toggle the battery power switch to recover.  Losing the time of day on the clock seems the only problem with that though.  

The thought of a 32gb iPod mini is mind blowing, isn't it?  BTW the iPod mini is very easy to work on.  Use small blobs of hot melt glue and scraps of wood to pull the plastic ends off the ipod (then stick the wood scraps in the freezer and the glue comes off easy with a sharp knife).  A number 00 or smaller philips screwdriver and a small pair of needle nose pliers are needed to remove the two small screws and a spring clip that hold the chassis in the case, then it just slides out (after disconnecting the cable from the click wheel using a flat screwdriver to pry it off the pc board connector).  Use a small flat screwdriver to disconnect the disk from the connector.  Be sure to  replace the battery with a larger capacity one while you're in the neighborhood.  Use some double sided scotch tape to hold the new CF disk and the battery to the pc board.
I've repaired two of these already, and both have survived.

The same CF adapter I used for the Gigabeat should work in the 4G color.  Might have to put some card stock between the adapter and the ipod pc board for insulation.  

[soap]

Although the very thought of just getting a cheap mini off eBay and popping a 32GB CF card into it is indeed tempting...  

Every time a major blog/slashdot/make/hack-a-day mention CF in iPod Minis their price on eBay skyrockets.  Someone with insider information could make quite a killing in this market.

[LambdaCalculus]

Every time a major blog/slashdot/make/hack-a-day mention CF in iPod Minis their price on eBay skyrockets.

Even broken minis are too expensive! But I would still love to work on this project one day.

[Siar]

Welcome to the club . I have exactly the same adapter and 8Gb of sloooow A-Data. After commenting "ata.c" and recompiling the source file, everything start working fine. The only bug I have - it gets stuck in a car mode. Probably, there is another "ata.c" bug is present.

BTW, how did you manage to close the device? I had to cut off the jumper to be able to do it.

In addition, 32Gb CF A-Data is 149$ now...

[petur]

I have exactly the same adapter and 8Gb of sloooow A-Data.

I assume you're talking about the A-Data 'speedy' card (orange color). Is the slowness a problem? I have an adapter here but still looking to buy a good CF card.

[scharkalvin]

In addition, 32Gb CF A-Data is 149$ now..

Well actually it's only cents less than $150 and the 16GB card is now down to $70.

EGAD! seems the price is dropping faster than the price of gasoline is rising!
I think if it drops by another $25 I'm going to pull the trigger on this one and convert my converted F10 -> F16 gigabeat to an F32 (well F30 due to round off errors in base 16->base 10).

BTW I do seem to have a problem with the conversion in that the gigabeat gets locked in the disk mode after the usb cable is removed and the only way I can reboot it is to power cycle it (with the handy battery switch).  This doesn't seem to hurt anything except that I lose the time of day (and have to reset the clock) every time I download new music.

I assume you're talking about the A-Data 'speedy' card (orange color). Is the slowness a problem? I have an adapter here but still looking to buy a good CF card.

Well maybe (see above).  It DID take almost half an hour to download about 1GB worth of music files to my converted Gigabeat using the A-data 16gb card.  With the HD in there the transfer time would have been MUCH less.  I just use the "verbose" switch and the command line copy command so I can see that it hasn't hung up and is really just slow and I'm ok with that.

[petur]

right...

I guess I'll spend a bit more and go for the faster 'turbo' card:
8GB (120X) - US$95.00
8GB (266X) - US$126.00

I wonder what the cheap 'speedy' cards have as specs, the a-data site doesn't mention anything other than PIO4 mode

[bascule]

BTW I do seem to have a problem with the conversion in that the gigabeat gets locked in the disk mode after the usb cable is removed and the only way I can reboot it is to power cycle it (with the handy battery switch).  This doesn't seem to hurt anything except that I lose the time of day (and have to reset the clock) every time I download new music.

Is that this problem?

[scharkalvin]

Is that this problem?

Code: [Select]

I'm running a Gigabeat F20 with the latest bootloader (21st April 2007) and whenever I use the bootloader USB mode (device off; plug in USB; power up device) I find it does not restart correctly.

Using either WinXP or Win2k, I do the 'Safely Disconnect' operation, which causes no change on the Gigabeat screen (but I don't know whether it should) and then when I unplug I just get blank screen with the backlight permanently on and no buttons functioning. It requires a battery switch-off to reset it.
Not quite.  First of all I enter the usb disk mode (not the bootloader mode) by plugging in the usb cable AFTER the gigabeat is up and running.  By the time I go to unplug the usb cable my backlight has timed out, but it does come back on if I press any button, however the usb icon remains on the screen.  If I hold the power button long enough the player does shut off, but then it won't power back on unless I toggle the battery switch.

[Siar]

I have exactly the same adapter and 8Gb of sloooow A-Data.

I assume you're talking about the A-Data 'speedy' card (orange color). Is the slowness a problem? I have an adapter here but still looking to buy a good CF card.

The card I bought is not available now on the newegg. However, given the speed, I would say that 40x could be too optimistic   for it...
The speed is not a big issue, though. The only thing I might think is some problems with playing loseless ape files. I had never tried this format when my hdd was alive, so I don't know whether this is the issue with reading speed or cpu speed or something else.

[petur]

The speed is not a big issue, though. The only thing I might think is some problems with playing loseless ape files. I had never tried this format when my hdd was alive, so I don't know whether this is the issue with reading speed or cpu speed or something else.

I'd say this is unrelated unless you mean the playback problem is the music skipping from time to time

[Siar]

The speed is not a big issue, though. The only thing I might think is some problems with playing loseless ape files. I had never tried this format when my hdd was alive, so I don't know whether this is the issue with reading speed or cpu speed or something else.

I'd say this is unrelated unless you mean the playback problem is the music skipping from time to time

It is not exactly skipping problem, but rather pauses during playback and pretty high CF reading activity (red diode turns on pretty frequently).

On the other hand, given pretty small size (only 8Gb in my case) usage of lossless formats is not that optimal...

[petur]

right, that would probably be caused by a slow card.....