ipod ressurection

so. my poor little ipod has been sitting in my desk drawer for a year and a half because I thought it was borken. what with all the clicking-hard-drive sounds it made when you tried to turn it on, this was understandable. this weekend I went through my office on a purge mission, and said ipod’s fate was put on the table.

when it worked, I lurved it. it had 40 gigs of space to throw all kinds of crap I’d never listen to on it, and some crap that I would. this craptacular bliss lasted about a year and a half, at which point the relationship ended abruptly. it has been replaced by two nanos since (the first one I can only assume is still in use) which are better than I could have thought possible.

I was going to chuck the 4g, but figured I’d look at repair prices becaue, really, who wants to throw away $400 after 18 months of use? I could buy a new drive for $150, and the next question was whether I’d fix it myself (preferred, ’cause I’m geeky) or send it in for the repair (“included in the price of the drive” say the ads – remember this part). so… could I repair the damn thing? heck, could I open the damn thing?

using the handy post over at ipod lounge, I realised I had a guitar pick, and could probably use it in the manner described. I found said pick and, sure enough, opened my 4g without scratching or breaking a thing. when I picked the shell apart, I was surprised to discover that the connector was actually loose. I re-seated it, and figured “what the hell, let’s give it a go”. I put it back together, and plugged it into a USB port (the battery was long dead).

the apple appeared, and then… so did the music. it works flawlessly, and I deleted everything on it and re-transferred 25 gigs of music to make sure the drive wasn’t teasing me. still working flawlessly.

so I’m wondering, how many repairs where people send their ipods in are simply a cable re-seat, or yield the repair shop a perfectly good drive… it’s probably not a huge issue, but I can’t help but wonder if the business card trick is really necessary, and if it’s just disconnecting and re-seating the connector that makes things happy.

I’ll use the 4g as the car player for the next month, and let you know how/if it continues to work. regardless, colour me “pleasantly surprised”.