iPod Linux (2017)

I worked on this project a bit back in the day as a teen. Bricked my first iPod trying to get a DIY uClinux kernel to boot on it within hours of getting it for Christmas. Took bricking 8 more warranty replacements before I finally got Linux to boot.

Weeks later thanks to a lot of community help, finally found the memory address for audio out and got music playback that was not beholden to any DRM.

This work was all referenced by the RockBox team that made a tiny embedded kernel and OS far more suited to the tasks.

Now all devices that can run rockbox are EOL and other community members are working on an open hardware player to run Rockbox.

https://github.com/amachronic/echoplayer

Couple decades in, but we are finally close to having the first fully featured fully open hardware music player, which all started back with reverse engineering iPods to run Linux kernels.

As someone that does not carry a cell phone, I am absolutely excited about this as it would be a daily driver for me.

Thank you for being awesome! I still use RockBox on my old tiny 8GB "mp3" (flac really) player

> Now all devices that can run rockbox are EOL

All Apple devices are, but the 'AIGO EROS Q / K' [0] is not end of life and is supported by Rockbox.

I'm interested in the Echo player and I think it's important long term. However, the lack of a scroll wheel is what keeps me invested in iPod Classics over all other players.

[0] https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/AIGOErosQK.html

Great work, and great to hear about Echoplayer. Sorely needed. I currently use a Cowon Plenue D2 and have an iPod Video running Rockbox. The iPod looks nice, but is flaky and outdated, and can't utilize 24-bit flacs. The Cowon is pretty good, but the UI has a load of irritating elements and proprietary nonsense.

Congratulations on not carrying a cell phone!