I was shooting some hoops on an empty court (I guess the crazy heat kept most people away) this weekend and I found a Zen Microphoto. It's actually pretty nice. It has a lot of features that iPods don't but overall isn't as slick. Anyway I already have an ipod so i was considering selling it (I may post it here in the marketplace actually) but I was wodering if anyone knew if it would be possible to swap the microphoto's 8gb drive into an ipod mini. If I pick up a mini with a dead drive and swap in the 8gb drive and a new battery it might be a fun little project to put together a "super mini".
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iPod Zen Microphoto Drive Into an iPod Mini?
- Thread starter Redline13
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I will assume you already tried to return it to its owner as Blue suggested.
It could work... http://homepage.mac.com/jason.parry/mini8gb.html
B
It could work... http://homepage.mac.com/jason.parry/mini8gb.html
B
Thanks for assuming the worst guys. 
Of course I am making an effort to return it to it's owner. I actually reposted an ad on my local craigslist lost and found again this morning. No responses yet. You can't fault me for letting my mind wander about the possibilities though. I came across that webpage in a search but I wanted to pick peoples minds around here.
Of course I am making an effort to return it to it's owner. I actually reposted an ad on my local craigslist lost and found again this morning. No responses yet. You can't fault me for letting my mind wander about the possibilities though. I came across that webpage in a search but I wanted to pick peoples minds around here.I think you might run into a problem here, as inserting a blank hard drive is a little different than inserting one that already has drivers and an OS installed, components that probably wouldn't work on an iPod. Additionally, there may be formatting and decoder problems, since creative players can decode different files than iPod, and you might lose for example, AAC compatibility.
I don't know enough of the inner working of the iPod to tell you for sure, but something tells me it won't be that simple.
I don't know enough of the inner working of the iPod to tell you for sure, but something tells me it won't be that simple.
feelthefire said:
I am not sure of any technical hurdles myself buy I belive the docodeing of the various file formats is done by the on board cpu. Where I thought I might might run into trouble though is installing the ipod mini firmware once I had it all together.
The link I provided made it work with the iPod updater software, so you're probably OK.Redline13 said:
B
Redline13 said:
well, for example, the ability of the iPod video to play MPEG video is due to an mpeg decoder chip, not to the on board CPU. So some features may not be interchangeable between the two, and the microphoto drive probably has photo and color drivers that would be incompatible with a black and white screen, meaning the drive would never even boot in the first place.
Assuming the microphoto drive is the same compactflash style drive, simply put the drive in a compactflash reader, and format the drive in OSX into fat32 then install it in the mini.