iPod Resurrection with CompactFlash, Part 1

Well, here I go - my maiden voyage into this blogging thing. Many, many years after everyone else has gotten into it, but I've been a late starter at most things in life. Anyway, here's a description of the first of many "fixit" projects that I have planned this year...

I'm currently on a mission to revive my until-now-ever-reliable 4th Gen iPod that I've had since 2006 or so. It's given me years of musical enjoyment, especially over the last year when I installed it into my car stereo system. But over the last month, it started giving me occasional trouble, until one day...

He's been sick...

Not a good sign when you turn on your iPod, you hear the hard drive making strange noises, and get that screen! Tried as I did, I could not get it going again (even with the helpful URL that you see in the pic). So I took a breath and resigned myself to the fact that my old friend was no more, at least the hard drive was.

Online searches for replacement drives came up with very little. New drives for old iPods such as mine are simply not out there, far as I can tell. The websites that have used drives for sale are asking more than I'm willing to pay. Why bother buying a used hard drive that just may die on me in another year, perhaps sooner?

Further searches uncovered some interesting reading about people who have replaced the drives in their old iPods using CompactFlash media cards, with the help of a special adapter.

I found the adapter on Amazon for about $7.00 and some change. Another quick Amazon search pointed me to a 32GB CF card for about $50. Cheaper than the price of a used hard drive, and about half the cost of other CF cards of the same capacity that I've seen (I think due to the speed of the card itself). Definitely cheaper than a whole new iPod! Besides, I really like this particular model, and combining it with the benefits of flash storage (no moving parts to eventually fail like a hard drive can), it's the best of both worlds, I think.

Ready to go to work

Well, I ordered all my parts and waited patiently for their arrival. Once delivered, I made plans on a Saturday to do the installation. All was going well at first, until... I realized that the adapter card was not going to fit my model of iPod. It has a connector on it that's compatible with newer iPod models than what I have. Then things went worse... Soon after, I managed to rip a piece off of the iPod's logic board - so it's now ruined.  Insert curse word... here.

But all is not completely lost just yet. I made arrangements with the Amazon merchant to exchange the adapter for the correct one, and I managed to find someone selling used, tested iPod logic boards that won't cost me an arm and a leg. Stay tuned...