Still holds up in 2016, if you replace the MicroDrive with a CompactFlash card.
About 10 minutes after firing it up and giving the drive a clean bill of health (with a full scan), it started having trouble spinning up. Well, that's to be expected from a 4GB Hitachi MicroDrive from over 10 years ago. Replaced the drive with a 4GB CompactFlash card I had laying around, "restored" the iPod, and boom! Works like a dream.
Only down-side is that this older iPod doesn't support audio-over-USB as more recent iPods (and all iPhones) do. So it doesn't work with the stereo in my Nissan LEAF - just says "Check device". In the manual, it turns out that it's only compatible with iPod Video (5th gen) and up, iPod Nano (1st gen) and up, etc... but no iPod Mini. Ah well... so I picked up a 2GB Nano as well.
Gotta have my music podcasts. ;)
Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned