Easiest Hack Ever: Revive Your MP3 Player with Rockbox

Still saving up to upgrade your aging MP3 player?  Or want the functionality of a higher-end player but can't yet justify the expense?  The recently-released Rockbox 3.0 is here to give new life to your player, and it supports more models than ever before--including many iPods.

What is Rockbox?  It's an open-source firmware/software package that completely replaces your current player's software.  It's not just a GUI replacement--it adds drag-and-drop file functionality to players, it adds playback support for most audio codecs including OGG and FLAC as well as MPEG video, and even adds support for games (Doom!) and small applications.  Most users report extended battery life as well.

Installation is easy with any supported, USB-connected player.  Simply download the Rockbox installer, run it, and follow the on-screen instructions.  A few clicks and your dusty old player will have a brand new pair of shoes in no time.  Here's a list of the currently supported players:

• Apple: 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano
  (not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd gen Nano, Classic or Touch)
• Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
• Cowon: iAudio X5, X5V, X5L, M5, M5L, M3 and M3L
• iriver: H100, H300 and H10 series
• Olympus: M:Robe 100
• SanDisk: Sansa c200, e200 and e200R series (not the v2 models)
• Toshiba: Gigabeat X and F series (not the S series)

Rockbox will build a database of your music with ID3 tag support, or you can browse by filetree.  It adds video capability (with support for multiple file types) on players that don't normally do video such as a 1st gen iPod nano, provided your player's CPU is fast enough.  You can read text files and browse photos.  Features like file renaming and deleting on the device, on-the-fly playlists, a 5-band equalizer, and user-created themes mean you can fully customize the sound and the look of your music. 

Note that while none of these features are groundbreaking in and of themselves, the point is that it adds this functionality to players that normally don't have it.  That means you can watch video on a "pre-fatty" nano, or play Asteroids on your Sansa E series.  Besides entertainment, there are small productivity plugins like currency converters, calculators, and a dictionary to give your player a more PDA-like quality.

In short, if you balk at the expense of products like the iPhone but wish your current player could carry its weight a little better, check out Rockbox.

--Aric A.

[Ed. Note: The site has been seeing a ton of traffic since the release of 3.0, so if the Rockbox site doesn't load for you at first, refresh or try again in a few minutes.]