Ipod nano 1g storage upgrade (do not say you cant) need some technical help

[psxpetey]

Alrighty So I want to upgrade the storage (I am highly skilled at soldering) and I'm running into some issues that I think I have a solution path. There are several ipod nano 1g motherboards 1 with a daughterboard, 1 with a piggy backed tsop 48 a dual tsop 48 ad a single tsop 48. I bought 10 broken ipod nan 1g, 10 2g, and 10 3g. I decided to swap the chips in between ipods to see if they work before trying a new chip since people whine about hardware issues. slc the nand controller (way to many forum posts on this crap). So Ii have tried all but one configuration 1 nand chip in the main slot. A ipod will run without nand chips, it will just say "nand bad ipod busy cant restore". When you swap nands in between ipods it does the same thing. Ipod is busy. So the ipod wont work with chips from other ipods but it will work with its own chips only. The chips are "married" to the motherboard. So how are they married? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHP-OPXK2ig this is a video about upgrading iphone storage chips and i think the method is the same. you need to read the info in the header or somewhere else and write that to the new nand chip. The info is like so: https://imgur.com/a/9TI37KR. Now I am not sure how WL got this information maybe they used IDA PRO?

So My question is how can I get this info off the old nand and put it on a new one? (these programmers are for 64 bit operating systems) I can buy an rt809h and read the encrypted nand and get a hex bin but I dont thin that will do me any good. Are there any creators of rockbox on this forum still who could help me out on getting this info? MMy other idea was using ipod patcher to get an unencrypted firmware and open it in idea and try to reverse engineer.

[saratoga]

I don't know that the NAND is electrically compatible between hardware versions (pinout may not match).  Do you have datasheets to check the pinouts?

It is possible that the player needs the NAND to be preflashed, but that would be strange since the player has a 4MB NOR flash that contains the bootloader.  I would expect the bootloader on the NOR to setup the NAND, otherwise they'd have to flash two chips in the factory instead of just 1.

[psxpetey]

I don't know that the NAND is electrically compatible between hardware versions (pinout may not match).  Do you have datasheets to check the pinouts?

It is possible that the player needs the NAND to be preflashed, but that would be strange since the player has a 4MB NOR flash that contains the bootloader.  I would expect the bootloader on the NOR to setup the NAND, otherwise they'd have to flash two chips in the factory instead of just 1.

I agree With the 4mb nor which is why I took on this project, Im going to swap 2 daughter cards in between each other with the same chips on. them and see if that works. I do have all the data sheets https://app.box.com/s/4v624hjuuiddyikxanq26od4hjy0vs4i, K9MBG08U5M is on the ipod nano 1gs, that have 1 dual chip on them usually 4gb ipods. Hynix is usually on ipods with 1 single chip on them, samsung K9HAG08U1M usually on boards with a daughter board, The daughter board can have 1 or 2 chips on them. Toshibas are generally on ipods with both slots on the motherboard itself. The same with 29F08G08FANB3 I could not find any type of data sheet or identifier for the 29F08G08FANB3 sheet. I think that is because the toshiba and 29F08G08FANB3 only have 1 ce so the motherboard can control them as 1 chip. Why else would they put a daughterboard that reorganizes K9HAG08U1M ce1 and ce 2 and rb 1 and rb2 to different pins like with the K9MBG08U5M which has ce1 an ce2 and rb1 an rb2 pins cut and are outputted on ce 3 and ce4 on pins 14 and 15 and rb3 and rb4 on pins 4 and 5. The hynix also has 4ces to control that as a single chip, The only difference I see could be the io pins but they all look pretty standardized.

Now maybe they have all these different configurations becuse they couldnt get enough chips from each manufacturer.

here is the datasheet for a 1gb hynix ipod as well https://app.box.com/s/c7318grwlbps5njj1uox3h511fgixjt8

[psxpetey]

I don't know that the NAND is electrically compatible between hardware versions (pinout may not match).  Do you have datasheets to check the pinouts?

It is possible that the player needs the NAND to be preflashed, but that would be strange since the player has a 4MB NOR flash that contains the bootloader.  I would expect the bootloader on the NOR to setup the NAND, otherwise they'd have to flash two chips in the factory instead of just 1.

just plugged in a daughter board from an ipod 1st gen with samsung k9hag08u1m with both slots filled into a ipod 1st gen that had the EXACT same memory in the EXACT same configuration and it didnt work same thing, wont recognize it at all, when trying to restore in itunes "ipod busy" and nothing in disk utility. "bad disk" So its confirmed like the iphone the ipod needs an identifier (probably the serial number like with the iphone , or maybe the encyption key to use the nand and you cannot swap nands in between ipods or install new ones until I figure out how to get whatever this identifier is.

[herculeesjr]

I'm curious if you ever made any progress with this adventure? I sure don't have the soldering skills but would be fascinated to see someone make an 8/16/32GB 1st gen Nano.

[777funk]

I've looked into doing this same thing. I agree... don't say it can't be done.

One thing I have noticed with this iPod (Nano 1st Gen) in having a few of many we own get corrupted beyond what apple can fix (itunes Win XP), the fix has been to use Linux DD command.

Look it up if not familiar but basically, it copies all partitions from one iPod Nano to another. I've done it many times and it works. I've done it on computers also. Say you have a laptop with an 80GB hard drive and want everthing the same but with a 2TB hard drive. Easy.

Remove the drives, plug them into another computer and use DD the 80GB to the new 2TB. Put the 2TB drive into the laptop and now you have everything as it was (all boot sectors, OSs, and data) but with way more capacity.

I would think, if the flash is electronically compatible and software is the limitation, DD could be used to copy all boot and OS partitions (usually 2 partitions on a Nano) to another chip.