I have my brother's dead 2G 20GB (8mm) iPod, which I've managed to fix to the point of playing music, however I still can't get firewire access.

Anyway, my first objective is to connect the drive to my laptop or desktop in hopes of recovering the MP3's and playlists. No, he didn't back them up.

I read Phil's post about the adapter (FADPT2/S00257SMTG01) and will look into that. The connector is physically identical to that of a CF card - is the interface the same?

Also, if you read this Phil, I read your post about drive replacement, where a new (non-Apple) drive wouldn't work in an iPod due to custom drive firmware. Is that firmware stored in a location before sector 0? If it's stored at sector 0 or beyond, wouldn't a drive image (such as from a hex editor) of the old drive, cloned to the new drive, work fine with the same size drive?

Then, if imaged, would a larger drive be used by using a service mode or update tool to reformat the drive to access the extra space? Just curious... no plans other than the primary objective of recovering data at this point.