iPod surgery!

[annathepiper]

And oh yes, I forgot to mention--despite the battery connector problems, and despite breaking off part of one of the tabs that holds the silver part of the iPod case to the white part, the iPod surgery does appear to have been successful.

It turns out to be pretty darned easy to get the iPod taken apart. I took the screwdriver they sent me (a small flat-head type) and gently pried it in between the back and front of the case, roughly just above the halfway point between the bottom and the top. Then I worked the screwdriver back and forth--again, gently--till the case popped open at that point, and once that happened I was able to make my way around the whole thing and pop it open all the way around.

There is not a single iota of wasted space inside the iPod. It's all hard drive, a very thin motherboard, and a battery. The hard drive is cushioned by blue rubber, and it's easy to get the hard drive out; you lift out the top part of the rubber, then you gently work the hard drive out of its connector, then you lift up the bottom part of the rubber so you can reach the battery. The tricky part was getting the old battery's connector cable out from under the corner of the motherboard, but once I did that I was able to get the battery out with no problems.

Trying to get the white connector off the end of the cable on the old battery was the hardest part of the whole operation, and Dara had to do that because I couldn't figure out how to do it. But she did it without breaking it, so we were able to get that connector onto the cables coming off the new battery. Trickiness, again, to get the cord tucked back under the corner of the motherboard was hard--especially doing it so that the wires didn't pop out of the connector. Eventually I got the hang of it, though.

Then I put the hard drive back in, put the top part of the rubber back on, and popped the case back together. I had a brief scare when I then tried to turn on the iPod and got the scary folder-with-exclamation-point icon, which apparently means there's a software problem on the device. So I took it apart again, reseated the hard drive, and put it back together.

Then I did a reset, and suddenly, BOOM, the iPod was live. I had to let it charge up for three hours, but it's done that now, and as I type this I'm giving it some play time to see how long the new battery holds up.

In conclusion: replacing the iPod battery is totally doable. And way, way cheaper than buying a new iPod.

Comments

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

You are SO BRAVE. I am in awe of your l33t iPod surgery skills.

[annathepiper]

Well, it was easy to be brave when the battery arrived with step-by-step instructions for what to do--though I will grant that I only mostly glanced at the instructions long enough to get an idea of what to expect when I took the case apart. :)