A new old iPod

In February 2009, when I found out I had been selected for my current job in Germany, I got some German instructional CDs from the public library in Maryland and started listening to them in the car as I was driving to and from work.  Over the next few months, I listened to 100+ hours of German CDs and I felt like I learned a lot.  Since coming to Germany, I have taken several German classes offered at the local Army base but I want to start again with listening to German instruction in the car.  Of course, I can always just turn on the radio.  That has been the biggest reason I haven't really pursued other options.  The problem with the radio is that it hasn't really helped me develop vocabulary.  I can definitely understand some of what is being discussed in these radio conversations but when I miss something, there is no way to go back and read what was said or look things up in a dictionary.  So I have been wanting to try something else.

Last month I found Tina's old 30GB 5th generation iPod Video on a bookshelf with the camera Oscar broke in 2009.  I had planned to sell that camera for parts on eBay but never got around to it.  Same for the iPod -- it gave the infamous sad face when it was turned on.

I could hear the hard drive clicking so I thought that replacing the hard drive would bring it back to life.  I bought a cheap plastic pry tool on eBay so I could open the case without scratching the plastic (I probably could have just used a small screwdriver with some electrical tape on the head) and then I bought a replacment 30GB hard drive on eBay and waited for it to come in the mail.

My first attempt did not go very well.  I got the case open (it was harder than I had expected) but then the ZIF connector slot on the new hard drive did not match the ZIF connector slot on the old hard drive.  I did some more reading and discovered that 1.8-inch hard drives from Samsung (what I bought) use a different ZIF connector than the 1.8-inch hard drives from Toshiba and Hitachi (what I had).  So I returned the Samsung (I had to pay shipping plus a 10% restocking fee) and ordered a Hitachi ($21 on eBay).

In hindsight, I should have opened the iPod first to see what was inside.  But I thought that all 1.8-inch hard drives would use the same ZIF connector.

The Hitachi hard drive came in the mail on Thursday.  The case was already open so all I had to do was connect the new hard drive and put things back together.  It took me about 20 minutes.  An experienced person with proper lighting and tools could easily do this repair in less than 5 minutes.  Here is a picture of the iPod before I put the new hard drive in.  The white rectangle is the back of the LCD screen.  The ZIF connector for the hard drive is at the bottom of the ipod (left side of the picture).

Once I got the new hard drive in, the only question that remained was whether or not my attempt at fixing the problem had actually made it worse.  That was exactly what happened during my last attempt at taking apart an electronics device (the digital camera from 2009 went from having a broken lens to not powering on at all after I "fixed" it).  This iPod repair had fewer parts to disassemble so I expected there would be less opportunity for me to make a big mistake.  I powered it on and immediately things looked better.

iTunes did the rest of the work.

Last night I synced it up with some podcasts in iTunes.  I found three German podcasts (German GrammarPod, Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten -- the news spoken slowly, and Slow German) and one from church.  I particularly like the last two German podcasts because they have supplemental reading material that can be used to build vocabulary and enhance comprehension.