Other Is there an offline iPod restore option out there?

[Certificate of Excellence]

I can’t post in the iPod forum for some reason, so am asking here. If mods can move it, right on please do

I replaced the hdd in my gen 3 iPod and realized quickly that all but one of my Mac’s that had FW400 had too-old iTunes versions and would not connect to Apple iPod servers to complete its restore. Is there a stand alone executable file that can be used to complete an old iPod restore?

FYI I successfully updated using my cMP 1,1 running El Cap but even that at some point will stop connecting as the interwebs march on.

 

[eyoungren]

Well, there are IPSWs. That's the firmware. You can go here: https://ipsw.me

Find your model of iPod and download the IPSW. What you'd do then is point iTunes to that IPSW. I haven't done this in ages, but instructions should be through Google somewhere.

Unfortunately, it means using only that IPSW Apple is still signing for your model iPod.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Well, there are IPSWs. That's the firmware. You can go here: https://ipsw.me

Find your model of iPod and download the IPSW. What you'd do then is point iTunes to that IPSW. I haven't done this in ages, but instructions should be through Google somewhere.

Unfortunately, it means using only that IPSW Apple is still signing for your model iPod.

Very cool. I did not realize this was out there. The other thought I had was to pop the cf card out of my iPod and clone it and keep that up on my NAS so if I need to replace the cf card or I want to upgrade to a bigger one, I can pull the image down and stick it onto the new card.

Ok poking around the interwebs revealed a couple other options for offline restore. Apple actually released a series of iPod updaters that could be used for updating firmwares and software of old iPods - Here’s one for up to Tiger 10.4.6.

There is also iPod wizard 1.3v which purportedly runs on both windows and osx (but I can only find the windows version) app that allows you to restore offline plus some other stuff like adjusting colors, fonts etc. Here is one link of many from the great google.

 

[eyoungren]

Very cool. I did not realize this was out there.

Well, it's known primarily to jailbreakers. You can download ANY firmware you want that your device will support, but the hitch is that unless Apple is still signing it, you can't actually use it.

But prior to iOS 6 (where Apple quietly changed things) you could install whatever IPSW you wanted (again, that your device supported) as long as you had 'blobs' (little bits of code) for it.

Anyway, not sure how useful it is to you. I just assumed your iPod was running a version of iOS.