Sunday, March 9, 2008

iPod mini mod

The microdrive in my first generation iPod mini finally died a few days ago.

The 1st gen iPod mini utilizes the same Wolfson Microelectronics WM8731L audio chipset as the 3rd gen iPod (which is believed to be the iPod with the best sound quality). The technical details can be found here.

Anyway, many people has tried to mod the 1st gen iPod mini to use flash based card. Now I have a good excuse to try it :P

First thing to do is to find the right compactflash card. The key word to look for here is "ATA compatibility". The speed of the card doesn't matter. The one that I used is from the A-Data Speedy series. Picked up the 16GB model for HKD520.




The rest is easy. Just follow the online tutorial to disassemble the iPod mini and replace the microdrive.











Finally, connect the iPod mini to a computer and use iTunes to restore the firmware. Restart. And iPod mini recognizes the card without any problem.



To do: replace the battery with a higher capacity one and reinstall the Rockbox firmware later to play FLAC.

5 comments:

cc said...

救命!原來你張cf card係要o黎咁用ga!!!唔打開我無諗過部ipod入面係咁o既,原來入面係有一張card ga ~~~ 如果我部o野壞左,我諗我點都唔會知道係因為入面有張card壞左!

:o :o :o

kc said...

唔係架~ 只係 iPod mini 係用 microdrive 的說。所以亦只有佢先可以換 cf card。你部 iPod nano 係用 on-board flash memory 架~

fatau said...

我都換左16GB咭...但係換完先知裝唔到IPOD LINUX 同ROCKBOX.....
巴打有計仔??

Michael said...

Can I store my iPOD nano (2nd gen) without using itunes ??

okusare said...

Hello, I did this mod with kinsgton 16 gb elite pro card but only got 14.1 gb of free space. Any clue what went wrong? I used itunes to restore it. Please help, thank you.