iPod repairs

While my daughter was home over the Thanksgiving weekend, she mentioned that her iPod was on the fritz, the Play/Pause button had stopped working. So being the gadget geek and tinkerer that I am I offered to take a look at it. This would actually be the second time that I worked on her iPod mini, I had changed out the battery last summer. So, I used the instructions that came with the battery to get the main components out of the way. The instructions are available online from batteryship.com (which has very good prices on the replacement batteries). Once all the "guts" are pulled out, the scroll wheel can be removed by applying slight downward pressure and sliding it out of the aluminum body. Once the scroll wheel was removed, I disassembled it further by removing the four phillips screws at each corner.







I couldn't see anything obvious, but the small encapsulated micro switches probably have a limited life expectancy. I was able to make it work by pressing the switch directly. As a workaround I placed a small piece of metal tape directly under the switch contact on the metal plate beneath the switch and put everything back together. It's now working, but I think it's just a stop gap, I have a feeling that a new iPod will be on my daughters wish list for Christmas.

My next iPod project is to replace the battery in my wifes old 3rd Gen iPod, it should make a handy 15Gb portable storage device.