Today was a day off to recover from my parents’ visit before I had to return to work. I decided to use some of my free time to get my new Ipod Nano working.
I bought my computer used when in lived in Kawasaki, wiped the hard drive, and then painstakingly installed a backup copy of Windows 98 that I had brought from home. On a trip back to Canada I scavenged my old desktop for parts to upgrade my Japan computer . After moving to Numazu I attached a wireless receiver to connect to our apartment’s internet connect. My computer wasn’t the newest or the fastest, but it let me play some games and gave me access to the internet.
Despite all of the fighting and struggles I had getting the computer into its current state, for some reason I believed that getting it to work with my Ipod would be easy. I was predictably wrong.
I spent about an hour trying to figure out why my computer didn’t recognize the Ipod properly when I connected it. After turning to Google for a solution, I learned that the Ipod Nano is not compatible with Windows 98. Not willing to give up yet, I hit various forums until I found someone who had coded their own Win 98 driver and was selling it for $6 USD. There is always a risk buying homebrew software off the internet, but I am happy to say that the driver worked as advertised.
I spent the rest of my day copying music to Itunes and then to my Nano, only taking a break to actually leave the house and listen to music on my new toy. It was a pretty good use of a day off.
Drinking in Japan 