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An iPod Adventure
This is the sad story of my iPod nano, which lasted exactly one
month in my hands.
The first few things I did were harmless, and merely voided the
warranty. I installed iPodLinux
on it, and from there installed Doom. I had plenty a joyful French
class with that toy in my hand. I also managed to loaded a few System
of a Down videos onto there, using some clever but illegal methods to
download the videos, hack up the file format, and transfer them to the
pod. Perhaps I'll post about that some other time.
The next few things were dangerous. I downloaded some spec sheets on
the connector cable, and used that to power some LEDs from the iPod's
battery. I also wired it into my stereo (version one, sans safety
measures). In retrospect, a few of those things could have caused
fires. I don't really care at this point.
One day, however, the iPod succumbed to my abuse. I wanted to see what
would happen to the sound if I poured water into it. It was kinda
fingerprinty anyway, so I turned it on and went to wash it. It ran fine
for about two seconds. Then the music began to cut out and get choppy.
I removed it from under the tap and frantically dried it off. It was
too late; the iPod had stopped playing, and the screen was dead. The
screen seemed a little cloudy from the water. Knowing that most electronics
will live if you simply let them dry, I set the iPod aside and went to do
something else.
Ha ha! That, of course, was a joke; I can't put down broken electronics
without toying with them. Instead, I tried to dry it faster. I did this
by opening up the iPod. All the websites I had visited told me that I
could do this easily and safely using a putty knife. So, I ordered a
putty knife. After spending ten whole minutes waiting for the UPS guy
to show up, I simply took my pocketknife out and stuck that into the
iPod. I heard a loud crack, and ignored it. I continued to force it
open until it came apart, after several other odd cracking sounds.
When I looked at the screen, I found that I had jammed the knife
into the LCD, and crystals were leaking out. "Oh shit," I said.
At this point I still wasn't worried; I could use the pod without a
proper LCD; I'd just look at the square centimeter or so that wasn't
all black and drippy. I would just leave the iPod open and let it dry,
and tomorrow it would be all right.
Ha ha! Once again, I'm kidding. Realizing that I had an opportunity to
play with an iPod while it was open, I decided to power various LEDs off
of the battery directly. I closed and opened the iPod a few times, just
to make sure that I could. I could, easily, but the second time my knife
cut through some wires connected to the battery. I let this slide, because
I figured that I could always solder it back together. I put it back together
and left it for a few days to dry. For real, this time.
Two days later, I soldered the battery back in. That took me several
tries, because the iPod's circuitry is much tinier than you'd expect.
When I finally finished, I discoved that the iPod didn't work. At all.
I taped the battery in placed, checked my solder, and left it for about
a week.
After a week I opened it up and studied the extent of my damage. To my
surprise, there were traces peeling off of the connectors on the clickwheel.
Hmm. That was never to function again, but I figured that with Linux, I'd
be able to script everything, eliminating a clickwheel. Upon further
inspection, I found that I had no screen, either. I sensed that the dollar
value of this iPod was dropping ever so slightly.
Two months later, I returned to the iPod and tried to reconnect everything.
I connected this to my stereo, which was at version 1.2 and had a motherboard.
After some quick scripting, I managed to mount it as a HFS+ partition. Wee
hee! It mounts! I ran over to my Mac and reinstalled Linux on the iPod, and
decided that scripting the music could wait until later. For now, I'd just
take it apart a few more times, just for fun. When I did this, I ESD'd the
NAND memory, which had a far worse effect than I'd expected. After a 12 hour
scan by my stereo, I found that I had exactly 0 blocks of working memory left
on the pod.
Wondering whether I could return it, I went to Future Shop and gave it to
the guy, saying that it didn't work when I opened it. He opened the box
and dumped the thing on the desk. "Impact damage isn't covered by warranty,"
he said. "Oh no," I laughed. "There wasn't any impact. I stuck a knife in it."
The FS guy looked at me funny, so I tried to backpaddle. "Uh... actually, I
misspoke. I simply put it under a running tap. Um... I mean I overwrote the
firmware. I mean..."
But as hard as I tried, I couldn't convince the guy that the broken iPod
was Future Shop's fault. This wasn't fair to me, because maybe the iPod
had been defective, and I had masked that by doing all that stuff
to it. Maybe Apple's warranty says that I'm supposed to have done
all that crap. I'm pretty sure that FS guy didn't have a copy of any
warranty behing his desk.
Anyway, I walked home dejected, but figured that somehow, some way, I could
make the iPod work again. I counted all the wires connecting the fried NAND
memory to the logic board, and they're the same as the ones connected the
flash memory in a USB stick I broke. I'm considering attempting a transplant
some day, and bring that iPod back... to the future!
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