Inside the IPOD......

Lately I've noticed that my pile of projects has been growing. Not that I feel that is a bad thing except, it is. Looking on my bench today, I found 4 guitar pedals, a bass amp, and 1 IPOD. The IPOD has been here for over a year. I apologize to the owner, it's not that I kept ignoring it, although I didn't go after it full steam either. Since apple has come out with newer versions, parts for the old ones are already going obsolete. As a last resort, I got another broken IPOD off of ebay and used it for spare parts. So for those of you who have never seen the inside of an IPOD, feel free to take a peek here.

It's pretty cool how they fit all of that in there. This is the 4th Gen, 20GB version I believe. The problem this thing had was the click wheel did not work. After finally figuring our a way to open the thing, I found that there was some corosion on the ribbon cable from the click wheel to the mother board. I cleaned it with some flux remover and alcohol, put it back together and it worked for about a month or 2. Then the click wheel stopped completely. I took it back and ordered a new click wheel, but this time when I opened the IPOD up, I damaged the head phone jack ribbon cable. I replaced that only to find out that the head phone jack assembly was not working either. The IPOD was showing that the click wheel was locked all the time. After waiting for a few months for one of the IPOD parts stores to get new ones in, I finally took a chance and won a broken IPOD off of Ebay. I swapped out the head phone jack assembly, and now it works again. Lots of fun, but the case parts are getting hard to come by. The hard drive, LCD, battery, and motherboard are all easy to find. Well, I feel I have geeked up enough tonight. Now to tackle the bass amp and guitar pedals.................