Domenica 21 Mar 2010, 17:28

So everything had arrived. Time to put it back together.

First up was to install the battery:
http://pancake.2280.net/ipod_photos/small_battery_installed.jpg

When OWC say the battery won't fit in a 20GB ipod they are serious. The battery was a pretty tight fit. It was quite tall too. It would be hard to fit everything in the slim case if it wasn't for the hard drive being replaced too.

Next up was to replace the hard drive. The converter from dealextreme had a couple of pins with a jumper on so that got bent out of the way and then it got plugged in. And then the battery was plugged in. Originally the battery cable went under the logic board but I figured it would make more sense to leave it above so it would be easier to remove the battery in the future.

The headphone socket needed plugging in too. And then it looked like this:
http://pancake.2280.net/ipod_photos/small_before_resealing.jpg

So that's all the hard work done. The back got clipped back on and that was it. And plugging it into a mac and up popped iTunes:
http://pancake.2280.net/ipod_photos/small_itunes_with_hackpod.jpg
It seemed quite happy. Even if it was in windows format (the CF card was formatted as FAT32). Just to make sure it was all working I told iTunes to restore the ipod which formatted its drive to a Macintosh format. And changed the name to "hackpod".

And that made for a happy new old ipod. It doesn't play videos. It doesn't pretend to be a phone. It doesn't have a flashy colour screen with album art. But it does play music. Which to me is the point of these things.

It also has more flash memory than most ipods (unless you want to spend a few hundred quid on a 64GB ipod touch) and if my calculations are correct it should have a battery life that craps all over anything that apple sell (from what I can tell it could last around 48 hours, but I need to test that over time).

Plus on top of that if I want to upgrade the memory in the future I can. 64GB is available but pricey and 128GB is possible (if you have money to burn).

What's next? Well with the bits I have left I was thinking of trying some surface mount soldering to repair the motherboard that's missing some chips. And with the 40GB case there's an interesting possibility. The first and second generation ipods had a battery with the same voltage and the same connector as the fourth generation. The difference in thickness between the two platter hard drive and CF card should mean it could fit in the case. And the capacity is almost four times the original battery. So that could mean a battery life of 48 hours before the gains from using flash memory instead of a hard drive. That's what's next. :-)