Casey Friday

I restore old iPods and repurpose them with audiophile parts. I'm currently having an issue with a 3G iPod that I've retro fi...

I bought a water damaged phone on ebay. The dock connector ribbon cable was downright ratty, so I replaced it, the battery, t...

My iPhone 3GS won't boot at all. I bought it off of ebay, and it was listed as water damaged. Only the water indicator in the...

I just tried to replace a black LCD with a white one on a VZW iPhone 4, and I accidentally ripped the cable on the white display, rendering it useless. Then when putting the black LCD back in, I bent the flex cable under the frame accidentally, and now the digitizer works sporadically, and not in all areas of the screen. The LCD is one of the trickiest repairs to do on this, because even after you've painstakingly removed ALL of those screws, you can still damage the LCD while installing it. At least now I know for the future! Just make sure when you're installing a new screen that once you're actually putting the LCD on, you're lightly pulling the cables through the frame the entire time, so that they don't get stuck under it and become bent.

I've been trying quite a few different compact flash cards, SSD's, and SD cards in the third gen iPod, and I finally found out how to make almost all of them work! I used one Mac computer, and one Windows netbook, but it's possible that you can do it with just your Mac and a virtual machine Windows. I posted the solution over at Head-Fi, so instead of posting it again, I'll just provide that link. I got a 64GB SD card to work (Patriot LX SDXC) in a CF-SD adapter I got on Amazon, which was put into an IDE-CF 50-pin adapter I also got on Amazon. The SD solution is really a hack, and the transfer speeds are so slow with SD compared to CF and HDD that I'd really stay away from SD cards in iPods if at all possible. Once you've got your music on, it's pretty quick, but that initial transfer can take many hours for just 30GB of music. With CF, it's as fast - if not a bit faster - than a hard disk drive. I tried the KingSpec 128GB IDE SSD from Amazon in my iPod 3G, and I couldn't get it to work, but I didn't have the...

mpias - if you look, you can see two separate areas with thermal paste, so this model likely does have the 750m. Click "View Original" on the final photo.

It looks like the factory did a pretty bad job of applying thermal paste to this laptop as well (same with my 2011 MBP 17, so I'll be re-applying some Arctic Silver 5. However, this procedure is MUCH easier than it was with my 2011, since I don't have to remove every single connector and the entire logic board! Now I just need to get some pentalobe tools.

I was able to get a relatively good grip with needle nose pliers, without taking anything apart. You just have to gently pull it out, and it'll pop right out.

Well, I ordered a sample from the company that provides the clip for the door, and you simply have to pull the broken door latch out with some pliers, then push the new one in, and your door works just like it's new! The name of the company is Richco, a part of Essentra Components, and the part number is DL-1X. They shipped two of them to me for free. Awesome!

Well, I haven't been able to figure out why I get the loud feedback noise when I turn this on occasionally, so I went ahead and upgraded to a Kicker iK501. Very similar to the iM7, and although I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for the iM7, the Kicker is a very, very nice 30-pin iPod dock.

The only thing I don't like about mine is that sometimes when I turn it on, it emits an insanely loud whistle noise that feels like it's going to pierce my ear drums. I thought cleaning it with contact cleaner would fix that, but it didn't. I wish I knew what was causing it, because it makes me afraid to turn it on!

When it doesn't do that whistling noise though, man this is the best sounding iPod stereo I've ever heard!