It's the perfect combination; a 4GB 1st generation iPod (mine's actually white, but I liked the picture of the black one) and RockBox. It's a setup that never leaves my pocket.A lot of times companies produce a great piece of hardware (the iPod), and load it with crappy firmware (the original iPod fw). I mean, yeah, it's easy to use and understand, but.. some of my expectations are just not filled. So after I got my Pod, it took me about a week until I decided to load RockBox..
What is RockBox?
from rockbox.orgRockBox is an open source firmware for mp3 players, written from scratch. It runs on a wide range of players:
- Apple: 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano
(not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd gen Nano, Classic or Touch)- Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
- Cowon: iAudio X5, X5V, X5L, M5 and M5L
- iriver: H100, H300 and H10 series
- SanDisk: Sansa c200, e200 and e200R series (not the v2 models)
- Toshiba: Gigabeat X and F series (not the S series)
The First Contact: Install
Ridiculously easy; download the current build, copy it on the player's hard disk, download and execute the bootloader, done. Go get yourself a treat.
(for player-specific instructions refer to the RockBox website)
Fill'er Up: Loading your library
Even easier than the installation; works exactly the same way as before. iTunes, WinAMP, foobar 2000, they all think they are dealing with an original iPod.
Dressing Up: Customize the user interface
This is probably one of the greatest things about RockBox; the GUI is fully customizable. The
menu- and while-playing screens are even independent from each other.My menus display a slightly modified "Brownstone" theme (download), and my while-playing screen shows my own creation, based on "Crashbox for nano" (download)
That's it for now. I'm testing RockBox/last.fm compatibility right now, and I'll be back as soon as I can supply some presentable results.
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