Extending the Capacity of Creative Nomad IIc MP3 Players?

A not-so Anonymous Coward asks: "I recently bought a second hand Creative Nomad IIc. I've since found that it is a good little MP3 player, with one slight exception: it's lack of memory. Sixty-four megs of memory was good, but with the 10 and 20 GIG players out now it's a little lacking. Plus, being Canadian has it's downside: with the new 'tax' being applied to anything that can store music (another reference, here), MP3 players are set to double in price. Being the kind of person I am, I'd rather try upgrading my current MP3 player then buy a new one. Are there any ways to attach a laptop hard drive to my Nomad? Are there any Smart Media > IDE converters I could use? Is there any information on how to make one myself?"

Comments

driveless "jukeboxes"?

[TheSHAD0W]

Don't some MP3 player companies sell their "jukebox"-type units with no hard drive installed? I don't think Canada's laws impose that tariff on those units... You could then get a new or used notebook drive, and trip the MP3 fantastic.

Power

[den_erpel]

You will have the storage capacity for hours of MP3 on your little player when attaching a HD, but only minutes of music:
your HD will drain battery power, there is a good reason why there are no HDs in a handheld device in commercial products.
If power is not your concern (you'll keep the supply close or plugged in), a HD is a possibility.

If you want to upgrade your handheld, you'll have to look at e.g. flashcards.

Re:Power

[gl4ss]

... look out of the window, do some checking.

ipod has hd, archos has hd, nomad has.. theres a freakin swarm of products out there that have harddrive.

http://www.chipmunk.nl/iPod/ for a picture of opened ipod, that quite normal pcmcia hd look like flash to you?

Re:Power

[ivan256]

THey also have specially written software and a memory buffer so that the hard drive is powered down most of the time. They don't just run the hard drive like it's a flash card.

Re:The best part

[Lord Bitman]

My favorite part is when the 'fixing my laptop' guy is talking, he's running SETI@Home in the background. That's the sort of attention to detail in commercials I love.

Re:Drive Upgrades

[biglig2]

Reverse engineering etc. may not even be necessary; I've seen mods where people just use a sector copy program to copy the beginning of the existing drive to a newer, high capacity one.

A correction re: Ipods; they use a real IDE laptop hard drive, not PCMCIA; what differs from other players is that they use the new smaller 1.8" laptop drives rather than the more usual 2.5" drives.

I'd suggest anyone planning to upgrade a hard disk one stick witha 2.5" model anyhow, as these come in bigger capacities; IBM, for example, have a 60Gb Travelstar. Over 40 days of music, that should last you. ;-)

Re:You can't. Don't waste your time trying.

[zztzed]

IIRC Smart Media's pinout is the same as an ATA drive or something like that

Actually, no. That's CompactFlash you're thinking of. SmartMedia looks like this. There is a floppy disk adapter for SmartMedia, called FlashPath, but that's rather irrelevant here...

A (somewhat) proud owner speaks out

[Azerphale]

First lets clear up the specs of the Nomad IIc mp3 player (sorry, sign says "No oggs allowed"). The II designates this as the Creative's second effort to sucker users into paying good money for a player with some problems. The c means that you're not get the fm radio tuner present on the normal model II (don't worry, commercial radio is ass anyway). The IIc comes with an internal memory capacity of either 32, 64, or 128mb. Every model is also blessed/cursed to have a smartmedia expansion slot on the rear of the unit, tucked up under the battery cover. The unit has one Line Out/Headphone jack a built in microphone and a USB connector. Various buttons are also present for tinkering with things like volume, voice recording, and accessing the internal memory. The LCD is mercifully backlit with a delay that can be adjusted in the internal settings menu.

One of the biggest shortcomings of the unit is the lack of file organisation. Files are present in one long list with no "search" or "jump" function. To go from song 5 to song 15 takes 10 clicks of the "skip right" button. Only while your nomad is connected to your computer are you able to sort this list of unhappiness. So connecting a 10Gig hard drive would give you an amazing amount of storage and an RSI of your index finger.

The IIc does have updatable firmware (available from Creative)which dictates the maximum size of the smartmedia card that the unit can take. Unfortunately there are no firmware updates for the 128mb version but the 64mb updates seem to work ok.

Also, not to be forgotten, is the pox on the house of every Nomad user; Playcenter! This packaged in garbage software from Creative is the only way out of the box to store files on the your IIc to internal memory or smartmedia cards. The Nomad doesn't even show up as an external device in explorer. I've experienced repeated hangs/crashes when reading from 128mb smartmedia cards and long waits while it updates the database containing songs on my computer. Any respectable program should be able to handle a 6Gb+ mp3 collection without choking. The quick solution to this is Notmad Explorer (the free version only allows the transfer of 1 file at a time $15 US for the single player version $35 for all nomad support).

That's about it, so I present to you two major hurdles to overcome in hacking this little wonder:

1) Powering the unit and an external HD on the go. The battery cover must be off to access the smartmedia slot so you run the risk of that AA battery popping out at inopportune times. Perhaps you could power both through a 12v cigarette lighter outlet of a car.

2) Firmware. You'll have to become a master of rewriting the firmware or know someone who is to overcome the 128mb barrier, find some way to skip to a certain song, and allow folder organization for easy browsing.

Perhaps some potential for expansion lies in the USB connection on the side of the player.

Maybe instead of hacking away looking for a big storage fix, save your pennies and order a Zen from another country.

Smart Cards are not very smart

[Chris Canfield]

In case the other poster didn't bring it up, you can find updated drivers for the nomad IIc here, which will allow you to use 128 MB smart cards (if you can't already), which can be had for $40 or less.

The problem with going any further is that the driver for smartcards has to be on the device. Compact Flash cards have the driver on the card itself. It is a trivial matter to put in a 5 GB CF microdrive in CF 2 devices from 8 years ago, but it is impossible to use any particular smart media card unless the manufacturer has specifically programmed the device to be able to handle it. So unless you are willing to program the firmware for either the device or the recepticle, you probably aren't going to find what you are looking for*.

Of course, if you do, please keep us posted. We've got a few somewhat useless Rio PMP 300's that would love to be PMPed out.

Sorry, I've been saving that pun for years.

-C

*It's extremely unlikely, but theoretically possible, that you may be able to connect an IDE controller in place of the smart card controller, but I really doubt it.