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legaleye3000

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 31, 2007
1,376
33
Hello - I have an iPod 4th gen where I bought an ide to cf adapter and then a cf to sdcard adapter. I formatted the sdcard to fat32 first. When turning on the iPod, I get the “contact support” message. I tried booting up in disk mode and both my Mac and windows machines don’t recognize it at all. Any tips appreciated.

Not sure if this is normal or not, but the orange ribbon seems to come out of the logic board slot really easily. But even when it’s all the way in, this still occurs.
 
Not sure if this is normal or not, but the orange ribbon seems to come out of the logic board slot really easily. But even when it’s all the way in, this still occurs.
The drive cable should definitely not come out of the connector easily. There is a clamp on the connector that must be flipped up towards the slot that the cable goes into, and then flipped back down to hold the cable into place. See step 7 in this ifixit guide.
 
Even when flapped down, it comes out easily. I’m wondering if I did something to the connector…
 
So, progress...! On my windows machine, iTunes detects the iPod and says its in recovery mode and that I need to restore it. I do that, but the ipod will just reboot and then itunes detects the ipod again and says the same thing. I'll try again and the same thing keeps happening over and over.

In Windows, the iPod is assigned letter drive D:\ and correctly reports the size of the SDCard. I have tried both with and without disk mode on the ipod. The iPod just shows the folder icon saying to contact support when I unplug it. Any help appreciated.
 
After the iTunes restore completes, disconnect the iPod from the computer and connect it to your power adapter. You should see a progress bar on the iPod screen as the restore finishes. The power adapter for the 4th gen is firewire, which delivers more power than usb, and IME firewire is required for a 4th gen restore to complete correctly. When you plug the iPod back into the computer, iTunes should recognize it as a "new" iPod.

From what I've read, the various ide to cf adapters are a crapshoot. I used an iFlash board to mod my 4th gen. Expensive, but straightforward to get everything working. I also used a "known working" 128 gig micro sd card from the list found on their web site. I believe they also make quality ide to cf adapters.
 
Thanks for your reply! I’m aware of the plugging in via FireWire after the restore (I’m waiting for my FireWire cable to arrive). However, from what I’ve seen, there will be an icon on the iPod screen showing to connect to power which my iPod does not show… So I’m not sure if my iPod is getting to that part of the restore process in order for plugging into FireWire to complete the restore process will work.
 
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