Renew Your Old iPod Nano With Some Software Mods

[Love Pulse]

Pimp Your Pod! It’s rather straightfoward, and shouldn’t take more than 10-15 minutes to complete from start to finish. Please be aware that the iPodWizard portion is using software that’s Windows only, so you should get that virtual machine or Boot Camp install cookin ’for a little while. Read the rest of the post for more information.

Note: The iPod Nano that I used for this tutorial is the first generation 1GB iPod Nano running firmware 1.3.1 and is formatted for use on Windows machines. If your iPod is formatted for use on a Mac, then you’re most likely going to run into issues with iPodWizard recognizing it. BUT, if all you’d like is Rockbox and iPodLoader, then go to step 4.

What We’ll Be Doing
So, what exactly will you be doing? First, we’ll be sprucing up the iPod OS by applying a really slick and completely custom theme. It replaces your main menu with a nice dock (as found in Mac OS X). It also adds a wallpaper (also found in Mac OS X 10.5). And finally, it changes the overall layout of your Now Playing screen.

Next, we’ll be installing Rockbox, which is pretty much an automated installation process via the Rockbox Utility. What Rockbox is is an open-source operating system for portable media players (which has also been made into a stand-alone Android application). It can do all sorts of things, such as play MPEG-4 videos, play games (such as Doom and various GameBoy ROMs), run applications (calculator, metronome, etc), and a lot more. While you’re at the Rockbox Utility, you can use it to install themes, Doom, and other goodies.

And finally, we’ll be installing a custom bootloader that will easily let you boot between the iPod OS and Rockbox. It’ll also include some extra options, such as doing into disk mode and completely shutting down your iPod.