Not another broken iPod
My first iPod was the First Generation 10 GB model, right after it was released. I used it every day at work. I loved it. And then, it had that obnoxious battery issue that they're now famous for having. Luckily, I moved to NY and had access to an Apple Store. The SoHo store hooked me up with a replacement, and that lasted all of 6 months, and then the Huntington store replaced it again, due to freaky battery/restarting issues. And then, THEN, the Play/Pause button stopped working completely. I gave up and bought a refurbished 3G 10GB iPod, which I'm still using... until yesterday. It had been acting up, and the center select button was less than responsive. Then it quit registering, and it's a solid state device. I figure I'm screwed, again.
I'm kind of enraged that I've broken 2 of these gizmos so far, so I figure what the hell, it's broken and wont be fixed for free, so I'm cracking this thing open. I go on the web and find a really helpful video from the folks at Other World Computing that gave me step-by-step instructions to open the case. I didn't have their fancy little tool, so I used a piece of wedge shaped plastic we had in the lab. It's quite a piece of engineering inside that little thing. The HD is tiny, the battery is tiny, it's all teeny-tiny! And now they have a Nano?
I take out the HD and notice that the software actually still works, which was surprising. Cool! But, the button still doesn't work. I can't see anything that's obviously burnt out or damaged, so I rub my finger all over the inside of it, on all the little capacitors and chips and everything. The little box made a bunch of squeaky chirping noises, and I turned it over to find that the button works again! Wheee! So I put it back together and everything's happy now!
Kiiiiick-Aaaasssss!