Shuffle not appearing on Mac

[tonym911]

Hello, new member, hope you can help. I've just bought an iPod Shuffle (1gig) off ebay and it won't appear on the desktop of my MacBook Pro (couple of months old, running Leopard 10.5.2). I plugged it into my partner's non-Leopard MacBook and our daughter's old iMac, it showed on their desktops as a CD ROM icon named 'AMT' and also as a 'No Name' hard drive icon. In no case would it show up on iTunes as a source, or initiate iTunes launch. And as I say my MacBook Pro just ignores it completely. The guy who sold it to me says he never used it, he unpacked it then put it on ebay (?why? takes all sorts I suppose). Any ideas? Sorry if this one has already been asked and answered a thousand times. thanks Tony

[Satcomer]

Because it still registered to the previous owner's computer. So have itunes reformat that drive when you first plug it in (it should pop up asking what to do with it).

[tonym911]

Previous owner says he didn't use it at all, just opened the box then put it back again. The problem I've got is that I can't do anything to restore or reformat the Shuffle from FAT to HFS (which apparently is what it needs) because it never appears in iTunes no matter what I do. It doesn't appear AT ALL on my Leopard MacBook Pro. On an older MacBook running 10.4.11 it appears as a 'NO NAME' hard drive and disc icon 'AMT_CDROM' on the Desktop. That's as much as I can get it to do. I've tried dragging both icons to the iTunes icon on the Dock, nothing happens, it never shows up as a source in iTunes, which makes it a bit difficult to follow Apple instructions to reset/restore etc. Anybody know how I can reformat the hard drive icon into HFS? Thanks.

[Giaguara]

Shuffles are used in FAT32 format also on Macs, so iTunes will not format them to HFS+.

On this Mac, can you see it even in system profiller?
Can you see it from ANY USB port? Are you using a USB hub? If you have Fusion or Parallels running, can you try when those are not running?

[tonym911]

Hello Giaguara. I just ran System Profiler on my MacBook Pro and it gives the following info for one of the three USB ports:

USB2.0(FS) MP3 Player:

Version: 1.00
Bus Power (mA): 500
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: DP
Product ID: 0x1101
Serial Number: 4713652531737
Vendor ID: 0x10d6

Which I guess means the Shuffle. But it still doesn't show up on the Desktop or in iTunes.

[Giaguara]

So it sees it. And there were no dialogs in PS X asking for what to do with the device?
Does this happen with all the USB ports?
If the shuffle is close to empty, it may take a while to get enough power to see it (so leaving it plugged in for a few hours could make a difference).

Never mind - just saw the serial of the shuffle. That does not look like an Apple iPod shuffle serial. Can you post a picture of that shuffle? Front, back...

[tonym911]

No messages, nothing, and it's the same no matter which port I use. As I say, it shows on two older Macs we've got as a 'no name' hard drive and a cd-rom icon, but none of our Macs are provoked into any sort of action by it. I charged the Shuffle for several hours yesterday. Doesn't help that the tiny piece of paper that came with it gives you no help at all, doesn't even tell you what all the various colours of light mean. I'm getting red, blinking red, blue, blinking blue, all available at the press of the centre button, what do they mean?? I've always rated Apple products, started with the original mono model way back in the mists of time, but the iPods are slowly eroding my faith in the brand. We've had several in this family, again starting with the very first whirly wheel one, and although they're great when they're working I've been generally disappointed with the way in which they interface with my computer. Especially as I've always had Macs. You'd think they'd make them work properly for Macs at least! Thanks for all your help anyway.

[tonym911]

Here are some pics of the offending (and offensive) item!