Easiest way to flash mod 3rd gen iPods

 

A lot of people agree that the 3rd generation iPod looks the best, but up until I found this method it's been a huge pain to use. Stock you'd be dealing with the mechanical hard drive which is fragile, slow and unreliable - this is a device from 2003, hard drives don't survive years of abuse in a portable device. So the solution is to flashmod it right? Well yes, but look at any write up of a 3rd gen flashmod and you'll find a tale of despair, of man pushed to his absolute limit, nay, past that, to the brink of tears and beyond. All for the sake of putting flash storage in an old iPod.

Alright enough of that bollocks, here's a method I've found to flash an iPod 3rd gen as fast as any other model. You'll need the iPod, a 1.8IDE adaptor board as shown to the right, a CF card or an iFlash CF to SD adapter*, a USB cable, a FireWire 400 to 30 pin cable, a computer and either a FireWire wall brick or a computer with a FireWire 400 port on.

*avoid unbranded red versions, digigear ones are said to be ok but I have never used one since they don't exist in the UK.

First of all you'll need to clip this part here, you can see what was there on the other side, it's basically a small plastic guide tab which is fine for other uses, but in an iPod it will prevent the adapter from fitting properly, you can leave the other side alone as I have here.

Insert the board into the iPod with the CF card in, the card will only go in one way due to the side guides. The adapter board fits the way shown, pins up. You will have pins left over on the adapter, make sure these are on the right side when looking at it from the angle shown here.

Right, now for the software, this is where the difficulty is said to come from, but through trial and error I found this way which should take less than a minute. I used a Windows PC but this shouldn't matter, however it is worth noting that a Windows formatted iPod will work on Windows or Mac, so is preferable.

First of all, don't bother formatting the card, restoring the iPod formats it and so this is unecessary, and in my testing, causes more issues than it solves. 

Ensure you have enough charge in the battery of the iPod to last a few mins, full charge is preferable, open iTunes on the computer (I was using Windows at this point) and then plug the iPod in via USB.

You should get a screen which looks like this:

But instead of "IPOD" at the top you'll see whatever the name of the card was, mine said "CANON CF" as it was used in a camera.

Press continue, it looks like it's working normally at this point but it isn't: restore the iPod.

After a minute of thinking about it, it'll tell you that you need to unplug the iPod to finish the restore, upon doing so you'll see this screen with a freakishly wide 30 pin connector on the iPod:

Last step now, plug the iPod into either a FireWire wall brick or a computer with a FireWire 400 port capable of providing power; old MacBooks are great for this, you'll see the Apple logo and a progress bar which will slowly fill up.

And you're done! Pick a language, preferably one you can speak, but if you're up for learning French through the iPod's menus - feel free. The iPod is up and running and you're free to sync your complete Backstreet Boys discography and listen to it better than ever - just remember not to tell anyone what you're listening to. 

As with all flashmods you get a nice little badge in iTunes showing the storage you shoved into the thing, a nice little touch that is very satisfying. What's so great about this method is that it lets you charge from a computer over FireWire still, I've heard from others that doing this normally after modding will attempt a sync and cause you to have to restore the iPod again. The lack of this annoyance makes the mod far more convenient, and means you don't need to shell out the £20 people want for a FireWire brick if you just charge from your laptop currently.