[Ipodlinux-devel] gen 4

[Peter <pet...@si...>]

Hi,
     A friend of mine got an ipod for christmas and he wanted me to put 
some music in it.  Problem is, I use an old Mac OS 9 computer for 
playing mp3s, my OS X laptop has no mp3s on it and no room for them, my 
windows computer refuses to run iTunes, it just quits instantly, 
(possibly because it doesn't like my driver debugger, I need to try it 
without that loaded).  And none of my linux or BSD computers have any 
mp3s either.  It seems the only way I can put mp3s on his computer 
would be to ftp them like 10 at a time from the OS 9 to the OS X and 
then copy them from there to the ipod which is a pain in the ass and 
then if he wants to use any other computer to get songs, he can't 
because they're limited to one computer.

    I think its an ipod mini which would mean gen 4?  Its small, 20 GB, 
"MP000 Model: MP102" on the back.  The "About screen" says Version 
3.0.1 Model PE435 A, I take the "435" to mean gen 4.

   I told him I'm sure there are hacks on the web to fix all these 
issues, and that I heard you could put linux on them.  But then I see 
that you don't have gen 4 yet.  What would happen if I tried the OS X 
gui linux loader and tried to put linux on this probable gen 4 ipod?  
Would it just not work?  Would it mess things up?  Could I reinstall 
the firm ware?  What's the stumbling point for getting the code to work 
on it?  Is gen 4 firmware totally different or is it just that you 
haven't tested it yet?

    I'm hoping you'll tell me, that you don't know if it works or not 
and that I should try the loader with some debug flag on and that the 
loader is capable of reloading the apple firmware in case of screw ups. 
  My friend isn't going to be here for very long so please email me back 
as soon as possible.  Thanks and you should put the exact reasons why 
the gen 4's don't work on your wiki for future googlers.  When I read 
"unsupported", I sometimes think "works but extremely buggy".

                      - Peter