|
Outside the storm rages, lightning flashes, it’s the perfect night for my experiment! After many long minutes of hard work my creation is ready for the ultimate test!
See how I used dead iPods to make a working music player!
Igor (AKA My son Jake) plugs in the charger to the firewire cable, “Now master? err, umm I mean Dad?” “Yes Igor, now!” He plugs the cable to the newly assembled iPod into the firewire cable. “Dad, stop calling me Igor.” The screen blinks, the thunder crashes, a little gray apple appears on the screen. “ Its alive!... ALIVE!”...I scream.
“Uh, Dad can I go play my guitar now?” I turn to my faithful assistant, “ Sure buddy, go ahead.”
I have an old original 5 gig iPod I keep most of my music on and my son has a 20 gig he uses with his Windoze machine. So the wife was feeling a little left out. “Honey, will you get me an iPod?” she demanded. And being a cheap...er, frugal person, I started on that well known auction site. So the hunt was on!
I found a 5 gig that the owner said needed a new battery, I have replaced mine a couple of times so I thought, “No problem!”, and the price was right about $20.00 So after I win the thing, I order a new battery for $15.00 on ebay and sit back to wait for the mailman, happy for my good deal. ( If you need one in a hurry try This) Two weeks later my battery shows up. I pull out the blue tool the battery people are kind enough to supply, and open the iPod, pry off the old battery and install the new one.
Plug in the charger for a couple hours, hit the menu button and what do I see? Nothing! dead as a door nail! And it was an “as is” auction so no luck there. Well I was not to be defeated! So back to the listings I went searching for a “special” iPod. Finally after hours of scanning listing after listing. I saw it! “5 gig iPod, works but shows folder icon”. I knew the main board was good, and I had a new battery. I was taking a chance the hard drive in the first one was good. I bid and won for $25.00, my “cheap” iPod was up to sixty dollars, still a bargain I guess.
Three days later my second dead iPod arrived. The events of that evening are covered above. The following pictures show the steps for removing the back and replacing the battery and hard drive.
Using the blue tool to open both iPods
 The new battery and tool
Off comes the back cover to reveal the battery
 The Plug is tiny!
 Gently pull the wires to un-plug
 Use the blue tool to gently pry the bad hard drive off the sticky stuff on the main board
 Then just unplug!
 Apply the "sticky" to the bottom of the new hard drive.
 Plug in the new battery
Squeez the case back together
 Power up!
 Just for grins I wanted to see the inside of the bad hard drive. Very Cool!
|
