About Wunkus Labs

Wunkus Labs is a small hardware operation in Michigan, United States, trading as Wunkus Labs LLC. It exists to make one thing at the moment: the Sphinxmoth, a board that lets a 1st or 2nd generation iPod run from a CompactFlash card and still sync over FireWire.

That combination had not worked before. The FireWire-to-ATA bridge in those iPods omits a checksum the ATA standard requires, which the original hard drives tolerated and flash cards correctly reject. The board supplies the missing checksum as data passes through. Texas Instruments documented the problem in 2001 and suggested exactly this fix; nobody had built it.

The design is open. The gateware is MIT licensed, the hardware is CERN-OHL-P-2.0, and the schematics, board files and a hardware-validated bitstream are published at github.com/dantidote/sphinxmoth. You are free to build your own or sell them. Boards are sold here for people who would rather not order a PCB and assemble a fine-pitch BGA.

Boards are assembled in production quantities, tested, and shipped by hand. Questions go to orders@wunkuslabs.com and are answered by the person who designed the board.

Wunkus Labs is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Apple Inc. iPod is a trademark of Apple Inc., used here only to describe which devices this product fits.