Eggman Posted February 20, 2006 Share Posted February 20, 2006 I'm too cheap to buy an iPod, so I thought I'd just use my Palm Pilot as a MP3 player. Course, now I have the problem of not enough space. So I've decided to make my own ghetto iPod using a computer hard drive. I'm looking for a method to get information off an IDE, SATA or USB hard drive using my Zire 72's SD slot or its USB port. I don't care how many adapters it would need or whatever. Can someone help me make Apple lose $350? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbjonas Posted February 20, 2006 Share Posted February 20, 2006 will the Zire recognize a USB hard drive if you plug it in? That seems like the simplest option to me. Just get the interface for an IDE drive from a USB HD enclosure... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eggman Posted February 20, 2006 Author Share Posted February 20, 2006 Thanks Jbjonas, but the Zire has one of those mini-USB ports and all I have on hand is a thumb drive. I'd need some cable that could join the two, but everything's closed at 8 PM on Sunday in Georgia... Can anyone else help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbjonas Posted February 20, 2006 Share Posted February 20, 2006 figure out the pin-outs, and solder yourself your own cable also, I didn't realize it had to be done tonight... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. Bear Helms Posted February 20, 2006 Share Posted February 20, 2006 USB hard drives exist and would offer the highest likelihood of connecting. The drive itself may need to be formatted with FAT32 prior to using it with the Zire, or it could be the Zire has to format it... assuming there's a format command for when you use memory cards. Then you take the drive to a PC (or OSx86) and copy over the songs, and hopefully that should work for you. The mini-USB connector actually is standard, too. It's used for Digital Cameras a lot. Find a cable meant to connect between a Camera and a PC. Or if the Zire came with a USB cable to attach it to a PC, simply take the big end of that cable and plug it into a USB drive. Some USB drives have that big square connector. I think there's a way to "gender change" that plug to something the other end of the Zire cable connects with, but we're deep into territorial waters I've not explored yet. The big square end of a USB cable is typically known as the "peripheral end" so you get a cable that is mini-usb for the computer side and normal peripheral end for the other, and that should hook up the Zire to an external USB drive. What drive would be good for this purpose? That's a damn good question. I paid like $20 for a USB enclosure I put a laptop 2.5" hard drive into, but that drive is worth like $90 by itself - I only had it because I had upgraded my Mac Mini internal drive to 80gb. I believe connection isn't going to be the problem, chiefly. It is going to be the expense of getting a portable hard drive with USB interface for under $100 - $150 and you're in the ballpark for a 1gb Nano... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eggman Posted February 20, 2006 Author Share Posted February 20, 2006 I found this awesome USB cable that has removable heads so you can make your own customized cable. How awesome is that? I made a mini-USB (Male) to USB (Female) cable and plugged one end into the Zire and the other into a thumb drive I had lying around. No go. Does anyone know of a driver for this sort of thing or a way to do it with the SD slot? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbjonas Posted February 20, 2006 Share Posted February 20, 2006 The thumb drive draws power from the USB bus to operate. I don't know the technical specs for your Zire, but I'm guessing it can't supply enough power for the drive to work. It might only work with 'passive' USB devices. Do you have a USB hard drive that has a separate power source, perhaps to test if the Zire can recognize this one? Also the Zire might not even have the proper interface via USB to recognize a USB drive. It might only be there for syncing. I would check online to see what kind of peripherals you can buy for your Zire - maybe existing products will give you more ideas for a solution (or see whats possible). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ampTK Posted February 24, 2006 Share Posted February 24, 2006 I don't think Palms are designed to be USB Hosts, so it looks remote via the USB port. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eggman Posted February 25, 2006 Author Share Posted February 25, 2006 Yeah. I asked a Palm developer, and he responded very cruelly, basically saying that it's impossible. Oh well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ampTK Posted February 25, 2006 Share Posted February 25, 2006 Do you want a cheap iPod? Buy an old iPod with it's drive damaged (Really cheap!). Open it and use any old laptop drive with it; or maybe a standard (gimogus for an ipod) 3.5'' HD and use/make the needed adaptor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Bond Posted February 26, 2006 Share Posted February 26, 2006 Do you want a cheap iPod? Buy an old iPod with it's drive damaged (Really cheap!). Open it and use any old laptop drive with it; or maybe a standard (gimogus for an ipod) 3.5'' HD and use/make the needed adaptor. Haha...that would be great to see. Post pics if you actually do it. I'm not sure if there's a way to get an SD-to-USB connector...you could try figuring out the pinouts and whatnot, and then making a hack-in-the-box cable. But even then, I doubt you'd get enough voltage from the SD slot to power a harddrive. Your best bet is to go and get one of those 2/4/6gb SD cards. It may cost a bit, but at least you don't have to buy a new device, and you're saving a ton of space! EDIT: A quick ebay search shows you can probably get 4gb SD card for around $150 canadian. Do the conversion, and that's about $134 US. Not too bad, considering 512mb cards were that much not long ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lkr Posted February 26, 2006 Share Posted February 26, 2006 well, my friend uses his SD Card reader or something like that and says it works great for him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ampTK Posted February 26, 2006 Share Posted February 26, 2006 Haha...that would be great to see. Post pics if you actually do it. There are some pictures about that around the web, I can't remember any specific sites. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts