Article: Someone Should Make This…

What happens to 1st- and 2nd-Generation iPods when they no longer have enough space to hold all your music? What if the battery dies and you’re not covered by the Apple lawsuit? What if your iPod has some other damage and you’ve already moved onto a newer offering? In short of tossing your old iPod, there is another option.

Some have looked into this option with some hacking:

“Ultimately, I’d like to get a regular 3.5” hard drive working with the iPod and explore what capacities it can make use of. The fact that it would be a huge unit will simply be a novelty.

This project came about after I dropped my 40GB 3rd-Generation iPod and killed the hard drive in it. I decided to open up the iPod and see what I could do with it. I could do so without fear of breaking it, since I’d already broken the most expensive part in it.”

There’s even more of the older iPods kicking around in the bottom of desk drawers, getting ready to be recycled, or (worse) headed for the trash. Why doesn’t one of the various Mac/iPod peripheral makers out there create a kit that allows you to take your old iPod’s essential components (motherboard, maybe screen and scroll wheel) and gives you the following:

• A stereo component-sized case: maybe something smaller, but since this new iPod will lose mobility, why not make it fit in a standard setup?
• An adapter: to connect a standard 3.5″ IDE hard drive to the iPod
• A power supply: to power the entire mess
• A remote: if it forgoes the built-in controls (allowing you to forgo one more original iPod part), you can control things from across the room
• An RCA adapter: So you can connect it to any stereo system (bonus points if anyone can tap into line-out capabilities)

Pricing can’t be too high, but I think many will embrace a kit that will salvage their old iPod’s “brain”. Of course, connecting it to a computer to sync songs would require the iPodGinormous to be moved from its stereo system location, but imagine the coolness of having all of your songs with your stereo system without dealing with AirPort Express, expensive network music players, or long stereo cables.

I’m sure designing this is the biggest challenge, but once a design is created, it could probably be translated to other iPod models (and other uses – like in a car).