A New Way To Use The Original iPod
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ต.ค. 2024
- One of the first iPods upgraded with a new operating system. So powerful it can run DOOM, on an Apple iPod classic model from 2002 with black and white display and a spinning hard drive.
Help support the channel with Memberships, SuperThanks on TH-cam
or Patreon: / januscycle
TH-cam short: Will it run?
• Will it Run?
Rockbox is a free replacement firmware for digital music players
www.rockbox.org/
Music:
TO and Bladiator - Jade Spawn (e2m7)
doom.ocremix.org/
Displaying more colors/shades on these old LCDs was simple. All you have to do is to alternate pixel color each frame and you'll get intermediate color. First it was used in software like in this iPod or there were J2ME tech demos for Siemens SL45i phone. In the first case you'll get 16 shades, in the second you'll only get 4 shades since SL45i had 1-bit screen.
This technique was widely adopted in LCD displays. For years most monitors and TV had 6-bit panels, but with FRC (which does the same in hardware) they were able to display 8-bit shades. Currently it is used in low-end and mid-range displays, but now we have 8-bit panels and FRC brings them up to 10-bit for HDR content.
In early days such technique wasn't used in hardware, since LCDs had much lower quality. My SL45i had inconsistent shades in few lines. Still better than 1-bit, but not good enough for commercial use case.
I hope you understand that I'm now going to have to try this on an SL45i.
@@JanusCycle There was J2ME tech demo movie player for SL45i. I don't remember the name, but I should have it somewhere on one of my old HDDs.
In order to alternate each shade in frames in this LCD you need more FPS from it (60 or 90) and the LCD usually runs at 30. Because that LCD is connected using SPI interface there is connection speed limit that was increased by using a trick to not wait for valid data confirmation on each data transfer. This increased the FPS signifficantly however introduces noise by controller errors that barely works at that data rate.
@@JanusCycle It is just very similar PWM control, nothing else. The controller sends 60 frames per second, let's say. It will send a series like 0110 for even and 0101 for odd frames, you will always generate the in-between. The only place I could see this approach failing is that black MacBook with Core Duo and GMA950. It had a panel that was able to show 262144 colors, but it was ran at 16 million colors by Apple, through every other frame cycling. It resulted in a bad dithering pattern and weird, yellowish whites. If I remember well enough, there were some games in the DOS era that exploited this in order to create more colors.
@@Leeki85if you find it please upload it to archive
Stuff like this needs to be archived
The breakout game in the original firmware of the original iPod WAS a hidden easter egg, but in later software updates they put it in the menu.
Very interesting, thank you!
Your videos are like comfort food to me. Like mums spaghetti bolognaise or a favourite movie you’ve seen so many times it’s just comforting to watch now.
I love the mechanical hard disk aspect about the older iPods. The way they used their flash buffer and only span the drive when necessary. Such gorgeous pieces of technology.
Thanks for this vid and Keep up the good work my brother.
This is high praise coming from someone who makes videos with a similar comforting feel. Thank you for making your inspiring work.
i had Rockbox installed on a tiny Sansa Clip+. the screen was a miniscule blue OLED with an amber strip across the top. Rockbox made this little gadget run just about everything. i even made my own theme for it.
my favorite feature of Rockbox however was the TalkBack feature that generates voice titles for all the artists and albums. i used this so i could navigate to where i wanted without looking at it, like when i was driving or taking a walk.
Great stuff. The TalkBack function seems like a very underrated aspect of Rockbox.
I had Rockbox on my Clip+ as well
@@Trekeyus Nice player, I wish I had one.
I really like the way you narrate these videos. You get straight to the point, you talk not too loud, not too quiet. I feel like I can have these playing in the background when I'm doing something stressful and this would be a nice remedy. Super rare to find a youtuber like you. Instant subscribe.
I'm really pleased to hear this, thanks. I really enjoy making these videos and it's great to hear how much people enjoy them :)
When I saw a video with the title "iPod DOOM" I knew I would be seeing some Rockbox. I haven't used it for a long time, but it's such a great piece of software. I hope its development continues for a long time. I honestly wish there were an equivalent for iPhones.
I was very impressed by Rockbox, and glad I saw it first on such legacy hardware.
0:45 "That's what she said" 😂😂 the description was spot on
I cannot believe that an iPod first/second get can play Doom and MP4s! Thank you so much for this video!
I'm really glad you enjoy this, thanks!
The reason Breakout is on the iPod is because Jobs and, well, mainly Wozniak designed the circuit board for the arcade machine, when Jobs was still working at Atari. It was their first successful product, before founding Apple.
I used rockbox with an iriver with a little smaller disk drive (8gb had inside i think) to hack my ps3 and jailbreak it around 2009 i think.
I used to let the iriver connected to the ps3 usb and as it booted up it delivered a payload to jailbreak the ps3 and run homebrew and backups. Then i got a infinite trade in (in rental ps3 games) for one month and backed up 60 or more of the best ps3 games.
Those were the days :)
That is awesome!
Bro you're a legend.
classic! i did something similar with my original xbox
Was that iriver h10?
@@kaanosphere probably ,I don't remember though clearly
no green ipad disappointed
I wish my iPod was that Dank :)
you'll get there eventually mate :))@@JanusCycle
He's got a green mat at least!
actually a good nugget
Where This Guys Views???
I remember using rockbox on my sansa e200 back in 2007, while i was in highschool. I also remember playing doom on the tiny display in the metro while going to school. I really felt like a hacker, changing my mp3 player OS, enabling so much cool features any stock player my friends had couldnt do..
that grayscale screen is so calming to the eyes. love that they also paired it with a white backlight ❤
There is something very beautiful about grayscale LCDs that I really love.
I'd love for you to become a calmer down-to-earth version of Dank Pods, I'd definitely be watching you regularly.
I'm pleased my calmer personality is worth watching, thank you.
Man I used to like dankpods but he decided to lean super hard into the Le Wacky Aussie Man bit that redditors seem to love for some reason and I kinda fell off of him. Oh well.
@@navi6463 I haven't watched a single video of his, I found out he was popular so went to check for what he was then I realized. I don't like that style as well.
Great intro music once again! I think Rockbox is super cool. I always wanted to see an Aussie discuss it ;)
Even tho the original firmware is qualitatively better for Just Music when your formats are already supported, all the themes, games, and extra formats always makes it compelling to me. The theming especially reminds me of the R4 and similar flash carts. Even the ugly ones are fun in their own way, and some are remarkably sleek and usable.
The default iPod experience is great for just music for sure. The problem is we like to tinker way too much :)
I still use a 5.5G iPod Video with Rockbox as my main portable music player. Other upgrades I've done include a vastly bigger battery, 512GB storage and the diyMod output stage bypass so I can feed the analogue output from the DAC directly to a headphone amp via the dock connector bypassing any additional filtering (the headphone jack still functions as normal)
Those are some amazing mods. I'm really very impressed. Thanks for sharing.
Same. I have a 5.5 with a bigger battery and two 128 GB SD cards. Did you install an SSD mod or Iflash? I’ve heard that the SSD can work better in some cases.
@@stasprze1685 iFlash Quad with 4x128GB micro SD cards, at the time it was the lowest cost per GB option available and I've not had any issues with battery life or stability.
I’ve used rockbox on a few different things over the years. iPod classics,nanos, rca Lyra off the top of my head always runs great
Nice selection of hardware there, Rockbox is amazing.
Really enjoying both the topics of your videos and your calm voice and presentation.
I really appreciate hearing this, thank you.
I used to run Rockbox on a Sandisk Sansa e280 in ~2008 and many other Mp3 Players after that. Now on the 6th gen IPod Classic with a bigger Battery Mod and a SD Card Mod with 512 GB Storage. Nice to see people still discovering Rockbox!
I have known about it for a while. I didn't realize how good it actually is. I'm so keen to get it on something with a colour screen now.
Rockbox is awesome. Been using it for over 10 years. With my SanDisk Sansa clip plus. That i bought back in 2011.
Hey cool little player, I like it.
FWIW, that tank/air bubbles story is probably apocryphal. The article only says it was relayed to the author by an unnamed Apple employee, the story doesn't appear in Walter Isaacson's all-encompassing biography (which includes plenty of unflattering stories about Jobs), and, perhaps most damningly, the exact same story is told about Sony co-founder Akio Morita. It may still be true, but some skepticism is warranted.
Thanks for those details. Jobs could be such a jerk at times that it's so easy to believe. Fascinating that Akio Morita has also been claimed to have done the same.
I have the same model, it was my grandfathers. I also got my very own brand new iPod Nano in 2006~
I remember installing RockBox all the way back then and showing off to everyone at school that my original Nano could play videos, many were impressed.
There also existed a few more iPod related things back then, namely iPod Wizard and iPod Linux. There was all kinds of things for iPods going on back then.
Also, RockBox works particularly excellently with a Sansa e200 series mp3 player.
I really like your stories, especially about showing off video on you Nano, that is cool.
@@JanusCycle I have many since I was a kid in the 90s, teen in the Y2Ks and adult by the 10s~
Such a gem of a channel, love your vids!
Thank you!
ROCKBOX the only reason I owned an ipod in the 1st place, and it was a refurbished nano 1st gen.
Broadcast quality audio processor, cross fade support, parametric EQ - so good.
I love all these interesting things you explore. I especially loved the stuff on Nokia 3310 modding and old GSM phones. Joined the Patreon. Best of luck! ❤
I'm very grateful for your support. I can't wait to make more videos like these. Thank you.
I had Rockbox on my iPod Video, back in high school. It was one of my first forays into modifying devices, simple as it was.
Rockbox is an amazing piece of software. I had it on every music player I've ever owned. It worked really well on my Sandisk devices with real buttons, those worked really well for playing games. You essentially had a small handheld game console in your pocket. Sadly, they have replaced physical buttons with a touchpad on the final model I had, the Fuze+. That one was essentially unusable for games.
Ah, memories... I still have a couple of music players with Rockbox on them which I do use from time to time.
I stumbled your channel by accident and I must admit your videos are quite addictive i first watched your previous videos how played around with nokia phones i like that you tried playing LOR on I pod people behind LOR used I Pods. seeing what you can do with old skool tech made somewhat jealous because I wish could disassemble and put things back but I'm not good with playing with small hardware has my hands shake due to my condition cerebral palsy. which affects my fine motor skills.
I'm glad you're enjoying these videos. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
I had trouble with rock box back in the day while installing it on my friends Sansa Clip, and my very own iPod Video. Trial and error is part of the process.
For sure, that's also when we learn the most :)
Most definitely. I noticed when I have trouble solving a problem and I take a break that’s when the ideas start flowing.
I always look forward to the next video. Cheers!
Loved the video, if I had an iPod I would probably go and try rockbox. It looks like a really cool project.
7:00 I love the fact you used the Zune theme on the Windows XP machine :)
Speaking of, are you going to do a video about the Zune as well? Is there a hacking scene for it?
I'm glad you noticed the Zune logo. I don't actually have one and don't know much about them . . yet.
I used to run daily Rockbox on sandisk players and it was awesome. Better sound, better battery, video playback...
I love when a grey scale LCD shades images always liked that...
yeah, they are beautiful.
Only has 4 shades of grey? Tha's MORE than enough to play the "Bad Apple!!" video.
I was able to connect my iPod to a M2 Mac with a FireWire 400 to 800 adapter, attached to a FireWire 800 to Thunderbolt adapter, attached to a Thunderbolt to USB-C adapter. It looks ridiculous but it works and charges the iPod while connected.
You have a triple going on there, nice.
love that digital dark age part with install troubleshooting
I'm sick jealous of your awesome collection of old hardware. Thanks for taking the time to show us your gadgets 😊
all my music player (until phones got a respectable memory size) always had RockBox installed. it is a great little interface!
Must have been amazing to use at that time.
@@JanusCycleI'm still using it today. It runs great on later iPods, such as my gen5.5.
Modding g5 and g6 is also alive and well, mine has a transparent front plate, a rainbow metal shell with custom engraving representing the 256GB micro SD on an iFlash solo that replaced the hard drive, a 3000mAh battery and i just printed an adapter for line out and USB C charging/data transfer.
The only thing stock about it is the internal frame, screen and logic board. with the sd and battery it runs well over a day of continuous playback.
There's also adapters for mSATA and m.2 SSDs but those draw way more power. The creators of iFlash make both and have a nice runtime benchmark on their website
You just blow my mind with your content! Congratulations!
Love hearing that, thanks!
Rockbox also improves audio quality a lot. Also in the daily builds it properly supports Apple docks (30 pin) and flash storage mods. I still use it with an iPod Mini 2 which I put a 8GB CF Card in it and I love it!
I'm looking forward to trying Rockbox on more devices, including with colour screens.
The small port right next to the I-link connector provides power
If only I could find a cable that uses it.
I got my iPod (1st gen) the very same week it was released in 2001. I was a freshman in high school at the time, and i remember when i would use it around school, teachers and other students alike would CONSTANTLY come up to me and ask me what this thing was that I was using! Hard to believe it's been so long now~!
Awesome to hear from a first user. Must have been so cool to have one of these in late 2001!
Always love the presentation of your videos, this one was super fun as someone who also loves tinkering with iPods!
You're absolutely right about working with old hardware being both fun, but also incredibly frustrating at times!
Getting though these frustrating challenges is when we learn the most. It also makes the result much more rewarding. I'm glad I was able to push through with this one. I'm pleased to hear you are enjoying the channel, thank you.
Rockbox was a savior back in the day. I used to use it on first generation Nano. It was so amazing. Wish I still had that little guy :) Awesome video as always mate :)
Nice, I would like to try this on something much smaller.
I ran Rockbox on my sixth-generation iPod Classic 160GB. It was beautiful.
Yeah, that sounds like it would be awesome.
I was using Rockbox on a 60GB iPod Video 5th gen with USB for years. And I've stil got it, but like the one in this video the battery is knackered.
Glad you still have it :)
@@JanusCycle My iPod Video still works, but the battery only runs for about 30 minutes now. Not only can Rockbox play Doom, it also plays Duke Nukem 3D and Quake on iPod as well. :D I did recently update Rockbox on it, using Macbook Pro.
I used to use it as my main music player with Rockbox between 2007-2013, as I was on the road full-time driving about 80,000km a year.
God that sony netbook looks nice, with the zune theme and purple wallpaper; makes me feel young staring at it.... im in my mid 20's
I should do more with this VAIO. It's actually from 2002, many years before netbooks even existed. Also, you are still young. Keep appreciating technology from all decades.
wow your videos have gotten so cinematic over the months!
I really enjoy seeing these devices looking their best. Thank you for noticing :)
The rockbox version 3.15 from 2019 already is outdated.
I´d highly recommend to switch to the daily/dev builds.
It contains a lot of patches from the last few years since 3.15 was released.
Especially improvements for flash storage.
Great recommendation, thank you. I'll be doing this on my next audio player for sure.
I'd love to have RockBOX on something with native Bluetooth
I run Rockbox on most of my iPods. It's one hell of a custom OS.
I actually got doom on my 6th gen yesterday. It's the only pc game that doesn't make me force restart my iPod when quitting
Nice, I'm really going to have to try Rockbox on more modern models.
@@JanusCycleYT is bugging out, I was trying to give a suggestion, but it won't let me post
trying to say iPodLinux
2:45 remind me of how I make a custom Apple bitmap logo for Nokia 5110 LCD on Arduino.
Great video, Janus! Used rockbox on my last gen ipod. But unfortunately was not able to recover to stock firmware without hdd change
Thanks. I wonder what happened to your firmware.
@@JanusCycle me too)) i tried to recover and the ipod died)))
Loved it, as always. Please do more of these old Skool firmware videos
For sure, firmware mods are one of my favourite things to do :)
That was really interesting, make more modding videos like this
For sure
The ones about soft-modding old phones when I went through the back catalogue were my favourite!
Poetic and lyric as usual
When i was a kid my dad gave me a mini mp3 player that had rockbox on it, that's why it was so fun ! I had no idea what custom firmware even was back then
Probably why I love installing custom firmware everywhere now, the phone I use daily has windows 11 on it
Wow, having that so young gave you a unique perspective. I'm glad you continue to this day :)
How did you boot win11 on your phone? Im really interested now.
Renegade project is the coolest thing I've ever found as far as phone modding goes, it's quite advanced but whren you get windows working on a phone, and working well it's quite special@@HBP27
Unrelated but what is the windows XP theme you're using on that laptop? I love it
Zune theme with custom Zune wallpaper :)
@@JanusCycle thank you that was fast lol
Hmm, the iPod 6G (the small square with a touchscreen) is not even listed :(
It would be interesting to try to "unlock" it in any way and maybe at least check what's needed to port Rockbox on one from scratch.
I'm going to totally guess that Rockbox is ported depending on the chipset the player runs on and the 6G used a very different chipset to the previous models. Also maybe Apple locked it down somehow.
@@JanusCycle It is likely the case.
I might at least check if there are any unpatched vulnerabilities to exploit :P
It's not like I'm using it anymore so I guess bricking it won't change much.
I run rockbox on my iPod Video with the Themify theme. It’s awesome.
A Jerk is a understatement for a man named Jobs.
Awesome video, love to see some ipod content
Thank you, it's about time for some Apple.
Love your videos man. Never owned any apple tech but what a cool operating system! Makes me want to buy an old pod and play with it! 🙏🏻👍🏻
I'm really glad you are enjoying the channel. There's nothing wrong with finding some old hardware and making it do something interesting :)
very cool video. i jailbroken my kindle 3 and now i can use custom screensavers. i think its a great ideea for a new video, to cover what you can do with modified kindle
Since I love e-paper screens, this is a really good idea.
Great content as always
cool, thanks.
The two pins which are missing in 4 pin FireWire cable/connectors is exactly the power pins, you don’t get power with them.
Rockbox is probably one of the best custom operating system I've ever use. It's not intuitive for general use but it opens so many potential for MP3 players.
Thanks
Thank you for your support. More great videos to come :)
i use rockbox myself on my recently acquired ipod video, it's a must-have for me as a linux user since there's virtually 0 currently-working pieces of software that support the itunes junk that the ipod expects, all the software that does currently exist either straight up crashes immediately, or can see the pre-existing music on there but can't delete it, or create new entries
so, rockbox being able to build it's own library makes it a must-have, besides in the modern day itunes is notorious for not being great, so, it's just a good idea to replace even for non-linux users i think :p
Rockbox is great! especially using it on the 4th gen photo
Edit: anything on the themes page is fully working from my knowledge
I'm very much looking forward to seeing Rockbox in colour.
Wait, so I have like 3 rare iPod chargers? Hooray for not throwing things away, I guess. 😂
Finally a video from you :)
I used that Zune theme on all of my Windows XP machines back in the days.
I still have my good old ipod classic 6.5 with a 128 gb mod on it, run rockbox like a charm ! It's my daily drive when i take the train or the bus. Work well with my grado headset
That's a nice upgrade you have there. It must be great to have a music player without including all the distractions that phones have today.
Indeed, no worry about having a internet issue, no distraction, long battery life and great dac to drive a few good headsets,it's the perfect entry level music thiggie you can have ! @@JanusCycle
Man I must have played that breakout clone as much as any portable game I owned. 😅
Yep rockboxed my iPod 6th gen and added a new battery and SSD. Runs nice.
You could have run Linux on a usb stick and installed rockbox on your iPod save the stress of old versions
I'm not sure how well this VAIO can handle USB booting. I will be doing more Linux stuff soon.
@@JanusCycle good point. There is a tool called ploppy (not joking) that can boot Linux from a CD ti USB.
Either way, great content
Amazing video, as usual 👏
thank you!
Old iPods usually click from failing hard drives.
How did you get that shot at the end there where the camera was panning around while you were using the iPod outside? A slider of some kind?
A small motorized dolly :)
Actually in the movie run away jury the iPod was featured as a HD
I've installed rockbox on almost all my mp3 players, and since I'm collecting ol phones and some mp3's it was on my personal Cowon D2, on ipod mini, ipod classic, iriver h20, creative zen maybe I forgot something.
Nice device range you had there.
I was shocked that it will run doom on a OG iPod.
I was tricked into watching an advertisement for Rockbox
:) open source advertising ?
A first gen ipod being able to display video is one of those things that doesn't sound possible, yet it evidently is, and of course someone was going to port Doom 😆. Pretty impressive what 20+ years of people tinkering with them has accomplished.
If I had an MP3 player that could run Rockbox I'd definitely try it, but back in the day I had a CD player (still works to this day surprisingly) and one of those generic MP3 players that look like a chunky pendrive with a screen, from there I moved to playing music on cellphones as soon as phones with expandable memory became reasonably priced.
As soon as phones could accept memory cards, music became the thing to fill them up with (and photos I guess).
I imagine the extra gray scale is similar to what you could do with the TI-89 to get 4 level grayscale like the Gameboy and flipping between different framebuffers faster than the pixels can reset between black and white.
Very interesting about the TI-89. Apparently also the TI-92+ can do this. I'm going to have to get one and try it one day. Thanks.
@@JanusCycle Yeah the TI-89, TI-92, and TI-89 Titanium are all the same platform. The TI-92 has a larger screen (and full keyboard)
I would recommend TIGCC (if it still exists) if you want yo get your hands dirty with C code to make something
@@ColinABarr Yep, I just found it. Looks great, thanks for that.
I got through the first episode of doom on an ipod nano but playing on this must be something else
That dedication, well done. I found it very difficult to play.
Absolutely love your videos man looking forward to more ❤🎉
Hey thanks, glad you are enjoying. A new one coming in a week :)
@@JanusCycleawesome! Looking forward to it!!
This is ridiculous- my first ipod was an ipod video cause I was waiting for a color screen and the horsepower (that apparently the ipod photo didn’t have…) to display video.
Then today I see this video- a 1st gen ipod that didn’t even display album cover art or any graphics in the stock firmware, running LOTR at full framerate, and Doom- in all its early 90’s 3D glory, And discovering it had dual 19Mhz ARM CPUs.
I mean, it’s gonna take a little bit for me to absorb this.
next time, it would be fun to see you use a white plastic unibody macbook with this ipod. since they have the firewire port built-in, it should make it a lot easier for you too.
I wold like to try some vintage MacBooks.
I remember using rockbox on my ipod nano 1gen, I bought it second hand w RB already installed. Imagine my shock when i discovered that it's not original software and apple soft felt really minimalist and boring 😂
Very amusing, thanks for sharing that.
i always wanted one of these when i was young and could never afford one. still one of the best mp3 players ever made. even now they are better today then newer ones. i always felt the touch series was garbage
the irony is sony vaio micro pcs used the exact same HDDS. i would still buy one of these if they weren't so pricey and rare
It's a very nice machine. Both the iPod and this VAIO. I know it uses the same hard drive. I would like to mention that in a follow up video one day.
I use a Sandisk Sansa e250 6GB player with Rockbox installed, just to be able to run Doom. (Color screen, Doom runs fine.)It has a mechanical clickwheel, too. But it also has a proprietary USB connector unfortunately, so I had to buy a cable for it. I found the player on a local flea market for 1.5 euros.
A very nice player, I like it.
@@JanusCycle and what I did not know, that it has a replaceable storage module inside. I got 2 devices on the flea market. One was working with 4GB storage, and the other had a broken LCD and 6GB storage. I took the 6GB module out and inserted it into the working one.
Steve Jobs was NO jerk. His team tried to take away the headphone jack earlier, even from the iPhone 4S. Then Steve Jobs said that anyone ever tries to do that in his team, will be exterminated immediately.
did you not need itunes to transfer files on it? I am sure I had to do that even on a later model- which is why I never got a second one...
iTunes is required. Browsing files in disk mode does not allow access to music.
Elite Obsolete Electronics has parts for most iPods
i feel like this video will get 1 million views really quick
I appreciate your enthusiasm.
I rockboxed a sansa zip clip that has a colour screen but it's so tiny, only a few cm across but I still tried watching some videos on it, it could only play mpeg1 videos
I'm really glad you tried this on such a small player. I wish I had one!
I really want to install RockBox on my Walkman, but I don't think my model is supported.
Oh man!!! thanks for this entertaining content!!! it made me get my iPod 3rd Gen out of the box one more time and listen to music!!! Thanks!!!
Glad you enjoyed this. Enjoy your 3rd Gen :)
I installed rockbox on my Toshiba gigabeat f40 way back in the day and it runs great. The Toshiba device is alot more powerful (400MHZ) able to rum a GBA emulator
nice, I can't wait to try this with a more modern player.
Sucks that the firewire door is missing on that 2nd gen. Awesome that the 3.5mm barrel for the headphones hasn't chipped away yet 😃
Hardest thing is finding replacement drives and quality batteries that are thin enough to cram into the iPod. 3rd gen iPod drives work well in 1st and 2nd gen. Pulled a battery from a random Motorola smartphone (EG30) to modify the connector and reuse the battery pumping it up from the dead original 1200mAh to 1940mAh
Also firewire is still sold. I keep an old PPC Mac Mini to communicate with my old iPods. But I also have a Lenovo laptop with mini firewire that works great with data transfer, just no power out via mini. You can get expansion cards to slot into a desktop to put out 12v and data transfer. Only thing that might be an issue is finding old Apple firewire wall chargers, but everything else to connect it is easily found online.
I also keep a box of flat batteries from other devices for adapting into things like this. This not being my iPod means I'm keeping it original for it's owner.
I do have a couple of old Macbooks. But not tried to get them running yet. Apart from Firewire which would be useful, I'm not sure what I would use them for.