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Comment by happytoexplain | Hacker News Reader

>As you can see, it’s… quite large!

In fact, I can not! The photo in question has no reference objects. (scroll down to see photos that actually demonstrate its size)

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One of the photos literally shows an actual 1st-gen iPod on top of it.

Did you read my entire comment?

Yes.

Your comment (especially the colloquial use of the word "literally" as emphasis) implies that I didn't address the existence of that photo, but I did when I said "scroll down to see photos that actually demonstrate its size". Your comment and subsequent lack of clarification ("Yes.") is confusing and has the appearance of rudeness, but I can't guess why you would want to use that tone (if it's on purpose).

Always try to either engage or not engage, rather than falling for the temptation of trolling.

When something is shown literally as a picture of an object that is in contrast to a figurative drawing of a concept.

Ah yes. I'll just pull out my 1st gen iPod from my pocket for reference then!

You've seen enough pictures of people holding them to get a good reference for the size.

I've owned one. But that was a million years ago. It's somewhere between the size of a box of matches and my current phone, but that's a pretty big range.

Edit: OK so maybe the reference of a gen 1 ipod is actually quite useful to me. But it's a 20 year old reference to use. Surely there are plenty of things around that are more useful as a reference point if you need one (or just provide measurements).

I am not a rich american, so I have not.

The iPod was about the size of a deck of cards but 50% thicker.

Since when could only rich Americans use image searches? Or are you just being facetious?

Let me Google that for you: https://images.app.goo.gl/hW7G3NaixUd4sNUc7

Based on the size of the barcodes, screen, various ports, the scrolling control + buttons (presumably sized for human fingers) I think it's pretty obvious it's rather large.

I thought the same, until I twigged that the screen is an actual size iPod screen.

Two references in all of the photos are the JTAG connector on the side (a standard pin header with 0.1" spacing) and the standard headphone jack.

Those are poor/obscure references.

Yes, but that's not useful if you don't know that one is a headphone jack (from the side), or that the other is a JTAG connector, or you do know but don't know what sizes JTAG connectors come in. And even allowing for all that, visual size analogies provide very poor information when the common element is relatively small in both cases.

The article mentions it, that's the only reason I knew it was JTAG. I agree -- a banana for scale would have been appropriate here.

I'd be very interested to know where the JTAG connector is routed to on the other side... iPodLinux and Rockbox never did figure out some features, and to finally have a real dev kit means that we might finish it!

Actually I was just using my iPod 5.5G with Rockbox on 2021-10-05, doing a demo of iPod clickwheel -> USB -> Mac -> Arduino -> Rotary encoder -> (commercial product)

I wanted to use my old iPod 1G too, but serial-over-FireWire is a little complicated to set up.

Repairing iPods is what got me into embedded systems engineering in the first place! From a cassette player (age 9) to a 32 MB Rio 600 (age 10) to a MiniDisc player (age 11) to a 1st gen iPod (age 12, Feb 2002), then 3rd gen iPod (age 13, Sep 2003). After that, I was repairing friends' iPods, moderating the iPodLinux forum, reading the Bible as Notes, or Shakespeare for English class... good memories.

And I still use an iPod now! With an SSD, and adaptors stashed in the back.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/49613276321/

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