tins ::: Rick Klau's blog

New iPod on XP?

On a lark, I splurged last night and bought a 10 gig iPod.

Five hours of maddening gadget hell later, I still do not have a single song on my iPod. I’m not exactly clueless when it comes to making tech stuff work, and this has been a remarkable exercise in frustration.

The helpful (and I use the term loosely) Apple support guy concluded, “Well, it’s either the iPod, the cable, or the Firewire card.”

For those keeping score at home, those are the only three items it could have been: the iPod has a cable that connects to the Firewire card. At least he didn’t suggest it might have been the earbuds.

Argh. I really, really want this to work.

If anyone wants to help me debug this, the firewire card is working, and when plugged in the iPod actually says “Do not disconnect”. Yet the iPod manager can’t see the iPod and attemps to connect through Musicmatch are pointless. It keeps saying there’s no portable device available.

5 responses to “New iPod on XP?”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Try using EphPod. It works much better than MusicMatch:http://www.ephpod.com/

    Reply
  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    No dude, Im having the same problems. The trouble is with firewire on PCs. Apple developed the standard and since then loads of people have developed cards, but havent stuck to the standard. This causes incompatibilities. For example, with me, my computer finds the ipod fine and sees it as a normal drive, but cannot write to it at all. But this is only some of the time. My advice is to either buy a VERY standard firewire card or wait for the USB drivers in mid june.

    Reply
  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I have gone through three firewire cards on my dell laptops running XP. 2 firewire cards on desktop running windows 98. The one that works on the desktop is the belkin firewire card. The one that works on the laptop is the PC Ally firewire cardbus adapter. Ironically, this is an ancient card. Getting the ipods to work is no easy task. I had to reformat the drives on both ipods, then restore the software, then load the music. I too use Ephpod. I think Musicmatch is a cruel joke. All that said, I love my ipod (the new 10G). It was worth the suffering, I learned a lot and I am happy to hear that there will be USB support soon. If you want specifics on connecting, etc. email me.

    Reply
  4. Avatar
    Anonymous

    GuysSame problem with D-Link DRF-A3 (DRW-500 is same model).This card sees the IPOD but locks up everything on configure.Lawrence

    Reply
  5. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Second thought:I did get the 30GB new IPOD working. Fine on the Creative Platinum MK 1 sound card SB1394 firewire socket.Lawrence

    Reply

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