[dloose]

You're misremembering. The first iPods did mount as a disk for general file storage. They weren't locked into iTunes either... they supported MP3, AAC, and several other formats.

[digi_owl]

Yes and no.

Yes you could put files on there, no you could not access them from inside the iPod UI.

If you wanted to put music on a iPod it had to happen via iTunes. And only AAC (in an Apple wrapper) and MP3 was supported without transcoding.

With Archos there was no special software, just dump the files on there and go.