Problems with Ipod mini 2 Gen

[Stulle]

Hey =)
this is my first time getting in touch with rock box I have an old Ipod mini 2gen (originally 4gB) an bought a new sd card (SDXC UHS I 128GB, CF to SD Card adapter and a new battery. Now i was trying the whole day to install the original ipod firmware and/or rockbox on this thing but i never succeded.
Itunes isnt recognising the Ipod (Windows finds it in the hardware section ://) so i was not able to install the normal os on it.
Then i tried to manually install/restore the ipod (https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/IpodManualRestore and then using this thread https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/IpodConversionToFAT32#c_41_Apply_the_correct_partition_table and installing it via the rockbox installer

I managed to get the installer runing ("completed the installation or so") but the ipod never showed any signs of an working os. :/ Can somebody give me a hint?
I had also some problems formating the sd card. Used mainly linux (ubuntu) and gparted/the disktool. But when i unplugged the ipod and put it back in i often didnt find the filesystem or so. Should i take out the sd card and do all the formatting outside of the ipod? could be teh cf card adapter an issue?

So many questionmarks above my head Have a nice evening and greatings from germany Stulle/Georg

[bluebrother]

Itunes isnt recognising the Ipod (Windows finds it in the hardware section ://) so i was not able to install the normal os on it.

It's hard to say what went wrong here. The first step would be to get the Ipod boot the Apple firmware, which Itunes should happily do for you, or can be done manually. If that didn't work I don't see much point in continuing, since the Ipod relies on the partition layout.

So, when manually restoring, which MBR did you use, did you reinstall the Apple firmware, and how did you handle the wrong partition size (since your card is bigger than the original drive?) There's a hidden partition that's used by the Apple firmware, that must be kept intact.

Those SD-to-whatever adapters have been known to cause issues with Rockbox in the past, though my understanding was that they usually worked fine with the Apple firmware. Also, there have been quite some fixes for that since the last release, so those shouldn't be as much an issue as they were before. You still might be affected by such, though -- not sure if it's 100% reliable these days.

[Stulle]

Hey thanks for your answer, i know its a hard to detect problem because nothing is/was working.... After a lot back and forth itunes does now recognize my ipod  but restoring the firmware does not seem to work..

detect a defective ipod-->restoring by itunes-->itunes detects an defective ipod...... (the partition manager views an unformated ipod at this time and rockbox says you have to enable writing on the device (or something in this direction)

I used the mbr for the 4Gig ipod mini 2nd gen but doesnt seem to work properly :DD

Maybe someone has a step by step solution? (so starting with formating (=back to start) and ending with something working?^:DD)

[Stulle]

tried now also to create myself a mbr and copy the (hidden) partitions of the given mbr to it. Does not work. For a moment i thought i got it, restored the ipod and clicked immediatly on the rockbox update thing-->rockbox completed the installation but it didnt boot.




I think all in all my problem is to get a working mbr file for my system as itunes is somehow not able to restore my ipod (or do i have to wait just really long after restoring/reboot?) When i format the complete usbdrive (/dev/sda/ in linux) to fat32 itunes detects my ipod but after restoring by itunes the drive is not formated/i dont have a working os

[cereal_killer]

I vaguely remember having a similar problem with one of my flash modded ipods. Is the Rockbox bootloader installed? Then try to format the card outside the ipod to fat32 (I used sdformatter.exe for windows) and put a .rockbox folder on the card. Then put it back in and don't restore in iTunes. I think I ended up in being able to use rockbox, but not the apple os back then.

FYI: my working setup (Rockbox and Apple OS) for my iPod mini 2G is a TOSHIBA 64 GB micro SDXC UHS-I Card, a iFlash SD-CF Adapter (or a red Micro SD Card to UDMA Type 1 Extreme CF Adapter, but can't remeber) and a new ribbon cable.

P.S.: greetings from Austria :-)

[Stulle]

Hey i just want to let you notice that i have found a way to restore my ipod mini with the 128gb card. Had some (minor) problems with rockbox-->panic screen-->could not write on a special sector or so. So i decided to try it at first with the normal apple os.

1.First i formatted the sd card in the ipod to fat32 using aoemi
2. Itunes now recognised my ipod but as "damaged" and offered me to repair it
3. now i needed the Program EaseUS Partition Master. I havent found a similar function somewhere else but maybe someone knows another program? the free version is enough! It has a function repair MBR. Prepare yourself to start it later (step 5)
4. start the repair program on itunes
5. close before the repair bar finishes in itunes start the MBR Repair in EaseUS for your ipod
6.disconnect/reconnect the ipod-->voila it was working

(7. rockbox installation was now without problems during the installation process possible but as i said i had some problems when running it)


Sadly i cant tell you why it works this way. Probably itunes gives us/(me) not the correct mbr for the 128gb SD Card and then Windows/Itunes sees a faulty Drive/Partition-->nothing works afterwards. The timing of the MB repair in EaseUS seems to be crucial but i am still not sure...

For my Ipod mini 2nd gen/4gb i have used now a SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC UHS-I 128gb SD Card (maybe overkill but i have never made a bad experience with them) and a cheap (the cheapest ) CF to SD card adapter from ebay+ a new battery.

Thank you all for your quick help and the knowledge that i found in this forum/on the rockbox website!
Have a nice evening/good start in the week
Greets Stulle/Georg from Berlin =)