Need help with my actual chiPod
 

So my parents go to china and adopt my little sister and bring back 4 iPod nano knock off's and I (being the computer geek of the family) have to get them in working order to give to my 2 computer illiterate cousins and my mom.

They're very odd little players, I can sync it with windows media player, but it won't play the songs. I can put folders of music on there but it won't play anything but the two Gwen Stefani albums I put on there (both are ripped directly from the CD which might have something to do with it) and 1 mp3 file I put on there, but after I skip past the first song it'll play for a few seconds then say "File corrupt" and restart. It says it's 4 gig and so far I'm believing it.

I don't know if the firmware that comes on these is bad (it doesn't seem awfully well put together) but it'd be serviceable enough if I could get it to play something other than Gwen Stefani.

If you need any specific information on the type of player, I can post a pic.

I'd appreciate any help or advice you could give me.

buaman22 , looks like the players are memory-hacked. i'll suggest to format the players with MP3 Utilities Disk Tools, guide here http://www.mympxplayer.org/how-to-re...ck-vt2400.html

Prolong file corruption and player restarts like you are experiencing would generally end up with firmware corruption, and disable the player.

Try the format first and see if the other problems are solved.

could you explain the term 'memory hacked', I don't want to be a total newb, but what is it and why do they do it?

Hi, a memory hack is something that scammers do to players to make it look like they have more memory than they actually do. The hack tricks the computer into reading the false memory 4gb, 8gb, etc. It shows that you are loading that much worth or music or videos onto the player. What it is really doing is writing partial or ghost files to it and then when you try to play them, you will have format errors, freezing, and restarts. This will continue to happen until the hack is removed.

Follow the link lattesurf posted and follow the instructions to determine the real memory of the players.

Also, whatever you do, do NOT update the firmware. You will brick (kill) your player and then you will have to find the correct firmware to get it running again.

Hope this helps.

Forgot to add that memory hacks are a very common scam, especially on eBay. All the chipods listed as 8gbs on there are hacked and most of the 4gb players too.

Very helpful so far (I'm on dial up so DL's are taking forever).

It's weird, this chiPod is actually Chinese, not some internet scam, (I don't know how many of those you actually get), they gott'm for about 20 US dollars apiece so even if it's only a 2 gig, I think we came out ok, esp. since it'll play videos and a whole host of other things

Yeah, China is where most of the hacked players originate from. Hopefully yours will be at least a 2gb. My 4 turned out to be 1gb and one I got for my nephew turned out to be 512mb. :evil:

The players themselves turned out to be pretty decent once the memory hacks were removed. Both play videos pretty nice for the price I paid. 8)

What size headphone jack is on your players? If it's a 2.5mm you might want to purchase a 2.5 to 3.5mm adapter off eBay.

yeah, i just got off work and I'm going to work on'm now, the head phone jack works with normal head phones so now the question is just how much memories on them.

Ok, I just did it and it says that it is 108 MB's....I'm gonna do surgery on it and check the serial number, but I certainly hope I did something wrong

nope, looked up the serial number, it's a 128mb chip, damn chinese

Sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, it happens a lot.

It should be noted that spot market prices for the types of NAND Flash used in these players have risen past $16 for 1MB (8Mbit) chips and $31 for 2MB (16Mbit). That's more than double what the prices were at their lowest this spring.

Obviously, the bigger manufacturers have more stable contracts (and probably better prices than this), but it should serve as a good pointer as to what a reasonable price is for these things. Add a couple of $ each for: the screen, chipset, battery, PCB + auxiliary electronics, casing and assembly, etc., and you see how $17-22 (+ dealer profit & shipping) for a 1GB player manufactured May/June is a reasonable floor for as cheap as a Chipod is ever going to get (until Flash prices go down again and capacities increase that is).

When something sounds too cheap to be true, it usually is.

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Edit: I'm sorry to hear that you got cheated. To take stab at a positive spin on something negative, they probably support Ogg Vorbis (the aoTuV version sound pretty darn good down to 80kb/s), thus you could still be able to get a reasonable amount of music on to them even @ 128MB. Might not be entirely useless. Oh, and do they have card slots? If so, a Gig of MiniSD or Transflash is available from ~$11-13 at reputable dealers and could put them back in the 'quite usable after all' category.

Yes... this is even true for inexpensive electronic gadgets coming out of China by the tonne!

I bought a Chipod from a reputable seller in the USA after doing some research on and off eBay. The player (2GB) certainly wasn't the cheapest on eBay; in fact, it was one of the more expensive ones listed of its type, but it is a legitimate 2 GB player.

Personally, I wouldn't pay much under $50 US (at today's going rates) for such a player if one wants to be certain they're getting the advertised memory capacity.

well, this was a straight from China deal (they were in China adopting my little sister) and he went to the electronics market and got them, didn't spend much on them at all so it's no big loss and I have 2 mp3 players myself (my SLVR and my old gateway 20 Gig), not to mention my 2 cousins are demonic and despite all their video game playing, they don't know jack about computers.

One positive out of it is that I have 4 sets of headphones (although they are kinda short) and 4 USB to mini USB cords.

I wonder if I could use them like little 128mb flash drives...

buaman22 , these players can also be used as flash drives. The way the player works is quite simply a firmware reading data off a flash drive. But seems pretty bulky to be used as a flash drive alone.

yeah, they're basically trash