[DMinor]

Quote:

I bought a lot of 36 of them to refurb and diyMod!

Holy 36 Mini's. I am sure you won't get bored for a while.

 

[caseyfriday]

I just tried to wire the mini's output directly to the dock connector pins, and I destroyed one of my minis. Gonna stick with the suggested soldering points now.

 

[DMinor]

Quote:

I just tried to wire the mini's output directly to the dock connector pins, and I destroyed one of my minis. Gonna stick with the suggested soldering points now.

Sorry to hear that man.
 
How & what exactly did that happen? No sound? Sad face?
 
I am not sure though if the dock pins of the mini are exactly numbered the same as the ipod video's for left/right channels, i.e. #3 & #4 pins.

 

[caseyfriday]

Even better than that. I lifted pin 5's pad and bent the pin. I probably should have looked at how others have soldered directly to the dock as a guide first.

 

[DMinor]

Well I took some pics for the last mod I did, hope these can be helpful to others who want to do the direct out mod to the pins. Yes the pins are tiny but with a decent solder station they are less intimidating than I initially thought.
 

 

[Athur126]

Do you have a picture of how it looks like with the Cf card inside? I tried to stuff the 4.7uf wimas in but it doesn't seem to work, even with my friends 80GB ipod.

 

[caseyfriday]

Well I took some pics for the last mod I did, hope these can be helpful to others who want to do the direct out mod to the pins. Yes the pins are tiny but with a decent solder station they are less intimidating than I initially thought.

I'm not seeing your soldering of the actual dock connector pins. Did you happen to take a photo of that?

 

[DMinor]

Quote:

Do you have a picture of how it looks like with the Cf card inside? I tried to stuff the 4.7uf wimas in but it doesn't seem to work, even with my friends 80GB ipod.

 
This pic from another mod but showing where the caps are located with the CF in.
 

 
 
 
Quote:

I'm not seeing your soldering of the actual dock connector pins. Did you happen to take a photo of that?

 
What you meant? The 2 pins were first taken out from the dock and then soldered to the wires (shown in the pic). Then you put the pins back to the dock and secure them with hot glue or epoxy.

 

[caseyfriday]

Aaahh, no wonder it was so difficult for me to try and solder the wires directly to the mini's dock.  I didn't remove the pins from the dock first.  Didn't even know you could!  Is it just a pressure connection?

 

[thegrobe]

I would recommend looking a few pages back, I answered all this in a response, including pictures, instructions, etc.

 

[thegrobe]

Here, this post, read the bold responses and check the pics I included

http://www.head-fi.org/t/269604/the-apple-diymod-my-take-on-the-famous-imod-56k-killer-featuring-3g-4g-5g-and-nano-1g/2595#post_9180204

 

[thegrobe]

Here's more, copied from a few pages back:


anyone trying the direct to dock pins method - Have a dead iPod or iPod dock available to "harvest" some extra pins from the female dock. The pins are extremely frail, fussy, and easy to lose. Once separated from the board they pull right out of the dock. It really isn't that hard to remove them. The ones on the iPod you you are working on - you will want to desolder while getting an xacto blade tip behind them and they pop right off.

Any "spares" you get from a donor you can just use that xacto knife blade to wildly cut them off the board then pull them from the dock with small tweezers.

You will want to solder your wires to the pins while they are removed from the dock. If you look at the dock, counting from the left, you are operating on pins #3 and 4. #3 is right signal, #4 is left signal. On pin #3 you will want to solder your wire kind of on the left side of it, on pin #4 solder kind of on the right. The first time I soldered the wires centered on the pins and just the thin film of solder on each was thick enough that when the pins were back in the dock they were touching intermittently. The area here is soooo small that you want to verify individual pin isolation and continuity (as needed) with a multimeter.


When the pins go back into the dock they are all wacky and fussy as well so you want to make sure they are seated properly in their grooves on the other side of the dock and hit them with a dab of hot glue to secure them.

(I have since switched to using epoxy here)

 

[caseyfriday]

I just read your posts from a couple pages back - thanks for the helpful notes.  It looks like I could do that, based on the amount of space between a stripped CF card and the dock connector (see pic below), but it's such a tight fit that I'd rather stick to using the connections on the front of the board.  I've also gotten gotten quite good at soldering to the pads on the front of the board, and I doubt I'd hear any difference wiring it directly to the pins.
 

 

[DMinor]

Quote:

Aaahh, no wonder it was so difficult for me to try and solder the wires directly to the mini's dock.  I didn't remove the pins from the dock first.  Didn't even know you could!  Is it just a pressure connection?

It would be a daunting task to solder to the pins while they are in the dock without bridging anything.
 
I recall thegrobe even posted a pic showing how the pins/wires should be bent for soldering. Follow that pic exactly. With a few practice, you should be good to go.

 

[DMinor]

Any chance we can mod the battery for ipod video? I am wondering if we can possibly put in a pair of batteries (let's assume the space is not an issue) to boost power supply.