IPod 5th Gen Headphone capless output MOD:

[DMinor]

  I just put a few dots on the possible soldering points, The green dots are for AGND,  pink for AVDD. With a very fine tip soldering iron, soldering pads of existing components can be utilized. , otherwise just scrape off the soldering mask to expose the copper if needed. 

 
Can you elaborate on the highlighted? Wow these are tiny for soldering. I guess you have to use a magnifier to find the spot for soldering.
 
BTW, FYI I have been testing a Crucial 480GB mSATA on a ipod 5.5g using your patch. So far I have copied about 365 GB of files to the drive without any issue. No heat issue no slowing down and ipod very responsive. The battery seems performing very well too. Your patch works like a charm. Thanks a ton on this. Please let us know if you would like to receive donations for your effort. Cmarti has suggested in his post here.

 

[beyondwind]

   
Can you elaborate on the highlighted? Wow these are tiny for soldering. I guess you have to use a magnifier to find the spot for soldering.
 
BTW, FYI I have been testing a Crucial 480GB mSATA on a ipod 5.5g using your patch. So far I have copied about 365 GB of files to the drive without any issue. No heat issue no slowing down and ipod very responsive. The battery seems performing very well too. Your patch works like a charm. Thanks a ton on this. Please let us know if you would like to receive donations for your effort. Cmarti has suggested in his post here

To see things working will make me a happy man. Thanks!
 
Yeah, you will need some kind of magnifier for the soldering. I did  use magnified lamp for the soldering and use a loupe (20x?) for qualty checking. 

 

[DMinor]

  To see things working will make me a happy man. Thanks!
 
Yeah, you will need some kind of magnifier for the soldering. I did  use magnified lamp for the soldering and use a loupe (20x?) for qualty checking. 

 
You are a great man with my respect. You are doing the community a great favor as many like myself have been hoping to mod the ipod with the mSATA's due to its largest storage size at the most affordable price. Honestly I had written the mSATA off despite Torne's great effort to crack on it. Now it's like a dream coming true. My gut feeling (from experience with the 480GB drive) is with your patch the ipod 5.5g may well be able to handle a 1TB mSATA drive without issues.

 

[zzffnn]

Yes, this firmware will work with either HDD ipod or mSATA mod. 

No DC offset, some pop at startup due to registry initialization sequence. Very clean and tight bass!  Sound is neutral for my taste. I use ear buds so the 40mW output level is not a problem for me.

The Cap is kemet 47uf, 6V, tantalum, The exact cap used on other part of the logic board,  I harvest it from another broken logic board. 

Nice work, thanks beyondwind. I am considering this mod.

How did you obtain your output power rating of 40 mw though, was it measured at 16 ohm of load? It is not significantly different than stock iPod's output power, correct? 40 mw loaded output is good enough for my use and I don't need 30-pin line out. Thank you again!

 

[DMinor]

Yeah I want to give this one a try too, but I have not figured out how/what to solder to near the DAC for AGND & AVDD. It's freaking tiny over there and I can't see any pads for soldering.

 

[DMinor]

Anyone has tried this mod?
 
I tried to solder the wires to the DAC pins on my practice board, but damn it that's not easy with the pins so tiny.

 

[DMinor]

@beyondwind , if I don't want to use the stock headphone out, can I remove these 4 caps? I assume removing these caps won't affect line out thru the dock, correct? Thanks
 
Right now, I just unplug the headphone cable from the board since I only use the LOD. I want to remove items from the board as much as I can without affecting the LOD.
 
Even though removing these caps may not affect the SQ, I think it may help to improve battery performance by drawing less power (with less components). 
 
Please let me know if there are anything else I can remove from the board IF I only use the LOD.
 
 

 

[paulus germanus]

Hi beyondwind! Your website appears to be dead And google does not seem to be able to find any other site with the manual to iPhD MOD And I badly wanna mod my iPod that way!

Halp plz

 

[paulus germanus]

Hi beyondwind! Your website appears to be dead

It works now - thanks

 

[EH-Yeon]

 
Hi, does it work as balanced if i separate the bridge at HP_COM above to both grounding for left and right respectively, for 4 pin (trrs/ RSA balanced connector etc) balanced termination replacing the headphone out? or they would remain the same as unbalanced still?  Not sure how VMID works

 

[DMinor]

I don't know how one can achieve a solid and reliable soldered joints near the DAC for AGND & AVDD2.

 

[EH-Yeon]

  I don't know how one can achieve a solid and reliable soldered joints near the DAC for AGND & AVDD2.

I still figuring out how. I might scrape off some soldering mask near to the pin to secure the cable for more contact/wetting surface. and some hot glue finally. 
 
Got a reply from beyondwind and he believes it works like xlr balanced output. i might try when my parts arrive. Still figuring which caps to go to to AGND and AVDD2.