Category: Site news

Posted on

Just a very minor update

I know I haven’t posted in quite some time. I’ve been busy with getting my life in a position where I can move in with my wifey. But I’ve been distracted by some health issues. No worries though, I’ll pull though.

On that note, I have been working on finding a more permanent place for the server that runs this blog and for now have found a place that I’m hoping will be it’s permanent place. Bad news is, I need more ram as I’m running a few other things on here as well. 16GB of ram isn’t cutting it anymore.

Posted on

Some odds and ends for the Creative Zen Vision M

A while back I bought a bunch of old mp3 players on the ebay. I’ve fixed most of them. Sold one of them. I’m using one of them. The rest; a Zune 30, an iPod mini 1st gen, and a Creative Zen Vision M. All but the Zen I have fixed. Why not the Zen you ask? It’s because the device is very picky about replacement batteries and most(all) replacements won’t work unless you run an old firmware. Version 1.41.01 or older to be exact. And therein lies the problem, finding that firmware or one older will lead you down a rabbit hole of broken links, forum posts(most of which aren’t in English), and sketchy sites that don’t even have the firmware. Creative themselves no longer has the firmware either.

So… I decided to go on a mission to find this “golden firmware”. Searched countless sites, clicked countless links, translated who knows how many pages just to find it. And I have. Yay~ Not only that, but I’m hosting it here. That’s right. Here. Along with some odds and ends so no one else has to.

Zen Vision M 30GB firmware version 1.51.01
Zen Vision M 30GB firmware version 1.41.01
Zen Vision M 30GB firmware version 1.30.02

Posted on

Moved to a new hosting setup

So I decided to make things easier for myself and migrate this blog from running on bare metal to a virtual machine as well as making a backup. We’re still self-hosted, but now on a Hyper-V instance. The original hardware will be re-purposed for something else eventually since I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet. Until then it’ll still sit in it’s corner, out of the way like a good girl.

Migrating wasn’t as hard as I thought or how every guide made it seem. I just had to copy over some directories from the old machine to the VM instance. I’m sure you’re “not supposed” to do it this way, but oh well. All I have left is migrating my backups but to be honest, I’m not even going to do that. It’ll just be easier to just make a new VM and configure it.

Posted on

New shop and a life update

So I’ve been busy folks. So there’s a lot to catch up on. Been trying to find work, get my life to how it was pre-covid. Trying to save up again for the big move. Been trying to get into the iPod and Zune buy/sell/repair business. I also got a couple more things in the works. One of which is a CafePress shop. There’s a few things up now and hopefully more during the next coming days and weeks. The link is here and if you see something you like do buy it. It will really help me out.

Posted on

A minor update

Replacing the screen on the Zune is still on hold. Not much a choice in the matter since I’m having some trouble finding a replacement screen. I could always just buy another one for parts on the ebay but that seems a waste.

However, I do have another pet project on my hands. I found a logic board for a 6th generation iPod classic in my junk drawer. The battery connector is gone as well as a trace. But it does still seem to work. At least enough to be stuck on the battery charging screen when I connect it to my PC. So all I need to do is find where that trace leads and solder in a bodge wire. Shouldn’t be too hard…I hope, the trace is tiny and I’m not even sure if it’s 100% needed. It looks like it’s just for a temp sensor. It also could be for balance, but I doubt it since it’s just a single cell. Here’s to getting it to work. Cheers~

The logic board in question
Posted on

On pause

Sorry for the lack of update y’all. I’ve been dealing with some personal stuff. My wedding is postponed until further notice. Seasonal depression is starting to take hold. Money has been tight, causing the Zune repair to be put on hold.

Good news though. I’m heading back to work in a week-ish. Hopefully that’ll help with most things. In the meantime though I’ll try to post more regularly. Maybe post more recipes.

Posted on

Good news, bad news and a Zune update.

Good news first. The battery replacement for the Zune works. Now for the bad news. Had my first issue with the server. During it’s first reboot it wouldn’t POST. Like at all. I tried using a different outlet. Tried resetting the CMOS, and it was just a whole bunch of nothing. So like any other tech I started to take everything apart and just get down to the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. Still nothing. At this point I’m starting to get worried. I don’t have any spare CPUs or RAM laying around and not much money to spare to get replacements. So I decided to pull out all the ram and just try one stick at a time. That seemed to work. Tried two, that didn’t work. Tried just one stick again and that worked. Now two sticks worked, then three sicks worked. Just for the heck of it I tried all four sticks and much to my surprise it worked like there was nothing wrong. I ran memtest and had no errors. I have no clue what happened. Everything was fine before the initial reboot. I just needed to reboot to update the kernel. Everything seems fine now. I’m just going to chalk it up to a gremlin or something. I’m hoping it’s not going to be an ongoing issue. I mean in a pinch I can probably run this off of my Beaglebone or Raspberry Pi…maybe. I rather not have to try.

Also while taking apart the Zune to put in the new battery, the display ribbon ripped. At least on some boards the display ribbon is also held down with some adhesive. This wasn’t mentioned on the iFixit guide at all. Not that it would have helped to know. The whole guide is mediocre at best. I will try do write my own when I get the new display. At least a new display isn’t too expensive. It’s just about 15$ shipped off of ebay.