Nano with old accesories

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Silent Assasin

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 1, 2004
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Ok, so I was one of the original I-pod users and still have and use my first edition 10 gig I-pod. This this is a brick compared to the nano and not much more memory. After seeing the nano first hand, I really felt the need to upgrade but I still have a couple questions.

Does anyone know if the nano still has the same connection that older regular ipods have? Like my question is, will it work with my car charger and fm transmitter? I probably won't use it much in the car because my plan is to make a semi-permenant mount with my old ipod. But it would still be nice to be able to charge the nano in my car if need to be. Also, will it alloy me to connect it to my computer using my firewire cable which I currently use with my first edition ipod? Or does it HAVE to be USB 2.0 now.....?
 
the first generation ipod has no dock connector whereas the nano does

you have to use USB

if the fm transmitter is a standard jack then it should work

dunno about the car charger
 
crap, so your saying that I have to use the dock to charge it???? The car charger that I have is the Monster brand. It plugs into the bottom of the ipod and then plugs into the ciggerette lighter. This thing also is what transmits the tunes.

Also, what makes it so different that you have to use the provided dock and usb? Why don't they use firewire anymore?

Edit: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=TB003LL/A
This thing to be exact.

Edit2: found this in the small print details "Charging via USB or FireWire to computer system or power adapter" but apple doesn't sell FireWire cables specifically for the nano which leads me to believe that my current cable will work...... But then with more reading, the dock actually helps keep the battery live longer..... All this reading is just making me more confused, it probably doesn't help that I'm extremely tired either...
 
That charger should work, but it also means your 10GB iPod isn't a first generation. Only the third onward had the dock connector. Also, many FM transmitters plug into the headphone jack and the remote jack together - if that's the case, it won't work with the Nano.

EDIT: Nm, that Monster charger has an FM transmitter built in - you should be good to go then.
 
ramuman said:
That charger should work, but it also means your 10GB iPod isn't a first generation. Only the third onward had the dock connector. Also, many FM transmitters plug into the headphone jack and the remote jack together - if that's the case, it won't work with the Nano.

EDIT: Nm, that Monster charger has an FM transmitter built in - you should be good to go then.
Click to expand...

So the bottom connection on the nano IS the SAME as older ipods??? And no, my 10gig ipod does not have the docking station. I just simply connect the ipod to my computer with a single fire wire cable. Ipod - firewire cable(no dock) - computer. This is how original ipods came. The USB didn't even exist at the time for ipod. I even had to buy a $20 3 port firewire PCI card just to use the dang thing. My first gen ipod also came with the wall charger which I now see is another $30 bucks. But my wall charger is for a firewire port which is the main reason I'm asking about this. I also have no avalible usb ports in the back of my computer. I had 4, used them up and added a 4 port hub that is also full. My joystick is plugged into the front but I don't like haveing pretty much permenant cables hang out the front of my computer.... I might end up buying a 5 port PCI card but I would love it if I didn't have to.....
 
The nano comes with a Dock connector to USB2.0 cable. So the only two ports on the nano are the Dock port and the headphone jack. Any accessories made for iPods before the 3rd generation are prolly not gonna work at all. If you look on Newegg they sell car chargers for cheap that work with the 3rd Gen and up iPods.

The current wall and car chargers use USB2.0 I believe. I'm just gonna be realistic, you're prolly going to need to buy all new accessories all around except for the FM tuner if all it uses is the hedphone jack.
 
if your ipod currently connects to your computer directly through firewire(firewire port on the top of the ipod) then you're out of luck for the car charger, the ipod nano doesn't have a firewire port, just the 30 pin dock connector. The fm transmitter should work as long as it only plugs into the headphone jack and uses power from batteries or from the car charger(so it doesnt plug into the firewire port on the 1st gen ipod). If you really wanted to use your current car charger on the nano you could buy something like this and plug the firewire cable from the charger into one end and the nano into the dock connector(as well as the fm transmitter into the 3.5mm jack cable). The nano can charge through firewire, but it can only transfer data(and will also charge) through USB(2.0 reccomended obviously), if you connect to your computer through a firewire ipod cable then it will give you a message saying "firewire not supported"..
 
This is what I use to connect to my PC.... The ipod itself doesn't have a fire wire port on it, one end has a 6 pin firewire port that plugs into the comp. The other end is the 30 pin flat connection to the ipod. There is no dock. It seems like the same kind of connection, just without the dock, but I don't know what the dock does exactly for advantages..... The car charger is the same way, it plugs into ciggerete lighter and has the 30 pin connection on the bottom of the ipod.......
 
no one said there was a dock, the 30 pin connector on the bottom of the ipod is called the "dock connector". So your car charger should work with the nano then, but you still can't use the firwire cable to transfer tunes to your nano(nano can only charge through firewire, not transfer through it), so you'll have to use the usb cable supplied with the nano to connect to your pc.
 
Silent Assasin said:
This is what I use to connect to my PC.... The ipod itself doesn't have a fire wire port on it, one end has a 6 pin firewire port that plugs into the comp. The other end is the 30 pin flat connection to the ipod. There is no dock. It seems like the same kind of connection, just without the dock, but I don't know what the dock does exactly for advantages..... The car charger is the same way, it plugs into ciggerete lighter and has the 30 pin connection on the bottom of the ipod.......
Click to expand...
Ok, then you DON'T have a 1st generation iPod, nor do you even have a 2nd generation iPod. You have a 3rd generation iPod.
 
You have a third gen, with a dock connector. Doesn't mean you're using a dock, that's what its called. Somebody draw this guy a diagram.
 
Holy crapper batman, it is a third gen..... Shows how much I know about apple...... but anyway I think I'll still go ahead with the nano.... Placing order in a couple of minutes....

But so what I have found and read from here. The FM transmitter/car charger will work with nano. My fire wire wall plug will work for charging. But I will need to buy a new usb pci card : - (..... But hey, isn't that what apple is all about, screwing over their customers and making billions...???? After thinking about it for a bit, it would be nice to just have pretty much a permenant wall charger to have for vacations and crap instead of unplugging the firewire from the computer and such.....
 
your motherboard should have usb 2.0 ports on it. And apple wouldnt make any money from you buying a pci usb card for your pc, since they dont make them.
 
yes my mobo supports usb 2.0 but as I already described, they are all full including a 4 port hub..... Way too many periphreals when you photoshop for a living. Plus a hardcore gamer..... And apple makes money by not allowing old mac users to use the new nano. G4 and below, along with the Ibooks, don't have USB ports. And then apple goes and charges 30 bucks for a wall charger which I got free 2 years ago, and my sister got free last year with her mini..... But what I was reffering to is that they make it quite a bit harder to use the new nano with older stuff, such as the firewire.... I've used both fire wire and usb with my old ipod and firewire does seem to transfer quite a bit better.
 
they had to sacrifice some things, like firewire, the mainboard on the nano would probably have to be bigger to support firewire, therefore the nano would be bigger. And though firewire may transfer better than usb 2.0 on your ipod there's no way of knowing if it could transfer better on the nano had they implimented it, it's a completely different mainboard and uses flash memory. And your sister didnt get a "free" wall charger, she paid for it, the 4gb mini she got was $250, when they cut the price of the 4gb mini to $200 they had to sacrifice the charger to put it at such a low price point(so it would have cost $230 for your sister to get a newer mini with a charger as apposed to the $250 she paid for the original mini that came with a charger). G4s and ibooks have usb ports, just not usb 2.0(recent ibooks have 2.0), 2.0 is recommended but not neccessary.
 
darkhorse said:
they had to sacrifice some things, like firewire, the mainboard on the nano would probably have to be bigger to support firewire, therefore the nano would be bigger. And though firewire may transfer better than usb 2.0 on your ipod there's no way of knowing if it could transfer better on the nano had they implimented it, it's a completely different mainboard and uses flash memory. And your sister didnt get a "free" wall charger, she paid for it, the 4gb mini she got was $250, when they cut the price of the 4gb mini to $200 they had to sacrifice the charger to put it at such a low price point(so it would have cost $230 for your sister to get a newer mini with a charger as apposed to the $250 she paid for the original mini that came with a charger). G4s and ibooks have usb ports, just not usb 2.0(recent ibooks have 2.0), 2.0 is recommended but not neccessary.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm not exactly sure how old the I-pod my sister got, for all I know is that it could of been sitting on a shelf somewhere for half a year. She got it less then a year ago through a entry and win thing at a collage basket ball game. So it was free.
 
Apple is a business... What else is new? Please tell me one corporation that isn't trying to make money.
 
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