I learned it helps to have all your folders as children of a single root directory that you can generate a single playlist from. You can save your folder list so you don’t have to that each time.Įven random track shuffle isn’t exactly straightforward, and I can’t say that I’ve mastered the process well enough to provide my own documentation for folk yet either. First generate your folder list, wait a while until the script finishes, and then play shuffled. It requires using a handy script “random folder advance config” that is located in the plugins/applications directory.

Setting up Album Shuffle wasn’t as straightforward as I would have liked but it works.

Syncing my iPod is now a much more straightforward process. On the other hand, it’s a remarkably robust operating system for one classified by its developers as unstable. For now, Rockbox classifies its 6g build as “unstable.” Rockbox does crash my iPod, way more often than with the original iPod operating system did. Not all my videos will play as they had before. Yes, there are bugs, and no, none of the 3rd party hardware that I had to extend the iPod features (radio, wireless control, etc.) work anymore. I’m happy to run open source software on hardware that was difficult to reverse-engineer. (Rockbox will run on the iPod Classic if you first install the opensource Emcore firmware).

UPDATE (May 2013): For the record, I’ve formatted my iPod back to FAT32 so I could install the open source Rockbox operating system for music players.

Winamp ipod classic