Attempted to do the USB-c mod but partially lifted the pads. Stopped until I can get some enameled wire but in case the pads have been torn from the traces beneath them does anyone know where I could jumper to data + and - on the board?

Maybe this is a stupid question, but I have a Halo 3 zune that is basically unblemished, complete in box.

It was a gift a few years ago, and I already made the mistake of taking it out of the sealed packaging.

Should I keep it as is? I opened it because it was a gift and I wanted to use it the way it was intended, but I would be much more pleased if I could add storage, battery life, and bluetooth.

Is there a Halo 3 replica shell I could use and just throw it off this one? Pretty sure I also have a second zune that needs a replacement screen.

Thank you. I grew up using a zune, and wanted to get back to it. If this is the wrong place to ask, or it's a stupid post, let me know.

i am considering purchasing a Zune and would appreciate some information. Could anyone explain how the Marketplace revival and the social features currently work? Additionally, I would welcome recommendations for specific models, excluding the Zune HD as it exceeds my budget. Thank you.

Hello, does the EBoot.bin file from the archive is a raw dump from a zune or is it extracted from the cab installer? I am trying to see if it is actually possible to port rockbox to the zune and a lot of memory addresses and drivers are already in the project from the toshiba gigabeat S. I was more interested to see if the bootloader is actually signed with a key for the HAB verification

Selling a small bundle of Zune stuff: an OEM A/V cable, OEM dock, and a failed project 120GB player.

The A/V cable is untested, but is clean and in great shape. The dock connects and charges, but I wasn't able to test data transfer. And finally, there's the player.

It's a black 120GB that's externally in pretty good shape, but internally has problems. It has a new battery, which works great, but it also has a failed hard drive, ZIF cable with a small tear, and one of the internal clips on the bottom is broken.

I'm asking $60 shipped for everything. Hopefully, this can help someone out. Thanks for looking!

Pulled the trigger and bought a white Zune with SSD on eBay (if the seller is here, thank you so much!). Dumped everything I had on my computer into the player, and still have oodles of space for more music, podcasts, Suno creations, you name it. Made some nifty art for it too.

I've been putting the most recent version of Xune for Windows (0.3.1.1) through its paces, and I've noticed one trouble area, and one less important aesthetic issue.

The more important area has to do with the library management. I've been recently going through some old mp3 files and updating their metadata with MusicBrainz Picard, and making sure they had proper album art. Given the size of my library, it'll take some time to go through everything, but it's an oddly relaxing form of procrastination. Well... normally, with Zune, when I do that, any updates I make to files immediately get noticed by the software, and what's seen in the Zune library reflects those changes. That's even if I move files around a bit, to put my library in a better state of organization. And of course, when new music is added to the library, the Zune software immediately recognizes the new files.

With Xune... well, not so much. At first, it seemed to handle that just as well as Zune. But for the last few weeks, it's like pulling teeth to get Xune to recognize any changes. For one thing, you can't just drag and drop into the library, the way you can with Zune. There's not really a way to force Xune to recognize any changes. Nor will it remove anything from it's library unless it's deleted from the Xune app itself.

The best I was ultimately able to do was to remove the primary music library folder from Collections. Oddly, even after doing that, most of the library was still in Xune. Then, add the music directory folder back in as the default drive. That... kind of worked. But one thing it did was generate doubles, with the old locations of files still present in the library, so quite a few doubles listed. The only thing I could do was to manually locate all the library content still based on old locations, manually delete those from the Xune library, and then it would leave the new location files there. But even then, Xune would often retain a "(2)" next to song titles, even though those weren't in the metadata and the originally doubles were removed from the library.

But more troubling is that entirely new stuff added to the library just isn't showing up at all.

So... I obviously have no way of knowing if this problem is showing up with the Linux or Apple versions of this software. I do wonder if the size of my library has something to do with it - it's currently around 98,000 or so distinct tracks. So perhaps libraries of larger sizes are just harder for it recognize for changes, be they updated metadata or changed locations or just new adds. So moving forward, one thing that would help might be some means of manually forcing the library to keep up with changes, or even just to reset it to rebuild. As well, if it's being sluggish to recognize changes on its own, making some "drag and drop" functionality to force it to recognize new adds would be great too.

But that all being said... for the record, I continue to be impressed with how the Xune software works thus far. It may still need some work, but it's a beautiful thing to see it reproducing, effortlessly, the old animations and photos of bands and musicians that the original Zune software could do... it was very cool to see that feature back and working so well so long after Microsoft killed off its Zune servers. I continue to have very high hopes for this project.

Alright, I’m finally putting Zuuned out there, I got approvals from the mods. This one’s for all of you still keeping your Zunes alive.

I have used AI extensively to decode all that I have at this point. How did that work? I took the time to setup wireshark captures, used an Windows 8 VM, to get the data captures of when you connect a Zune, then I proceeded to use pictures, videos, etc... about every possible transaction in the Zune software I could do. This has taken me MONTHS to build and reverse engineer, lots of that has been in the Massive Testing phases, I have tested on Classic Zune 30s, Zune 2nd Gen 120gb and 80gb, and Zune HDs. The only models that have not so far been tested are the small 2nd gen flash models 4gb, 8gb.

I then took these captures and with Claude and Codex, we reverse engineered each transaction in the MTP connection stack. My goal in doing this was to establish a code base that I could then build something off of and iterate and do the thing I wanted most. SYNC a Zune without windows, I focused on Linux, as Mac OS is still in progress.

I have tested on as many Zunes as I own, to QA what I used Claude and codex for. There has been hours and hours of testing. I still say its in pre-release status at this point. BUT having said this, if you endeavor to use something that is unique and different, give Zuuned a try. I used AI to help me bring the Design of the application to life, I first designed it on paper and used basic physical simulations before I took it to AI to help me build it out.

There are lots of MD files that are available to read in the libzune library, because I wanted to Document everything that I could, the little hangups and observations I have run into, the designs I chose to run with.

libzune is the C based library that should help anyone if they had a project for Zunes, hopefully it gives people a good starting point. Now Zuuned is the application that I built on top of the libzune c library. I so far support, Video, Photo, Music, Podcast and Audiobooks are coming in the future.

Zuuned is a Linux app for managing your Zune and your media collection. I’ve been running it on my own setup for months, and I hope it helps more people enjoy their players on Linux.

It’s not perfect! There will be bugs, rough edges, and setups I haven’t tested. Give it a try, let me know what works, and report what doesn’t.

Underneath it is libzune, a C library I built with help from Claude and Codex. I put a ton of time into reverse engineering how the Zune talks to a computer: digging through protocol traffic, figuring out device behavior, testing, breaking things, and trying again. Community research helped along the way, but a lot of that investigation and testing was my own. The library is available separately for anyone who wants to build something with it.

I’m a Cloud engineer by trade who wanted his Zune to work on Linux and kept going till I got it working. If you can improve the code, documentation, compatibility, or design, I encourage it. Fork it, experiment, send a PR, or take it in your own direction. It’s free and open source under GPLv3. Just keep making Zune better. Fork it, build with it, expand it. My goal is to make Zune great again by building tooling needed to do it.

Why does it look like this? Because I wanted something fun to use. Something with personality that didn’t look like everything else out there. I honestly made it for me, and it’s taken a long, long time to get here. Now I’m sharing it with you.

Special thanks to magicisinthehole for XuneSyncLibrary and NiceBeard for zune-explorer. Their protocol research and reverse-engineering work provided valuable references and helped make this possible. The ZMDB protocol definitely made reading from the zunes much faster.

Enjoy your Zunes. Build cool things. Make them better.

Y’all rock.

Download Zuuned Linux:
https://github.com/badgeromen/zuuned-linux/releases

Source code and bug reports:
https://github.com/badgeromen/zuuned-linux

libzune:
https://github.com/badgeromen/libzune

So, a few months back, I bought one of the ebay Zune 120GBs that dropped. When it arrived, I plugged it into the dock, and go the dreaded flashing almost-invisible battery. No big, I honestly expected that. I ordered the replacement battery, then got busy, and finally just got some time to repair it. Pulling the back off was a PAIN, and way more difficult than the tutorial videos led me to believe. Still, after a few tries, I got it apart, soldered the new battery on, re-assembled (getting the top panel to line up right was also a huge pain), and dropped it into the dock. Saw a nearly invisible solid battery, and figured I was good, then I saw the above. Yeah.

I was extra careful with the cable, and double-checked it before I put everything back together, so I'm guessing the drive has failed. And, at this point, I'm not even sure I want to screw with it anymore. I'll sleep on it, but if y'all see a "For Sale" post in the next few days, you know what happened.

Ive been using this Wallpaper I found as my background on the Zune software for basically as long as the "Zune Modding Helper" has been around and I'm really pleased with how it looks and thought it may be nice to share it for others after all this time. You have to be careful with what custom background you choose because the contrast with text can make stuff difficult to read. This has suited it perfectly. I'm about ready for a change but unless someone shows me how to alter the text colors, I may have a hard time finding something better.

https://ibb.co/6RKJjB8K

Hello, as I never owned any Zune player.. That big back button in the upper left corner has been common part of the Zune UI?

If anyone is looking for a good replacement battery for their Zune HD, give this guy a shot: https://www.ebay.com/itm/336763791511

Purchased the battery on October 5th, and it arrived on October 8th.

Microsoft claimed up to 8.5 hours of video playback on a full charge. Tested my new battery last night. 13 hours and 10 minutes continuous video playback before getting the low battery warning.

I was impressed.

Hello! I have a Zune 30 and might get an HD, yet the way I listen to all my music if I'm not out of the house is through the Zune PC software. I was wondering if it's possible to get the listening data from the software, NOT the hardware, and get last.fm to recognize it? Thanks!

So just saw this on eBay 1000 big ones.

ScummVM running on my Zune HD, playing Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max and Curse of Monkey Island (video attached).

None of this would exist without u/TheMagicIsInTheHole and Project Lyra. It's a mod on top of Lyra, and it shows up as a tile in the Apps list. Huge thanks to them.

It's a proof of concept, so: touch controls only for now (the physical buttons don't work yet), and quitting a game reboots the Zune. But the goal was to prove it could be done, and it can.

Code and detailed notes here:
https://github.com/kkffiirr/Zune_Lyra_Plugins

zune 80 owner here, i recently bought one untested last month and the only issue ive run into so far is the battery, i'll be hopefully getting that soldered this weekend.

however, during my research on how to repair this in the event of other issues, i realized this device is really delicate, almost like microsoft cheaply made it OR they made it difficult to repair on purpose, and kind of future-proof if you don't charge the battery regularly, as it degrades fast even in an unused state.

is there a reason for most of this? seems like the 30 or hd is easier to maintain than the 80/120, as if you look at it weirdly or in a funny way, move the zif cable too much, let it sit with a discharged battery for a while, etc. then it goes completely kaput. makes me a bit nervous as i don't know about the hard drive or anything else yet in this thing.

This r/ popped up in my feed a few weeks ago and made me nostalgic for my Zune. Found my buried HD and haven't put it down since.

Attempting a USB C mod because the zune pin connector was trashed on this zune I bought. I'm definitely not the best at soldering, but I would have thought I'd gotten this okay enough and I really don't know what I'm missing here. So far no luck getting this to charge or connect, and I've been at it for hours. Is it possible that there's something else wrong with the board? Everything fully working except charging and connecting.

Hey everyone! My iPod 5th gen recently broke, and I found a local listing for a Microsoft Zune 30 in good condition. The seller is asking roughly $67 USD.

Here are the details from the listing:

Official refurbished

Working 30GB hard drive

Battery lasts around 8-10 hours

Clean screen, buttons, and headphone jack

Comes with the unit and a charger

I'm switching over mainly for the Wolfson DAC sound signature. Do you guys think $67 is a fair price for a Zune 30 nowadays, or should I look out for anything specific before buying? Thanks!

I recently came across an open source desktop media app that I really liked and wanted to customize it to my liking with vibe coding for a fun little project. I tweaked the UI quite a bit, added tons of features and services I use, and now have an all-in-one media player that plays local files, has YouTube Music streaming, Youtube videos, Bandcamp streaming, Soulseek downloads, SpotiFLAC, and I was able to get Zune transfers to work with my Zune HD.

Recently the Xune software stopped syncing to my Zune, so I had to use the official Zune software, but I missed the dark theme and some of the features of Xune. I had the idea of trying to incorporate Zune syncing into my coding project and lo and behold I got it working thanks to Zune Explorer on github. I also have an alternate columns view in my local library that sort of matches the Zune software/Xune look. With the help of AI I've been able to ditch the Zune software and Xune!

I'm still early in the progress and doing lots of testing, so it's bare bones at the moment. After some errors, fixes, and testing, it's now transferring files 100% of the time. I attempted to get custom Artist images but ran into some snags, so that part isn't working fully yet.

I've implemented some p2p and streaming downloads so I won't be offering it to download.

Along the way I also attempted some custom mods on my Zune HD such as a bass boost and larger album art, which I was able to do thanks to the Lyra project. I never liked the tiny album art and always thought there wasn't enough bass in any of the EQ presets.

I just wanted share with everyone here since I figured you all might appreciate this. Here's some screenshots.