Ipod on Win98

[hedin]

Has anyone tried the I-pod on Win98 or Win98SE? I read a review from one person that said it locked up his computer and wouldn't work until he installed WinME. Unfortunately this is not an option right now.

 

[Woodman]

My brother just got it 2 days ago, without any sort of input from me (the idiot lol). The first problem was that my system lacked a firewire port, so i had to go & buy a PCI card.

After a smooth install, i tried installing the software in. Unfortunatly, like many others know, it doesnt support 98SE, i was this close to kicking his ass for getting this thing!

After scouring the web for fixes, most suggest 2 software Xplay & Ephpod (more love the latter though), here are links:
<A HREF="http/www.ephpod.com" target="_new">http/www.ephpod.com</A>
<A HREF="http/www.mediafour.com" target="_new">http/www.mediafour.com</A>


So i ended up trying the latter. Unfortunatly the instructions wernt very clear, apparently 98SE has very poor firewire support, & required this patch from Microsoft:
<A HREF="http/www.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/contents/WURecommended/S_WUFeatured/1394/Default.asp" target="_new">1394 update</A> (Shortened link)

I patched it in & still the program wouldnt work. The drive does say "Ok to disconnect", which means it is being recognized by 98SE. What needs to be done was that iPod should be seen as a new drive, which then Ephpod could then use. That didnt happen in my case, so i turned to Xplay.

After installing Xplay, well it didnt work straight away. I had to tweak various settings back & forth, alter the firewire plug between the 2 ports, & hard/soft-booted tonnes of times before something happened. When it finally recognized the drive, Windows installed additional components from the installation disk & voila, a new drive appeared.

Xplay worked like a charm after that. The unfortunate thing is that its only shareware, & so i have to find a way to make this thing work before it stops working. When i get the iPod back from my bro, ill try to reinstall Ephpod & see if it'll work again.


And another thing, another forum said a lot of folks successfully got the iPod software to work by simply replacing some windows files. Im not very sure what they were talking about though, here's the thread:
<A HREF="http/www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Q_20417943.html" target="_new">http/www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Q_20417943.html</A>

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Woodman on 02/13/03 05:53 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Woodman]

Update:

I scoured around looking for the full version of Xplay, but unfortunatly none of the shops here where i live were selling it. I dont have a credit card on which to buy it over the net, so i have little choice but to install Windows XP & use the software that came with the iPod. I have a little more than a week left before with shareware version stops working. So it'll be a race to upderstand & learn how to operate XP in a spare drive, backup my files, install XP over to my new drive & hope everything goes smoothly .

As for Ephpod, well i didnt get to try it just yet. As soon as i do however, ill make another update.

 

[Woodman]

2nd update:

I installed Windows XP & have been trying it out for a cople days now. It wasnt as i expected it to be, it works very similarly to Windows 98 (thank goodness ), & is pretty easy to use.

Well after installing it, i immediately installed Xplay. I didnt like it very much, but it was the only thing that worked on my previous Win98 system. Unfortunatly it expired yesterday, so i immediately installed the default software supplied with IPod.

In my very personal opinion, i think that software sucked big time. It was hard to use, it was inefficient, it was *really* slow, & frankly i thought its eyecandy coated GUI was completely unnecessary & insulting to users.

Hope was almost lost until i thought about Ephpod once again, and oh my god what a tremendous difference it was to Xplay & IPod's Musicmatch crap. It was very easy to use, the GUI was fast & pleasent to the eyes, i also loved its no-nonsense approach, but best of all, its completely free!

I must say, im very pleased with Ephpod & i really hope that you & everyone else gets to try it for your IPod, you wont regret it . And by the way, it doesnt always work on Win98, it worked very well on XP.

Well im done here, & i hope some of you finds this helpful, even in a little way. Goodnight fellow techies & may the world of technology march on .