The Apple diyMod: My Take on the Famous iMod [56k killer] Featuring 3G, 4G, 5G and nano 1G! - Page 9

You mean Radio Shack doesn't carry any smaller sizes? I got my wire from navships on eBay, 30 AWG teflon 7 strand SPC. He has a huge selection, and has served head-fiers well over the years. Very reliable. The only caveat I have is that the 30 AWG wire is one size away from what my wire stripper can strip. 28 would serve you well, I think.

I did use a new headphone jack. I don't have a sufficiently portable amp yet (one that will fit into my jacket's breast pocket and isn't completely noticeable when I hug someone), so I decided to keep the original headphone jack intact. One major consquence of this design decision is that I have to somehow incorporate a new jack, which leads to an effectively larger player, which then leads to add-ons much like my diyMod 4G's rocket pack. At the same time, this affords the possibility of slightly larger (better?) capacitors than the original iMod's Black Gate NX Hi-Q caps, though Black Gate's NX line is already of high quality. I didn't have the Black Gates on hand, so I had to use some slightly larger, overspec'ed caps that required some method of stabilization. That's where the Tic-Tac box, mummified with electric tape to my iPod, comes in. I'll be making an order of Black Gates soon-ish. We'll see how that goes.

Just wanted to report that work has gone under way to make a tutorial for the diyMod 5G. The only thing is this board is much, much harder for me to figure out than the 4G click wheel. Basically, the trace is hard to find from the pin, and once I post some pics, you'll see what I mean. The dude at this page has picture of some very obvious caps that go to the headphone out, but I'm not finding a short between the line out pins of the WM8758 chip and either side of the caps, so I'll keep investigating.

The closest I came to anything was an increasing resistance between the line out pin and one of the pads of the huge capacitors, starting around 1400Kohms and slowly climbing up to 1600Kohms as I remove the leads. I suspect some current [from] the DMM caused this odd activity.

Opening the iPod video was difficult on its own, so beginners may want to take caution. This iPod is extra annoying not only in its complexity, but also in the ludicrous amounts of adhesive used. Once you remove some of it, it's near impossible to put it back to its previous effectiveness. It's not that the logic board necessarily needs that much adhesive as it's all pretty cramped inside anyway, but I guess Apple wanted to be doubly sure of its security.

This has gotten me to scratch my head quite a bit. I'm beginning to question whether or not it's worth the trouble. I know this feeling will pass, but it's greatly frustrating working into the wee hours of the night (wee for me anyways) with a full day ahead of you and getting nowhere. If anyone would care to open up their 5G and explore with me, that would be of great assistance. Better yet, if someone would open their 5G iMod...

Alas, my bed beckons me, as I have many pages and hours of studying tomorrow/today. Help would be greatly appreciated.

Wow, look at what I started. I hope this rocket pack thing doesn't become too common I personally don't mind the aesthetics of it, but never thought people would want to copy it. Interesting stuff. Hope all goes well for you this time around, wgr. Remember, bring on the pics!

There's very little need for a tutorial, iQEM. You have a garden variety of iPod opening pictorial/tutorials, and besides opening your iPod, all you need to do is: solder some wires to the board; drill a hole; and basically make an interconnect with some caps in the sleeving, which there is another tutorial for in this very subforum. After all, we are in a do-it-yourself forum here.

The most damage you could do to your iPod happens while you open it, so the abundance of tutorials for that process should already almost fully equip you to do this mod. Once it's open, solder this and that there, drill a hole, make an interconnect, voila.