Secrets of the iPod and iTunes (Fifth Edition) [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Inside the First- and Second-generation iPods

Come on, admit ityou've always wondered what the inside of your iPod looks like. Please allow me to save you the trouble of finding out on your own. The following pictures and descriptions illustrate how the first-generation iPod is put together and what makes it tick.

Beneath the Cover

If you were to perform surgery on your iPod, here's what you'd find.

The battery

The first thing you see when you remove the back plate of a first- or second-generation iPod is the Sony Fukushima 4.15 lithium polymer battery. This battery, which is about 0.11 inch thick, plugs into the iPod's main circuit board. The battery on a third-generation iPod is about one-third the size of the original iPod's battery.

The hard drive

The first-generation iPods carried 5 and 10 GB Toshiba hard drives. The second-generation carried Toshiba drives that held 5, 10, or 20 GB of data. The drive's detachable data connector is at the bottom of the iPod.

The circuit board

The iPod's circuit board hosts the components necessary for the iPod to do its job. Here, on a first- or second-generation iPod, you'll find the following items (Figure 10.5):

The FireWire controller chip.
As the name implies, this Texas Instruments TSB43AA82 chip controls the iPod's FireWire functions.

The SDRAM chip.
This 32 MB Samsung K4S561632C chip serves as the iPod's 20-minute music buffer. Music is read from the hard drive and moved into this chip, allowing the hard drive to spin down (thus saving battery power). When the buffer is nearly empty, the hard drive spins back up and loads additional music into the chip.

The third-generation iPod's SDRAM chip is much smaller and made by Sharp.

The Central Processing Unit (CPU).
The PortalPlayer PP5002B chip takes care of processing music on the iPod, including encoding and decoding MP3 and AAC files and producing effects such as EQ and bass boost.

The Digital Audio Converter (DAC) chip.
On the flip side of the circuit board is the DAC chip, which is responsible for delivering sound through the headphone and data/power ports.

It's What's Inside That Counts: Disassembling the First-generation iPod

These instructions are for first-generation iPod models only. The second-generation iPod is similarly configured on the inside, except for the inclusion of some shock-absorbing material; it's more difficult to open because the back plate overlaps the top ports.

My greatest desire is that you'll never feel compelled to open your iPod. But there are occasions when pulling it apart makes sensewhen your iPod apparently has given up the ghost; its warranty has expired; you want to salvage parts from it; or other troubleshooting techniques have failed, and before pungling up more than $255 plus tax for Apple to repair or replace it, you'd like to try one more thing. Here's how to accomplish that one more thing:

1. Turn off the iPod, and engage its Hold switch so that it doesn't turn on while you're working on it.

2. Find a thin piece of smooth plastic a little thinner than a credit card (my library card did the trick).

You'll use this plastic as a wedge to remove the back plate.Don't use a screwdriver, as it can bend and score the case.

3. Hold the iPod upright, facing you; insert an edge of the plastic between the FireWire port and the symbol for that port; and push forward toward the corner of the iPod.

If you're left-handed, you'll probably want to start below the Hold switch and push toward the corner nearest to it.

The corner of the back plate should pull slightly away from the front.

4. With the plastic wedged between the back case and the front, continue pushing around the corner and down the side of the iPod, working the back case away from the front.

Work slowly; the 12 plastic clips that hold the back plate in place can break if you wrench the back plate away too violently.

5. Work the plastic all the way around the back plate, and when the back plate is free, pull it off (Figure 10.6).

6. Pull out the battery.

The battery is held in place by a couple of thin sticky rubber pads that are really sticky. To dislodge the battery from the hard drive, you must use a fair amount of force. Before applying the force, hold the hard drive in place. If you don't, the hard drive is likely to pull up along with the battery, and you could damage the hard drive's data connector (Figure 10.7).

7. Fold the battery away from the iPod so that you can access the hard drive without pulling on the thin battery cables (Figure 10.8).

8. Gently pull the hard drive away from the iPod's circuit board, pulling from the top first (Figure 10.9).

9. When the top and bottom pads are free, detach the hard drive's data connector by grasping it and gently pulling the drive away from the connector (Figure 10.10).

10. To detach the battery from the circuit board, grasp the top of the white plastic connector with a pair of needle-nosed pliers, and gently pull straight up (Figure 10.11).

11. To reassemble the iPod, reattach the battery connector, replace the hard drive and data connector, place the battery back on top of the hard drive, and press the back plate into place.

Be sure that the battery wires are out of the way so that the back plate doesn't pinch (or break) them.

Can You Upgrade the Hard Drive?

I've made it a habit to disassemble the very first iPoda 5 GB modelwhenever I'm called upon to speak to an audience about this little digital wonder. Because the folks I address have a strong desire to know what the iPod looks like under the hood (and are more than willing to see someone else risk his iPod to satisfy their curiosity), I do my best to oblige.

Invariably, once the iPod is apart, someone shouts, "Can I put a higher-capacity hard drive into my iPod?"

Yes, you candepending on the iPod you intend to upgrade. I have successfully transplanted the hard drive from a first-generation 10 GB iPod into the body of a first-generation 5 GB iPod. After the operation, I checked this FrankenPod's About screen, and sure enough, it thought that it was a 10 GB iPod. As you would expect, all the datamusic, playlists, calendars, and contactsworked perfectly.

You won't have this kind of luck moving the drive from a second-generation 20 GB iPod to a first- or second-generation iPod of lesser capacity unless you also use that 20 GB iPod's back case. Because the hard drive in the first 20 GB iPod is physically larger; it won't fit in the original case of an earlier iPod.

The third-generation iPod bears an entirely different form factor from the previous two generations of iPodsboth inside and outside. The hard drive in the 15 and 20 GB third-generation iPods, however, is the same dimension and weight as the 5 and 10 GB hard drives used in earlier models and is indeed swappablebut not without a degree of preparation.

The difficulty is that the drive from a third-generation iPod includes software that the earlier iPods can't comprehendthe software that allows the On-The-Go menu feature to work, for example. When you plug one of these drives into an older iPod, the older iPod displays an icon indicating that it can't find the software necessary to boot the iPod. To make the drive compatible with your old iPod, you must restore it with the iPod Software Updater appropriate for that iPod model. After you do, the iPod boots from the higher-capacity drive. Should you want to return the drive to a third-generation iPod, you must restore it with the iPod Software Updater designed for that kind of iPod.

Plunking a 30 or 40 GB drive from a third-generation iPod into an early iPod is impossible. The drive is too large to fit in the iPod's case.

PDASmart is the only company I'm aware of that sells replacement iPod hard drives and as this book goes to press, it sells only 5 and 10 GB drives for first- and second-generation iPods. Its 5 and 10 GB drives are priced at $100 and $140, respectively. (Add $10 to have PDASmart install the hard drive for you.)