Respectfully, I was hoping for something more DIY. I haven't used Amazon in some years and do not plan to return. I have been considering buying a second hand iPod like you mentioned. The youtube channel Dankpods has me convinced I can mod one to be fairly modernized while still just a dumb player, which is all I want.
I dont require audiophile DAC, I just need decent battery, as few features as possible, and massive storage. It is a plus also if I can just address it as a drive rather than needing itunes as it is a little flaky on Linux.
One thing that piqued my interest is the new raspi pico I think it is called. Not sure if anybody has looked into it yet to any extent, but at least the price and form factor are right
A number of the iPod models can be re-flashed with Rockbox, which sounds like what you want. There are lots of third party parts like batteries available. You can probably pick up a used one on eBay for $10 or so.
Repurposing old smartphones for audio players never made any sense to me as I normally run my smartphones until the battery is dead, and battery life is the reason that I have dedicated portable audio player.
I used to use Rockbox on an old Sandisk Clip - it was great and did exactly what I needed. Then it died and I discovered that Rockbox doesn't work on the newer Sandisk devices.
You'd have thought that the few basic features that I needed would have been implemented in their interface by now, but you still can't tell it to play all your albums in a sensible track order. Selecting Play All in the albums menu doesn't play all your albums in album order, instead it plays track 1 off all the albums, followed by track 2 off all the albums, then track 3...
In the end I had to fall back to writing a simple script to create a playlist of all the tracks in album order - it's not a great solution but it's workable.
5 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 28.1 ms ] threadPersonally, I rebuilt and refurbished an old iPod (new battery, upgrade HDD to flash) it is a bit like a classic car.
I dont require audiophile DAC, I just need decent battery, as few features as possible, and massive storage. It is a plus also if I can just address it as a drive rather than needing itunes as it is a little flaky on Linux.
One thing that piqued my interest is the new raspi pico I think it is called. Not sure if anybody has looked into it yet to any extent, but at least the price and form factor are right
I used to use Rockbox on an old Sandisk Clip - it was great and did exactly what I needed. Then it died and I discovered that Rockbox doesn't work on the newer Sandisk devices.
You'd have thought that the few basic features that I needed would have been implemented in their interface by now, but you still can't tell it to play all your albums in a sensible track order. Selecting Play All in the albums menu doesn't play all your albums in album order, instead it plays track 1 off all the albums, followed by track 2 off all the albums, then track 3...
In the end I had to fall back to writing a simple script to create a playlist of all the tracks in album order - it's not a great solution but it's workable.