Over the last few months I’ve had a crackling over the headphones when playing music, which steadily got worse. And only a few weeks back I lost all audio. I was gutted!

It turns out that the very reason I love this iPod, the wolfson DAC, was also the culprit. Over time, the audio chips de-solder from the logic board. This could be due to changes in temperature when using the iPod in hot conditions, such as in a car. I tried to reflow the logic board but to no avail. It was time for a new logic board.

This iPod is now 11 years old & spare parts aren’t easy to come by. I managed to find a Canadian seller on eBay who had a refurbished iPod video 5th generation logic board for sale. The board was £55 delivered & took around 4 weeks to arrive after getting stopped at customs (without extra charges).

Fitting a logic board into a 5th Generation isn’t for the faint of heart. It requires stripping down the iPod into its component parts, including un-pealing ribbon cables which are attached with glue & completely dismantling the chassis. It’s not an impossible task if you take your time, and I’d advise you take pictures along the way to keep track of component & cable locations.

Once I had the logic board in place I reassembled the iPod and plugged it into my iMac. I instantly had an issue. After restoring the iPod software in iTunes I found the iPod stuck in a reboot loop. The Apple logo would display on-screen, followed by the screen flashing and the iPod rebooting. This would happen indefinitely.

At first I suspected a faulty logic board, but I managed to get the iPod into Disk Mode and the screen displayed fine & was recognised by the iMac. This demonstrated that the logic board was fine. I then entered the diagnostic secret menu on the iPod and ran some self tests. Again, all came back as normal. I suspected a formatting issue, so I plugged the iPod in to the iMac in disk mode & used Disk Utility on my mac to format the disk. After formatting the disk iTunes again wanted to restore the iPod, I let it do its thing & the iPod booted first time. This could have been an issue with iFlash quad, or it could be that the storage device is somehow paired to the logic board. Either way, formatting in Disk Mode using disk utility, then restoring in iTunes fixed the issue.

I was happy to see my Ipod boot up quickly & I started to sync my entire library (over 140GB) over to the iPod. This takes a long time as the USB interface on these old iPods is slow. I let it sync overnight and came back to it the next day.

As soon as I started scrolling through the menus it felt different. Only slightly, but I noticed a search option. To my surprise I had been sent the logic board from an iPod 5.5 generation. These where the last of the 5th Generation iPods, the last with the Wolfson DAC which is so sought after, and the one with many improvements. We now have search & brightness controls, and the menus feel snappier.  This now means I’ve got a 5.5 Gen iPod with 256GB of flash storage and a fresh battery. Gone are the days of not carrying all of my music. No longer am I bound by 3G/4G signal for my music. This iPod is perfect for travel, ideal for the airplane. Last time I flew to Berlin when the iPod was broken, I only had my iPhone 6. To my dismay I only had 12 songs stored locally, which meant a long travel time with only a handful of tunes I hadn’t even chosen.

I generally hate streaming over cellular. It’s unpredictable, costly & dependent on Signal. It also ruins battery life. I’m so glad to have my iPod up & running again & I can see me using this for another 10 years. If you have a 5th Generation iPod & still use it, let me know in the comments.

This iPod has seen heavy usage since the day I bought it. It has traveled with me around the world, still in its original Belkin hard case & it has never EVER failed me.

I had to replace the battery a few years back as it was holding less & less charge, but apart from that it just keeps going. I think the Wolfson DAC in this generation iPod offers the greatest sound output from any of the Apple music players before or since. It knocks the socks off even my iPhone 6 and all of my previous iPhones.

From the iPhone 3G onward I’ve been tempted to switch my music to the iPhone only but I have various gripes with that. Firstly, it has limited storage space & is quite a clunky experience. I don’t like streaming as it relies on Connectivity, which eats battery, its useless for international travel and generally gives an interrupted user experience. Secondly, I find myself constantly interrupted by push notifications, calls, texts & distractions. Walking around a city in my own world listening to my extensive music library used to be my way of disconnecting and chilling out. Since using smart phones this is less & less viable.

So I’ve switched back to the iPod. My problem now is since using iTunes match, my entire library is now of a higher bitrate. My music is mostly now in 256kbps AAC. My MP3 collection used to be predominately 160kbps or 192kbps which was pretty normal in mid to late 2000’s. Couple that with my ever-growing library & I’ve found myself needing to be selective about the music I carry on the iPod. I hate that! If I think of a tune I would like to listen to on the go, I like to have it to hand. I therefore decided to upgrade the old iPod, not by replacing it, but by enhancing it.

I researched putting in an SSD and doing an iPod SSD upgrade, which seemed a good prospect, but not very flexible. I then looked at the possibility of using SD or Compact Flash cards to expand the memory & stumbled across the iFlash website & boards. iFlash make boards which allow you to swap out the internal ZIF hard drive on the iPod 5th Gen and replace it with a small PCB supporting SD cards. You have the option of a board supporting one card, a dual SD board or a quad board. To future proof I went for the quad board meaning I could expand it easily in the future.

The iFlash essentially replaces your hard drive with a board running SD cards which acts as a virtual HDD using JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) mode allowing you to mix and match SD cards to create one large volume. I ordered the iFlash Quad & two fresh Sandisk Ultra Micro SDXC Class 10 cards. Both cards are 64GB giving me a combined 128GB of flash storage in the old iPod. Compared to the standard 30GB this is a massive improvement, & I can add some more SD cards in the future if needs be.

I used the iFixit tear down guide to dismantle my iPod, bearing in mind that I’ve stripped it down in the past to replace the battery. Dismantling is fairly easy, I’d recommend an iPod opening soft tool to open the case. The back cover is metal but the front is plastic so you don’t want to damage the clips or the casing. Make sure to turn the iPod off and use the lock switch to lock the iPod before starting. I find it best to insert the removal tool in the case gap on each side and run it the full length a few times to pop the clips open. I don’t lever it at all, the simple back and forth sliding is normally enough. One is pops open, don’t just pull it apart as the battery ribbon cable needs to be removed. I use a small pair of tweezers to lift up the brown ribbon latch a few mm. Go really easy with this, it only needs to raise slightly to release the cable. Once the cable is removed you can open the case like a book, leaving the other ribbon untouched.

The next thing you need to do is flip the hard drive 180 degrees towards the bottom edge of the case to expose the ZIF cable & connector. You then need to lightly flip-up the black connector at the HDD end, it doesn’t lift up, it flips up through 90 degrees or so to release the cable.. Once that is lifted you can slowly ease the ribbon cable out.

Next you need to take your iFlash board & insert your SD cards. In my case I inserted both 64GB cards into slow 1 & 2. Make sure you have removed all of the grey HDD bumpers, I found an extra little bumper at the bottom edge which had to come out to seat the iFlash properly. Slip the HDD ribbon into the ZIF connector on the iFlash and close the lock bar. It works exactly the same as the one you just opened on your HDD. I used tweezers again to make sure the ribbon was fully seated int he connector, be careful not to kink the ribbon. Light pressure only. You can then seat the iFlash and stick one of the supplied sticky pads to the chipset to keep it snug when the case is closed.

Before clipping the case back together, reinsert the battery ribbon and click the lock shut. Place the top case onto the bottom case but don’t clip the case back together yet. First plug your iPod into your computer and check that you can restore it with iTunes and that it boots up & reports your new storage capacity both in iTunes and on the iPod in the settings menu. Once you are happy & have restored the iPod using iTunes, clip back together & enjoy.

So far I’m loving this mod. Battery life is much improved as the iFlash doesn’t have a platter to move like the old HDD. Also I found syncing to be much faster, song seeking much faster and the ability to sync my entire library in 256kbps AAC means vastly improved audio quality. Better clarity and less fuzz.

This mod should be do-able by most competent DIY-ers and hardware hackers. Just be careful when releasing cable release latches, the plastic is now 10 years old in mine & no doubt more brittle with age. Take your time with these parts, treat it as if it where precious. No force, just patience.

I now have a smart phone killer in the mobile music battle. I expect this iPod will keep travelling the world with me for many years. I’m also looking onto running an even higher capacity battery, but right now I can just run it off my Anker PowerCore 20100 power bank if required.

Below is a picture of my upgraded iPod & my original packaging. This is now 10 years old (was 10 in June this year) and I still treasure it like the day I bought it.

If you have carried out any hardware hacks on old iPod do let me know & as always if you need help, just ask me in the comments.

I love how the apple earphones integrate with iPod and the Ipod music app for iPhone. The play/pause & volume controls are great when I put my music on Shuffle. I use iTunes match so I stream my entire library to my iOS devices. My library has over 15,000 songs in it so I use the skip button quite often & it’s great to be able to do it via the cable remote. I also like to answer my calls while I’m on the go, walking around cities. It seamlessly mutes my music so i can take the call using the built in cable mic and then resumes playback at the end.

The new EarPods are a revelation. The positioning of the bass and treble speakers are perfect. The bass essentially plays into the cartilage/bone around your ear so it’s full bodied & not deafening. It’s so much richer. The small treble speaker gives great definition to higher notes & the whole experience is a major improvement on the older earphone design. They come in Apple’s infamous rubbery finish and the parts of the cable that meet the ear buds & the 3.5mm audio jack are perfectly reinforced to stop bending and splitting. They come beautifully packaged in a plastic wrap box. These are well worth the money & I would recommend them to anyone. I also find that they sit in my ears much better & feel far more comfortable.

As someone who listens to really heavy music (I tested these with Down, Lamb Of God & Kyuss) I really recommend them. The bass is incredible for in earphones and doesn’t leave that horrible muffled hearing when you stop listening.

You can buy them directly from Apple or Amazon. Amazon have them for £10.95 delivered. Absolute bargain!  ]]> 1094