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psipsy-Abandoned Ipod Nano: Got a new display for it, which went together easily enough. I'll do some more testing on it, and if everything is cool, I'll put some fresh adhesive on and button it all back together. It's a good sign that it can now go for more than 2 minutes without the battery going completely dead.
-Ebay Ipod Touch 4: This did not go as well as I had hoped it would. I put a new antenna on, but in the process I bent some of the pins on the connector for the digitizer, which is on the hard-to-reach side of the board. So, I had to completely remove the board, which requires desoldering both the battery and the volume/power button ribbon cables. Then I had to re-bend the affected pins, put it all back together, and find out that not only is the wifi reception still weak, but the new display was damaged in the process. There's a line that goes halfway across the screen and it's visible even when the thing is off, so I know it's the display. It still works, it just sucks that I know my work isn't done on this. I would like to get this working anyway.
-Ipod Touch 6: Got this in case I have to give up on the Touch 4. Too bad this won't directly work with Itunes 10.7; it needs a newer version (which I have on select computers). But! I can use it as a remote control for that version.
-Ipod Classic #2 (2014, Gen7): Doesn't need anything, at least not yet.
-Ipod Classic #1 (2008, Gen6): Hooboy. Ordered an Iflash adapter for the mSATA drive. First of all, the original 160GB Ipod (Gen6) will only see the full 160 if it's an original hard drive made for the express purpose of putting in an Ipod. Any other method (such as the iflash) and it'll only see 128GB directly via Itunes. To make use of the full volume, in this case a 1TB SSD, requires installing an alternative firmware called Rockbox. This only really applies to earlier Classics; the later ones (Gen7) will allow Itunes to see the full disk. Anyway.
So I installed the SSD and the adapter, I installed Rockbox, I juggled around with the formatting of the new drive, and I'm finding that the msata drive tends to get hot. As a bonus, the written instructions with the adapter warn to not let the battery get below 20% or else the drive might go into a low-power recovery mode, and the only way to get the drive out of that is to remove it from the ipod and connect it to a computer, which means opening up the ipod case again. Given the relatively high power consumption of the SSD, it does not take much to drain the battery which is about the size of a USB flash drive. I'm starting to wonder if I should have gone with a version that takes either SD or microSD cards. After all, this is a device that was designed for a low-RPM mobile hard drive for the low-power-demand of playing music, not a high-performance SSD suitable for running a modern OS.
Also, Rockbox itself has its own issues. I can't get it to work with playlists, or maybe I just haven't taken the time to figure that out. It also doesn't work very well with filenames or tags that are in Japanese. Most of the time it freezes up without warning and needs a hard restart. For all the dragging I do on Apple, I gotta admit that when their stuff works, it WORKS and hits the ground running. Rockbox is a mess in comparison.
The real test will be when I connect it to the cars' radios, though at this point I'm not getting my hopes up. That is one of those make-or-break deals, because one of the reasons I got an ipod was because it could natively connect to the stereo, allowing me to change tracks and navigate playlists from the radio controls. Granted, now we have bluetooth and other ways of playing music from external sources, but I'm kinda stuck in my ways anymore.
On the bright side, if I choose to retreat on using an msata drive in the ipod, the drive itself won't go to waste. I can make use of that somewhere else. Or, I could physically move the 160GB hard drive from the newer Ipod classic to the older one, and put the 1TB in the newer one.
Nah, at the rate I'm going with these, I should probably leave it alone.
-Ebay Ipod Touch 4: This did not go as well as I had hoped it would. I put a new antenna on, but in the process I bent some of the pins on the connector for the digitizer, which is on the hard-to-reach side of the board. So, I had to completely remove the board, which requires desoldering both the battery and the volume/power button ribbon cables. Then I had to re-bend the affected pins, put it all back together, and find out that not only is the wifi reception still weak, but the new display was damaged in the process. There's a line that goes halfway across the screen and it's visible even when the thing is off, so I know it's the display. It still works, it just sucks that I know my work isn't done on this. I would like to get this working anyway.
-Ipod Touch 6: Got this in case I have to give up on the Touch 4. Too bad this won't directly work with Itunes 10.7; it needs a newer version (which I have on select computers). But! I can use it as a remote control for that version.
-Ipod Classic #2 (2014, Gen7): Doesn't need anything, at least not yet.
-Ipod Classic #1 (2008, Gen6): Hooboy. Ordered an Iflash adapter for the mSATA drive. First of all, the original 160GB Ipod (Gen6) will only see the full 160 if it's an original hard drive made for the express purpose of putting in an Ipod. Any other method (such as the iflash) and it'll only see 128GB directly via Itunes. To make use of the full volume, in this case a 1TB SSD, requires installing an alternative firmware called Rockbox. This only really applies to earlier Classics; the later ones (Gen7) will allow Itunes to see the full disk. Anyway.
So I installed the SSD and the adapter, I installed Rockbox, I juggled around with the formatting of the new drive, and I'm finding that the msata drive tends to get hot. As a bonus, the written instructions with the adapter warn to not let the battery get below 20% or else the drive might go into a low-power recovery mode, and the only way to get the drive out of that is to remove it from the ipod and connect it to a computer, which means opening up the ipod case again. Given the relatively high power consumption of the SSD, it does not take much to drain the battery which is about the size of a USB flash drive. I'm starting to wonder if I should have gone with a version that takes either SD or microSD cards. After all, this is a device that was designed for a low-RPM mobile hard drive for the low-power-demand of playing music, not a high-performance SSD suitable for running a modern OS.
Also, Rockbox itself has its own issues. I can't get it to work with playlists, or maybe I just haven't taken the time to figure that out. It also doesn't work very well with filenames or tags that are in Japanese. Most of the time it freezes up without warning and needs a hard restart. For all the dragging I do on Apple, I gotta admit that when their stuff works, it WORKS and hits the ground running. Rockbox is a mess in comparison.
The real test will be when I connect it to the cars' radios, though at this point I'm not getting my hopes up. That is one of those make-or-break deals, because one of the reasons I got an ipod was because it could natively connect to the stereo, allowing me to change tracks and navigate playlists from the radio controls. Granted, now we have bluetooth and other ways of playing music from external sources, but I'm kinda stuck in my ways anymore.
On the bright side, if I choose to retreat on using an msata drive in the ipod, the drive itself won't go to waste. I can make use of that somewhere else. Or, I could physically move the 160GB hard drive from the newer Ipod classic to the older one, and put the 1TB in the newer one.
Nah, at the rate I'm going with these, I should probably leave it alone.
