I bought my friend Stacey's old iPod this summer for $75, not a bad deal at all. It's the old-school, original, 5 gig iPod - the one with wheel that actually spins. It held up it's end of the $75 bargain for a good 6 months before it suddenly stopped working... right in the middle of the iPod battery fiasco.

Sure that this was the problem, I started doing some research on how to repair/replace the battery and along the way, ran across this explaination of what generally happens when old-school iPods stop working... a broken leads on the firewire connection.

So, I sat down with my brand new soldering iron (a gift from Santa), a handful of screwdrivers and an exacto knife and went to work...


Here's what the inside of the iPod looks like.


Sure enough, the leads connecting the firewire port to the board had snapped.


So, I re-soldered them.

it's a pretty shotty soldering job. In fact, while the iPod now works again (the battery wouldn't charge since the firewire connection was snapped), it no longer syncs with my Powerbook, no doubt due to my messy soldering job. I may re-open and operate again, but I think I may just break down and buy a new one.