With the new parallel 160gb tech rocking the laptop drive world, once pricey 100gb drives can now be found on sale and for rebate. The free and open source rockbox firmware will further extend the device features — and flashing the rockbox firmware into the Jukebox Studio was doable (although reading through lots of documentation was a necessity). Rockbox is a very useful firmware replacement since it supports OGG -Vorbis encoded audio files and gapless playback. (UPDATE: gapless only works if your mp3s are encoded in LAME with the gapless switch. Rockbox does not support ogg-vorbis on archos jukebox studio/recorder models .

ebay seems ripe with the old Archos now, but I was not the only one shopping for them. Folks are bidding over $100 for the Jukebox Recorder’s with USB 2 .0. I relented and bid on the older Studio model with usb 1.1. (Hint: can be had cheaper than the Recorder).

Things I learned if you’d like to do something like this.

0. A jeweler’s sized Philips head screwdriver will come in handy for removing the very tiny screws holding on the Jukebox faceplate. Otherwise, the directions for upgrading the drive at mctubster are fairly accurate.

1. To transfer your files over from your main computer to the new 2.5″ drive, use a usb 2.0 portable enclosure or some other speedy connection. Connecting via a 3.5″ to 2.5″ ide converter is fraught with danger (bent pins and too high voltage in your new drive).

2. Move your files over to your new HD before you swap it. And don’t forget to defragment it too, cause that will take a longish time over USB 1 .

3. The rockbox manuals for flashing the Jukebox Studio and Recorder models are inaccurate. You might think that rockbox will create an id3 tag database on these models with rockbox’s Tag Cache feature. No. The included RAM in these models is too small (2mb) to use Tag Cache.

4. id3browse is some very useful free and open source software to use in generating m3u playlists. (You’ll need to generate playlists in lieu of an id3 tag database. Otherwise, you’ll have to rely on playing files according to directories. This is limiting since without a playlist, Archos will only play one directory at a time without advancing to successive or nested directories).

5. Be patient. If you’re confused don’t blame yourself. Continue to read. Nerdy, zen like acceptance of tedium will be rewarded. Take a nap.

6. And, oh yeah, be patient bidding on eBay. It’s not like there is a supply problem or anything and yet impatient demand is driving prices up. If everyone could just wait their turn, they’d get their obsolete but upgradeable old archos at a reasonably cheap price.