Songbird iPod development
I’ve started working on the 64-bit x86 port for the Songbird iPod extension. I used Parallels to run 32 bit Linux on my iMac, but Parallels doesn’t support 64-bit OS’s on the Mac. Thus, I’m running 64-bit Ubuntu on VMWare’s Fusion.
It’s in Beta, and it shows. I couldn’t boot from an iso image on my HD like I did with Parallels. I had to burn a CD first. It’s slow, but otherwise seems to work. I got Songbird running and playing MP3’s. I’m building the iPod extension right now.
I bought a G3 iBook on eBay. I’ll start the Mac PPC port of the iPod extension when it’s delivered.
January 24th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Can’t wait for the Mac PPC port! Keep up the good work…
January 24th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Wait no longer. I got my G3 iBook, and the PPC Mac port is now available.
January 25th, 2007 at 9:30 am
GREAT! I’m trying this right now…
January 25th, 2007 at 9:43 am
I just installed the new extension, and it doesn’t seem to recognize my iPod. Yes, the device is set to hard drive mode, but it is formated in HFS+ (incompatible with Windows PC), so I don’t know if it could have something to do with this.
January 25th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Are you trying this on Windows or a PPC Mac? If the iPod doesn’t mount on your system and show up as a readable drive, the extension won’t be able to read it. You may need to reformat your iPod to FAT32 in order for it to work on your system.
January 25th, 2007 at 10:16 am
No, I am on a PPC Mac. It mount on my system, on iTunes, and show up as a readable drive. I’m just asking if the extension was written in such way that the iPod needs to be formated in FAT32 or if I can keep it in HFS+ mode?
January 25th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Hmm… there’s nothing FAT32 specific that I can think of in the extension. I’ll have to see if I can reformat one of my iPods to HFS+ and try it out.
January 25th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
I’ve backup up my data, format the iPod in FAT32 (I needed to do this anyway, I want to be able to listen to my music on Windows computer as well) but it doesn’t seem to have any impact. Maybe there’s a conflict between extensions? I’ll try to install it on my PPC Mac at home tonight…
January 25th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
OK, well it doesn’t sound like it’s specific to HFS+. That much is good. Did you try manually mounting your iPod using the “Tools>Mount iPod…” menu?
January 25th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
THE LINK IS BAD! I haven’t noticed, but “Mac-PPC” links to the file SBIPodDevice-0.8.4-mac-x86.xpi which by its name indicates me that it is the wrong version. That’s what happen when you use copy-paste extensively. I manually typed SBIPodDevice-0.8.4-mac-ppc-xpi and I will try it right away…
January 25th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Doh! I just fixed the link. Hopefully, that will do it for you.
January 26th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Works fine… A bit slow, but I deeply appreciate your effort! Bidirectional transfer of files between the iPod and the computer is a fonctionnality that really contrast Songbird from iTunes…
January 29th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
I’m glad it’s working for you now. Thanks for pointing out the bogus link. I’ll be working on improving the performance. That may have to wait for some optimizations in Songbird itself.