The once popular Apple Music playback device iPod has now become an ancient device. Yet apparently they have other uses than just playing music. Recently on the SteamDeck subreddit forum, a netizen named nekomichi shared a video of using two different versions of iPods as SteamDeck external controllers.
He played "The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim" in the video, and you can see that the operation is not very convenient. Some players in the post said that this means that there is a new piece of hardware that can be used by Souls game challengers to speed pass - before this, some people have used various devices, including dancing mats, racing steering wheels, and even brainwave sensors to pass FromSoftware games, and now there is an unconventional device.
Because the SteamOS operating system built into SteamDeck is essentially Linux, many experienced players like to modify and customize this hardware. In this case, however, it's more of a makeover of the iPod. Nikomichi explained that he installed firmware called "Rockbox" into the iPod so that it would be recognized as a USB input device.
He explained: "The iPod Mini on the left acts as a mouse cursor, controlled by 4 direction keys, the middle button is left click (attack), and the iPod 4th generation on the right acts as a multimedia controller. Fast forward is equivalent to taking a step forward, and losing is equivalent to taking a step back. Due to hardware limitations, the command to hold down the buttons cannot be sent, which means that in order to continuously move forward, I have to press the fast forward button repeatedly."
In addition to testing it in Skyrim, he also shared a video of using the hardware in Scoundrels.