Hey! Long time no see.
So I'm doing some research before I tackle this: I've got an original iPod from a buddy on Discord, and I was asked to diagnose it for them. Of course, this couldn't be easy, and a bunch of troubleshooting and disassembly later, I happened upon the culprit, which they also suspected: The RAM. Except I don't think any of us expected the RAM chip to have a nice crack running down the latter third of it. So yeah. RAM's toast.
It looks to be a standard (16MB?) Samsung DRAM chip, and given the cost of first gen iPods I'd say it's definitely worth it to attempt swapping the chip with some hot air. I have a couple questions though, hopefully ones that can be answered by those more experienced:
1. Will the fist gen iPod accept any DRAM chip from any vendor that matches the parameters of the Samsung one that went bad? Or does it specifically have to be THAT Samsung chip?
2. For disassembly, how the heck do you get the hard drive and display cables out? It looks like they're pretty securely tucked under the scroll wheel, and sadly the iFixit guide for this is incredibly unhelpful and doesn't really account for having to plug the cables back in when all is said and done.
I appreciate any pointers. I'm fairly confident in my abilities here but given how expensive these things are I definitely want to be well informed before I really dive in.
So I'm doing some research before I tackle this: I've got an original iPod from a buddy on Discord, and I was asked to diagnose it for them. Of course, this couldn't be easy, and a bunch of troubleshooting and disassembly later, I happened upon the culprit, which they also suspected: The RAM. Except I don't think any of us expected the RAM chip to have a nice crack running down the latter third of it. So yeah. RAM's toast.
It looks to be a standard (16MB?) Samsung DRAM chip, and given the cost of first gen iPods I'd say it's definitely worth it to attempt swapping the chip with some hot air. I have a couple questions though, hopefully ones that can be answered by those more experienced:
1. Will the fist gen iPod accept any DRAM chip from any vendor that matches the parameters of the Samsung one that went bad? Or does it specifically have to be THAT Samsung chip?
2. For disassembly, how the heck do you get the hard drive and display cables out? It looks like they're pretty securely tucked under the scroll wheel, and sadly the iFixit guide for this is incredibly unhelpful and doesn't really account for having to plug the cables back in when all is said and done.
I appreciate any pointers. I'm fairly confident in my abilities here but given how expensive these things are I definitely want to be well informed before I really dive in.