Hi there, I'm new and would really appreciate any help!
First of all, welcome to our community.
I got a 160GB iPod classic, and if I'm understanding the model number, it's the 2nd revision of the 6th gen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Classic#6th_generation). However, other websites describe the late 2009 model as 7th gen.
We follow the manufacturer when it comes to device naming schema.
There is actually no such thing as an iPod 7G, it simply doesn't exist. When people refer to the 6.5G or 7G iPod Classic models, they are just referring to the various iterations of the iPod Classic 6G in a confusing and erroneous way.
I tried installing Rockbox, but it describes 6th gen as unstable and doesn't even mention a 7th gen.
Actually, technically, the port is classified as "unusable", not "unstable".
But it really helps to understand what those build classifications actually mean, because they have very little in common with their English language definitions. Stable doesn't imply stability, unstable doesn't imply instability, just the same as unusable doesn't literally mean that it can not be used. I understand how this could be confusing at first glance.
Our
main page describes the classifications like so:
Stable: Rockbox runs well on these players, has a complete manual and is supported by
the installerUnstable: Rockbox runs on these players, but is incomplete, less usable or has problems that limit it to advanced users
Unusable: Work has begun on porting Rockbox to these players, but much remains before they are usable
Now, in the case of the Classic 6G, it is not "stable", or "unstable", it gets classed as "unusable" because there is quite literally no officially supported method of booting Rockbox on this device. Booting Rockbox at this time relies on one of either of two third party bootloaders.
The first one, and the most widely known, is
emCORE, from the
Freemyipod team.
The second, and little known, is an ongoing work to provide a Rockbox bootloader and Rockbox Utility support for the iPod 6G that is to be mainlined into Rockbox source in the near future. You can
see this task in our
Gerrit instance.
I don't know what DFU or emCORE are, but I hear they come in handy.
emCORE is explained in the paragraph and linked pages above.
DFU is a special mode that all iPod from the iPod Nano 2G (including the Nano 2G, though accessing DFU mode on this device requires opening the device and bridging some hardware pins to initiate it - no other devices after the Nano 2G require this) upwards. This is a special mode that allows low level communication with the device for the purpose of updating and recovery. Best guess is that the acronym stands for something along the lines of "Direct Firmware Update".
You can find an explanation and live demonstration of how to access DFU mode
here.
Can someone please explain where I begin? I couldn't find any video walkthroughs.
There is a detailed walkthrough for installing emCORE on your device that can be found via the Freemyipod project's wiki
here.
However...
At this stage emCORE is to be considered deprecated in favour of the Rockbox iPod 6G bootloader intended to be mainlined which I mentioned earlier. The intention for emCORE never really was for it to be deployed large scale, it was more of a proof of concept bootloader and low level debugging tool. It was far too powerful and complicated for the average user who only really wanted it because it allowed them a path to booting the Rockbox binaries that the Rockbox project provides (without any means to actually boot them).
The intention was to mainline a much simpler bootloader in line with the current iPod mainline bootloaders, based on emCORE code. But as life has a way of doing, time and motivation dwindled for the main contributor (Michael Sparmann - [7]/TheSeven) and because there was already a working model in the form of emCORE itself there was little incentive to complete the required work.
...<skip forward in time ~2 years>...
Now, this is where Cástor Muñoz (prof_wolfff) comes in. Who did exactly that. A new bootloader was born of the theoretical ashes of emCORE that is much simpler for the end user, and supports dual-booting both Rockbox and the Original Firmware, which is something the current release of emCORE cannot do. This work is under the process of review for submission into upstream Rockbox codebase presently.
Here is an archive containing that work (
rockbox-bootloader-installation-pack_20160209_135859_NZDT.zip - 10.76 MB), contained in the archive are Windows RockboxUtility.exe and mk6gboot.exe binaries and dualboot-installer-ipod6g.dfu, dualboot-uninstaller-ipod6g.dfu compiled by user890104 of the Freemyipod team, and an mk6gboot binary for Linux, as well as the bootloader-ipod6g.ipod and main Rockbox rockbox-ipod6g.zip compiled just a matter of minutes ago by myself. There is also README files for both mk6gboot and Rockbox Utility.
It is suggested at this stage to use this method. Installation is incredibly simple on Windows machines, and you should have no problems if you follow the included README.
However...
If you do have any issues or questions, you can contact myself ([Saint] on Freenode IRC, as here) or other staffers/developers/contributors/community members here in this forum or over at our IRC channel on Freenode,
here is a url that will open an IRC browser session for our channel if you need it, or just want to say hello and meet us in person (so to speak).
[Saint]
Rockbox Technical Forums
Topic: New in the forum, installing on iPod classic (Read 6867 times)