Hey everybody, I'm a new member, but I've been lurking here without an account for a week or two. I got into tapes because I've always enjoyed older portable music players, (I collect and mod iPods mainly, add new battery, more internernal storage, bluetooth, etc,) and cassette seemed like a fun format to get into after I felt I had built my dream iPod, especially after one of my favorite bands released one of their older albums on cassette for shockingly cheap. I've been on the hunt at thriftshops, yard sales, sendico, and ebay ever since.
Welcome! I love the idea of a classic iPod with more storage and Bluetooth…would like to see what you’ve done
Welcome, we love all audio equipment, feel free to post the newer stuff, a lot of it is starting to get popular again.
Yeah, here are the two bluetooth mods, they're both pretty amateur. The board is a taotronics branded 3.5mm bluetooth adapter cut out of it's case, with all the switches and connectors desoldered. I didn't post any of the pictures of expanded storage, cause that's just a matter of getting an sd adapter that fits the ipod ribbon cable. mod one is soldered to the back side of the headphone jack for audio, and the upper power pins in the bottom right for power. It's the first one I did and employs a ton of tape and hot glue. Second one is attempt number two, soldered directly to the L and R channel pads on the motherboard (under the ribbon cable) for audio, same power source as before. I don't think either bluetooth board was being correctly powered by this setup, and both had terrible humming from not having a proper ground. It didn't matter anyway, though, because the ipod back is pretty thick metal, so in the end you only have a range of about a foot, so you needed to put them in a breast pocket to get reception. Others I spoke two had more luck with different types of wire, and various different bluetooth boards, but at the time it was a pretty finnicky mod. it may have improved since then, I don't know. Eventually I just got a little dongle that plugs into the 30-pin connector on the ipod, sounds better, lets you control playback with the touch controls on your bluetooth device, and uses less battery.
Thanks for the photos Here is one source of adapters if anyone is interested https://www.iflash.xyz/ I wonder if anyone has taken an iPod up to 4TByte yet ? The guy who sells the adapters has definitely done 1TByte. Years ago I used his CF adapter to make a 32GByte iPod Mini, which was very straightforward. However I don't use iTunes much so have switched to Sony MP3 players. I'm still keeping an eye on 1TByte Micro SD card prices to expand mine from the 400GByte I have at the moment. http://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/sony-network-walkman-personal-stereos.5800/
I've never seen 4tb, it might be possible, but after you have about 1TB installed getting an ipod working becomes more luck than skill. I've seen a couple of people try for 2tb with limited success. On the itunes front, my move is to make a portable installation of media monkey on the drive of the ipod, so you can add music on devices without itunes.
You would need very deep pockets to try for 4TB. As you say 2TB has been done using 4 x 512GByte cards which are more reasonably priced. I wonder how much Micro SD cards will be in a decades time? The 32GByte card I put in the iPod Mini wasn't cheap at the time I bought it, while now they are far cheaper than the iFlash adaptor.
