put flash memory into (almost) ANY iPod!

These last few days I’ve been living like a monk. Why? Well, after the success of my former project, turn your iPod mini into a flash based iPod, I started thinking “wouldn’t it be great if we could do this to almost any iPod ever made?”... I mean, eliminating all moving parts out of our current iPods would be great, wouldn’t it? ^_^



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And the thought just wouldn’t let go. The information online about something like this was very scarce, if any, and I couldn’t find a single soul who actually did something like this… So, there I was, (thanks go out to Adam of iPodrepair.nl for some of the material) with two 4G iPods (a 40GB photo and a 20GB ‘normal’ 4G), some compact flashcards, up to 16GB, all from Peak Hardware, cards that have proven to be ideal for the iPod mini upgrade, my kitchentable, my tools and three days to do it in (which became four by the way, and the weather’s been great! not that I’ve been able to enjoy it though… *^_^*)



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the starting point…



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it looks nice, but all I gotta do is make this work! ^_^



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this is NOT a How To

Well, in the process of gathering the information for what was needed to pull this off, the tought of making this a how-to became doubtful. Not that I want to exaggerate my own skills or such, but I had to go into three days of total Zen to get this done and in the end I had to hand-solder 88(!) connections by hand on the smallest of spaces. A drip of solder already was too big and I must’ve had an angel on my shoulder when I soldered this.



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I made a video where I explain my ideas around this:

direct link to the video on YouTube.



...geeeeez… (taken from a screenshot of april 4th from the youtube-video)

in short:

I’m gonna make sure this adapter, which is now a working prototype (as you can see in the video) is going in to production.

the sales pitch

this adapter enables you to take out all moving parts from your current 1G, 2G, 3G or 4G iPod. Batterylife will improve dramatically. The adapter (and thereby your iPod) will be able to hold Compact Flashcards up to 128GB with this. No matter what size your current iPod is now.

Upgrading your current iPod is just better than just to go out and buy a new one… ^_^

If you’re willing to buy such an adapter as the perfect upgrade for your 1G, 2G, 3G or 4G ‘normal’ iPod, leave your mail-address and I will only send you one email once I’ve got all the details pinned down. In that email you can still decide about buying this or not and just to make sure, I will only use your mail-address once.



the contact form

the making of

For the real hardware pr*n lovers out there, here are some pics of the making of… *^_^*





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The harddrive-connector (top left) proved to be undoable to solder (for me at least) and after a while I came up with an almost identical connector from an old PCMCIA 14K4 modemcard which had solder-connections on each side, thereby making it hand solderable (well, sort of). For me, this was the break-through I needed to prove my schematic would work… and after countless hours of soldering all 88 connections… it worked!



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testing



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Well, in the first test, this adapter didn’t work… and after measuring through all connections it seemed one(!) got loose… When I fixed that, all was good to go.



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And well, what is there to say, this is it. Along with the previous project I guess I can say I found ways of eliminating almost every hard drive out of almost every hard drive based iPod thereby eliminating all moving parts. The only one left is the iPod video which would only need a slightly different adapter. But next to that I’ve got a gut feeling that one’s being upgraded to flash memory by Apple themselves any time soon.

If you want this adapter, make sure you fill out the form on this page and I’ll contact you as soon as I’ve got all the details pinned down.

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I would like to point out that everything on this website is licensed through a Creative Commons License.

(c) 2007 mark

You can digg the engadget-article, that one hit the frontpage!



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As mentioned in the Message from Mark's family this site has been made static. This means that it will be no longer possible to comment on his ideas and projects, but that we all can continue to cherish his creativity.you can find all of my projects overhere