Let’s talk iPods

So I recently found the DankPods youtube channel, if you haven’t already seen it, Wade’s style of content is both hilarious and interesting, find it at DankPods – YouTube and god damn give that man a subscribe!

One thing he does often is repair and “flash mod” older iPods, and recently I had fallen out of love with music thanks to streaming services playing 2 or three songs that I actually like, followed by unloading all manner of crap at me before another 2 or three songs.

The answer was to get a means of storing my own music again, exactly as I like, with no internet required! the iPod was, and still is the perfect way of doing this. As a bonus, the iPod works perfectly with my car meaning everything can be controlled through the ICE system without taking my eyes off the road because my phone is playing bullshit with bluetooth YET AGAIN!!!!

Anyways, the 5th gen on the left here is our subject for surgery. Two companies have been absolute diamonds here and deserve a shout out, https://iflash.xyz provided the iflash solo HDD replacement card, and https://www.replacebase.co.uk/ provided the replacement screen! Both sent the items on the day of purchase first class and they arrived very soon after!

So, first task was to get in. Thankfully iflash provide the perfect knife tool to crack open the rear case of the iPod. from there, carefully disconnect the battery from the motherboard, and peel it open like a book. Pefect.

Disconnecting the hard drive feels wrong, you have to bend the ribbon cable over, open the zif connector and wobble it off the cable to free the drive from the connector. Once out… you know it got yeeted across the room as it was deader than the dodo!

Time to disconnect the motherboard, separate the support bracket from the front panel and the screen was loose to replace. Re-assembling the iPod it was time for the iflash card. A 128Gb SD card should provide the space for about 15,000 high quality songs, and the RAM in this 30Gb model can only cope with 20,000 anyways. Fitting the card was a breeze, and reconnecting the battery took the iPod straight into recovery mode. THIS IS GOOD NEWS.

This is the part that, quite frankly, is amazing. I plugged the iPod into my 2018 MacBook Air, and it was recognised IMMEDIATELY. A quick restore later and she was up and running and my music library was copying onto the iPod at decent speeds.

Where would this be really useful. Well, for anyone who travels abroad for extended periods, a long battery life video player, with 1Tb (on the 7th gen) of storage that holds video, and could be used as a hard drive seems a no-brainer! Even my mini with 256Gb of storage serves this purpose perfectly!

So whats it like to use? Honestly, fantastic. It runs smooth and quiet at there is no longer a spinning disc. The battery lasts around 9 hours of constant playback. The audio quality is fantastic and the shuffle feature is sublime. I happily offer this service on a case by case basis, but the average cost would be approx £100 including the iPod (subject to available machines) or around £60 for the fitted iflash and 128Gb SD card. All that’s left is the final photo;

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