[ Thanks to Paul Zarucki for this
link. ]
“I wanted to set up a friend’s iPod on Linux. The iPod was
supplied in Mac format and must be re-formatted. This is typically
done using a suitable Mac or Windows computer but I don’t have
either of these, just Linux. There are published instructions for
setting up an iPod using Linux but they don’t seem to apply to this
model as they refer to a firmware file which, as far as I can see,
doesn’t exist on this iPod. According to the iPod display, it is a
model ‘MA978 version 1.1 Mac’ (although the number shown on the
case is A1236).“This is my recipe for setting up an MA978 Mac-format iPod on
Debian 4.0 GNU/Linux, based on information gleaned from the web
(see references at the end of this document).