ipod hacks

171 Articles

300gig Ipod

March 13, 2005 by 41 Comments

flamingballofwreckage sent us a link to instructions for using a standard 3.5″ hard disk with your ipod.  after making the adapter, there is another howto for formatting the drive so that it will be correctly recognized by the device.

‘but j,’ you say, ‘that 3.5″ drive would make my ipod simply ginormous!’

yes.  yes it would.  but with a proper case, a small power supply, and an rca plug adapter, the ‘ipod super’ could be a really cool 300gb audio station that isn’t much bigger than a portable cd player.  that’s an awful lot of music and data storage in a tight package.

think car audio.  think brick sized dance party.  think media pc case mod.  or think different — and tell us about it.

Howto: Nonviolent Ipod Shuffle Disassembly

March 2, 2005 by 107 Comments

shuffle disassemble hack
while most shuffle owners don’t know it yet, in a year or two there will be a lot of folks wondering where their battery life went.  applecare’s battery replacement service for normal ipods is available for the low, low price of $99.  think they will have a cheapo shuffle battery replacement service?  think different.

we mentioned earlier that someone posted photos of an ipod shuffle disassembly.  the previous disassembly left a few key questions unanswered, namely:

  • do you need to butcher the buttons to take your shuffle apart?

  • will the average joe be able to replace the battery?

  • what else is under the hood?

  • can it be cleanly reassembled?

this howto will attempt to answer these questions while disassembling the shuffle in a non-destructive manner.

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Shuffle Array

February 8, 2005 by 19 Comments

shuffle raid array

i saw this just moments after posting yestrday’s article, so i’ve been itching to get this one up before everyone has read it already (apologies to those that have).  here’s a quick howto that shows you how to make a raid 0 array out of 4 ipod shuffles.  is it just me, or does this one look an awful lot like that weird boomerang from krull?

the basic setup is applicable to normal usb flash drives as well.  it’s not super fast, but it does allow you to use several devices as a one single, larger drive.  there’s really nothing stopping you from making a software raid array out of anything.  take the floppy disk array as an extreme example.

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How-to Make A ‘usb Battery’

January 20, 2005 by 186 Comments

usb battery

found out yesterday that there’s a shuffle shortage and gadget battery life can only be expected to get worse.  bummer.  at least you can make the most of your waiting-for-shuffle blues and solder yourself a ‘usb battery’.  this little gizmo runs off a 9 volt battery and supplies your favorite little device with the proper 5 volts of mobile power.

in lieu of running an ipod off of it, i tested it with an mpx220 smartphone and it should work fine with any low power mobile device that can charge via usb cable.  read more for instructions on how to make your own.

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Hack Your New Mac

January 19, 2005 by 45 Comments

mac mini

it’s begun.  you may have seen news of the ipod shuffle disassembly on engadget earlier this week, and now the mac mini is subject to hacking as well.

to begin hacking an ipod shuffle, follow the disassembly photos here.
to begin hacking a mac mini, view how to safely open the case here.

regarding the shuffle disassembly, i’d recommend you don’t remove the navigation pad if you ever intend to reassemble the device.  as for the mac mini, supposedly opening and servicing the machine won’t void your warranty.

unless you break something.

happy hacking and make sure to send us your creations.  we’ll be posting our own, so it only seems fair.  if you can’t find the time to create, send in any ideas you have and we’ll put our team of highly skilled hackers to work.

here are some examples to get the ideas flowing:

  • mac mini media player

  • external battery pack for the shuffle

  • integrated shuffle or mac mini car audio or navigation system

  • the most mini mac mini

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