Using iPod As a Mass Storage Device?
 

Okay, so I got myself a new deck for the car that has direct controls for iPod. Problem is that since my iPod with 4th gen, it doesn't support on-the-unit controls for it (my sister's 2nd Gen Nano works beautifully).

I tried plugging in my USB stick and it works fine. So I got to thinking. What if I just copy/paste files onto the iPod without using iTunes and have the deck recognize it as a storage device instead of an iPod. Problem is that it doesn't. It sees it as an iPod no matter what and won't play the files via USB.

Is there anything I can do to make it appear as a simple USB hard drive? Firmware stripping? I'm open to suggestions.

Restart the iPod by holding the center button and the menu button for ~10 seconds.

When it restarts, immediately (like while you see the apple logo), hold the center button and the play button until you see black and white text telling you the iPod is in disk mode.

If that doesn't do it, I'm not sure what would, but I can try to find out. Also make sure you've done all available software updates to the iPod just in case...

Let me know if this doesn't do it.

I just tried. The method does put the iPod into disk mode, but I still get the same error code as before from the deck.

I updated the firmware just this morning to the latest version. It's up to date.

Try erasing the music from the iPod. Then enable disk mode on the iPod and drag the files into it (so they are just files and not part of the iPod's system). Then see if the deck sees it. That's not ideal since you would have to have 2 copies of each song on the iPod -- one for the car and one for the iPod.

What kind of car deck is this anyway?

You could put another OS on it like RockBox. It makes the ipod show up as a removable disk in XP so it would probably work great. Google Rockbox for more info.

I'm wondering the same thing; I've never seen a system that would require "5th gen or above"; 4th gen is the usual floor cutoff.

It's this unit: http://www.clarion.com/us/en/product...385079405.html

And here's the iPod compatibility chart (mine is the 4th gen, non color): http://www.teamclarion.com/sharedweb...Pod%20Book.pdf

And I found this tidbit on their site:

uber, I did that and it still wouldn't work.

That's odd -- an iPod is disk mode with files loaded purely as data doesn't require any special drivers. It's just an external HD at that point.

I'll look into a couple of things and see if I can find anything out.

Rockbox is probably the best answer, and provides a crapton of amazing new features to your iPod. See http://www.rockbox.org

I'll try out Rockbox tonight.

Sorry, but something in my post above doesn't read right...

Is "crapton" one word or two? Or hyphenated? Crap-ton?

I'm pretty sure it's one word, much like shitload. You don't hyphenate that.

Okay, I just tried connecting it with Rockbox installed. Same issue, except now it changes from the error code to "no device connected".

I like this firmware a lot better than the stock Apple one.

Hrm.