Nooooooo!

My iPod classic 80gb 5th gen (I think) has finally decided it’s had enough. After years of living in the glove box of various cars, and navigating the lined and dodgy screen, it’s not waking up. Well, it does, but then promptly dies again.

So what’s next?

It’s literally just to live in the van, don’t need and probably can’t afford an Apple device, the van stereo doesn’t have Bluetooth or anything so it’s got to be usb connectable, it’s not got to hold as much as 80gb (I really should update my music) (see another thread of mine about Depeche Mode dominance in shuffle mode…) I don’t want or need a colour screen or a touch screen or fancy album art showing while playing, and it’s got to be ‘value’.

It’s been probably a couple of years since I put any music on it so I believe iTunes doesn’t even exist anymore?

The cool kids are streaming I believe but I’m guessing that would eat my data.

The dream is to be able to listen to digital radio in the van too. Any devices that do all that?

Cheers 👊

An iPod classic earlier

Mine did this at the turn of the year, went to turn it on one day and nothing….
I’ve been listening to CDs since. It very therapeutic deciding what to take for each journey, like a little trip to the past.

Depending on your stereo, can you just load the music onto a usb stick and use the radio to navigate it?

Or your smartphone, or a cheap second-hand smartphone. They’re pretty much the reason music players have died off.

Fix the iPod?

They are easy to get into and it might be worth a play.

Other than that, an older iPod touch could be worth a look. Will be easy to put music on and you could get one with damaged screen if it is only controlled by the cars stereo.

iTunes isn’t dead – I use it often for my car based touch.

Usb sticks are much cheaper but a pain to put music on if you’ve had iTunes and let it organise your music. They can also be annoying in use as some car stereos play the tracks alphabetically from usb.

It might be that the hard drive has died…. in which case you could swap it for a new SSD.

Afaik, the iPhone 6 is the last iteration to feature a proper headphone socket, and some feature 256gb of storage!

Could be worth exploring a fix I guess but I’ve got a lot on elsewhere really.

I don’t use the stereo interface to navigate music on it at all to be honest, though I believe it can be done, although in a bit of a shonky fashion.  It’s a right faff to do it and dangerous really. I tend to set it on shuffle before I drive from the iPod itself, or select whatever then drive.

Really, I’m after something that can be controlled on it’s own interface, that I can then plug in and drive off into the sunset.

Depending on how the head unit controls the usb, a usb stick may not remember its position when the ignition is switched off and goes back to A.
as for dab, look at dab transmitters in Amazon, cheap and relatively effective depending on where you live

I’d vote for repairing your existing iPod. Or even replacing it with a functional one of the same from ebay.

I was in the same situation a couple of years ago and decided to just repair and upgrade my iPod classic. I bought a new battery and an internal adaptor which plugs in where the hard drive was and allows you to use micro usb’s for storage. You can run as much as 128gb in the 5th gen and it’s cheap to do. Has worked perfectly ever since.

I think I used a kit from these guys

What about Android – budget Android go based phone plus 64gb micro sd. Don’t bother with sim

“ iTunes isn’t dead – I use it often for my car based touch.”

I think it might have gone or changed to the Apple Music app on iOS and possibly even the latest macOS?

I would double check what the status is before getting any latest sw updates.

But regarding listening to tunes in your car again. I don’t know of one device that can do all of that, DAB radio and music from USB.

But a Pure Highway device will get you DAB radio on your existing radio.

And if you can get your music onto your phone then you can send the audio from your phone to the Pure device via Bluetooth.

Or maybe a second hand iPod and Bluetooth from iPod to Pure gadget. iPods can’t be demand at the mo and surely not a rare collectors item yet so I’d hope are inexpensive on the second hand market.

I have done the same as ‘arogers’ but on a ipod mini, worked perfectly but battery is a bit flakey so it needs to stay on charge whilst in use.

That said I’m currently using a 12v FM transmitter which has 2 built in USB ports for charging but one will also play music from a USB stick.

I load that it with music, set it to a FM station thats tuned in for the FM transmitter and all works perfectly.

It also has bluetooth so can take calls or stream music from my phone as well.

Was about £14 from Amazon,

Same as this one

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Transmitter-CHGeek-Bluetooth-Wireless-Handsfree/dp/B07N18X4MQ/ref=sr_1_3?ascsubtag=1ba00-01000-ubp00-win10-other-smile-uk000-gatwy-feature-SEARC&keywords=fm+transmitter+bluetooth&qid=1570876753&smid=A1OHCQF5JONB0Z&sr=8-3&pldnSite=1

I have a 160gb iPod classic in storage. If anyone wants to buy it I’m sure we come to an arrange (£60?). I’ll be a week or so before I can dig it out.

iTunes is ‘dead’ but I’m reliably informed that the functionality for older iPods is still present, mostly in Finder instead.

Ask your mates for one of their old iPhones. Buy a dongle so you can plug it in. Sorted.

I’ve got an old 5s for the car. It ‘only’ takes 64gb of music, but I find that’s enough for most journeys.

Fix the the ipod or buy dogbone’s – I would but i have 3 classics already.

Your broken one will either be the disk (easily replaced – link to follow) or the battery, also easily replaced.

I’ve bought a SD card adapter for mine, its been a 250gb ipod for a while. Thinking of going for the MicroSD adapter so can make it higher capacity. Pretty easy to change, or I’ll do it for you (no guarantees though!) Great way to breathe new life into em.

iFlash-Quad

(or ebay)

oh and CopyTrans or iTunes can be used for the music transfer (both free).

How is it connecting via USB? Does the van just see it as mass storage? If so, a USB pendrive would do the same job.

Peoples use for itunes must vary.

I use it to store all my music in apple lossless (having had 900+ CDs) and now buy music through Melodishop, usually in FLAC. These are then converted to apple lossless and into itunes, where I use it to manage the ipod using a random album playlist every sync.

Works perfectly and just updated everything 3 hours ago.

Yeah the van knows it’s an iPod and I can control it from the stereo. It’s just…clunky.

I’ve just ordered a dab radio thingymebob. Just a cheap one for now, but it can do radio obvs, plus it has an sd card slot up to 64 gig so maybe that’ll do.

I’ll see how it goes and report back. Hoping that the windscreen aerial(if you call them that) works ok.

I’ve got this parrot Bluetooth hands free thing that came fitted in the van so I’ll remove that and put the dab adaptor in its place, which also does hands free calls too supposedly 👍

Same here (as the previous post!) – VW has an iPod adapter in the glovebox. Sound is shit though, so I have mine plugged into the aux port.

Is a new head unit an option rather than cocking about with external devices?

DAB lives or dies by the aerial.

Yeah I might look into  another head unit if this adaptor isn’t much cop. See what the Ariel is like too and beef it up if needs be.

Just found my old ipod classic which died (partially boots up but no more) ages ago…

So I could whack an SSD inside and plug into my ‘puter to revive it??

What drive is recommended??

Mikertroid I bought one of these https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/172537011681 and slapped 4 x 256GB mini SD cards in it. The website https://www.iflash.xyz/ has loads of upgrade info on it (the advice on flash storage cards should be read before purchasing them). While you’re in there get a new battery fitted and you’re good to go.

Cheers Sandwich! Will look at all that when I can get some charge into the thing!

Just bookmarking, although @dogbone if you still have that classic I might be interested?

Mikertroid, does it work when plugged in? If it doesn’t its probably beyond help or needs a new logic/main board. If it does it’s new battery time. (I bought a series 5 classic to SSD especially for Mrs S car, the first one didn’t charge at all but worked with the replacement battery, second one has a TB SSD fitted and works a treat with large bit-rate files).

mikertroid
Cheers Sandwich! Will look at all that when I can get some charge into the thing!

Oh right, cos my post yesterday with the same thing was invisible was it?! 😠

Your linky no worky DezB. 🙂

I think it might have gone or changed to the Apple Music app on iOS and possibly even the latest macOS?

I would double check what the status is before getting any latest sw updates.

No, it absolutely has NOT gone! Apple has done what people have been begging for for years, and split iTunes back into its components, Music, Books, etc. If updating to OSX Catalina, everything currently in iTunes, playlists, etc will behave exactly the same in Music, it’s all a lot less complicated now.
If it was my iPod, I’d seriously look into getting an SSD conversion and a new battery fitted, depending on firmware, I believe it’s possible to take the capacity up to 256Gb using SD or MicroSD cards. Certainly an iPod Classic is worth keeping alive, the click-wheel interface has never really been improved on, the machine can easily be operated in a pocket without actual being able to see it, shame they never kept producing them.

Your linky no worky DezB

Bleedin does. You just click the “Read more” in the pic

capacity up to 256Gb using SD or MicroSD cards
You can go to 1tb with the microSD card adapter THAT I HAVE LINKED TO MANY TIMES!! 🤪

Links too subtle Dez for some of us of a certain age on here.

Think its borked. Kinda starts up but iTunes won’t talk to it and I can’t get it to display its About screen….

DezB, did you post earlier? 😉

When this happened to my iPod I was amazed to discover that my wife and son had no fewer than five old iPhones in the hosue between them, so reluctantly I am using one of them to store my music, much though I dislike it and its lack of intuitiveness.

DezB, did you post earlier?

I want CREDIT! 😆