Recommendation For Hard-Drive MP3 Player

[deech]

Hi all,
I've been using an Archos Jukebox Recorder that recently went on the fritz. I liked the fact that it used a laptop hard drive so  swapping the drives was easy, and it used AA batteries (and it ran Rockbox!).

Are there any MP3 players out there that run Rockbox and use a laptop hard-drive? AA batteries are nice but not essential.

Thanks for the feedback ...
-deech

[saratoga]

Just the ancient archos players.

[Multiplex]

There are many players that use 1.8inch drives, the older 50pin drives are becoming more difficult to get, but the ZIF drives are sill available and there are adapters.

Changing those drives is not trivial, but not that hard either. Batteries for most of the iPods are fairly easily changed, the iRiver H100/H300s use iPod batteries and are fairly easy to change, I don't know about others.

Search round here and places like http://www.ifixit.com/ and http://www.misticriver.com/forum.php for information about upgrading/fixing iPods and iRivers

Maybe not exactly what you were asking but some of the smaller laptops/netbooks use the 1.8inch drives ;-)

[Llorean]

Just a not, the H100/H300 batteries are the same as the iPod battery, but the connector is slightly different (the positive/negative are swapped, if I recall correctly) so always pay attention to which is which when removing an old battery, and make sure the new one matches.

[Multiplex]

... the connector is slightly different (the positive/negative are swapped, if I recall correctly) ...

Yes that's right - the connector is the same but wired differently - you have to swap the wires over - or splice them. I found it helps to trim the lip from the connector - can't remember if that was for the H100 or the H300 - I have one, my wife the other.

I can't work out how I managed to paste the ifixit URL twice and not the Mistic River one - I'll go back and fix it

[deech]

Ok then, time to move on! The Archos was nice while it lasted. Thanks for all your help!
-deech

[pwhodges]

eBay has plenty of batteries correctly wired for the iriver H3x0 - no need to fiddle around changing them these days.

Paul