Installing Rockbox on most Generations of iPods

Rockbox is an operating system that supports many MP3 players, including:

• Apple: 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano
  (not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd gen Nano, Classic or Touch)
• Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
• Cowon: iAudio X5, X5V, X5L, M5, M5L, M3 and M3L
• iriver: H100, H300 and H10 series
• Olympus: M:Robe 100
• SanDisk: Sansa c200, e200 and e200R series (not the v2 models)
• Toshiba: Gigabeat X and F series (not the S series)
• Additional models are in development

This article will take you through the steps necessary to install it on any version of iPod.

Update: It is no longer necessary to manually install Rockbox. Use the Rockbox utility to automatically install it on your MP3 player:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/RockboxUtility

If you want to manually install it for some reason, keep reading below.

First, download the latest firmware that pertains to your iPod. Daily revisions of Rockbox can be downloaded here: http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtm

Attach the iPod to you computer and extract the files to it. Ensure it is installed to the root of your iPod. For example, if your iPod is assigned to drive letter "I" you would want to extract Rockbox to I:\rockbox-xxxxx (xxxxx being the type of iPod you own.)

Now that the firmware is on your iPod, we need a way of telling the iPod to load it instead of the default firmware on startup. This is achieved with the Rockbox bootloader: http://download.rockbox.org/bootloader/ipod/ipodpatcher/win32/ipodpatcher.exe
Download and run the patcher to set Rockbox as the default operating system.

Finally, restart your iPod by holding down the menu and select buttons for five seconds. If the installation was completed succesfully, Rockbox will load. If something went wrong and your iPod will not boot, hold down the menu and select buttons to reboot the iPod again, and activate disk mode by holding down the select and play buttons.

Adding music to Rockbox is even easier than using iTunes. Simply create a folder on your iPod and copy the music files to it. Rockbox will automatically detect and build a catalog of your music.