Get it on your iPod. A perverted man with 12 units tried to increase the capacity to 1,600GB (Impress Watch) --Yahoo! News

Photo: Impress Watch

Apple's portable music player "iPod" equipped with an LCD screen and touch wheel was discontinued in September 2014. A long time ago, when I looked around the city or on the train, I often saw people enjoying music on their iPods, but these days, I don't see them anymore. [See another image for this article] Most portable music players have been replaced by smartphones, and earphones have also shifted from wired to completely wireless. The act of ripping CDs one by one and editing or transferring metadata with music management software on a PC is no longer a Heisei retro style. We are now in an era where you can spend a dream-like music life where you can listen to tens of millions of songs, old and new, just by subscribing to a music distribution service that costs several hundred yen a month. What's more, Apple and Amazon's music distribution services allow you to listen in lossless, high-resolution, and even 3D. In such a case, there will be only a lot of lovers or metamorphosis, such as people who use iPods that are "high resolution", "cannot use wireless", and "cannot listen to music distribution". However, such metamorphosis exists in every world. I am one of them, and I am not dissatisfied with the simple music playback function and intuitive wheel operation of the iPod, and I am still using it in active use. The chances of taking it out due to Korona-ka have decreased considerably, but 11 out of 12 iPods are operating, and if you charge it, you can play the recorded lossless sound source (in case of emergency). One is unopened). However, one of them started to show some anxious symptoms. The strange noise that seems to be caused by the built-in HDD has become noticeable. It's been a long time since I bought it, and I think it's okay if it breaks, but I can't help but part with my partner who has been with me for many years. So I searched online for "iPod HDD repair" and found videos and blogs of heroes who disassembled the iPod and converted the internal HDD to SSD. Moreover, it seems that modifying the iPod is not that difficult. If you can increase the capacity by referring to the information of those ancestors, it seems that it is not impossible to combine multiple iPods into one. So, this time, I tried the project "iPod 1,600GB" that goes against the wireless & music distribution era. ■ Why do you have 12 iPods? The iPod that we are trying to remodel this time is the "iPod Classic" equipped with a 160GB HDD. The iPod Classic series, which first appeared in 2007, is a minor update model of the 5th generation iPod equipped with a color LCD and video playback function. Therefore, other than the design change, only small functions such as Cover Flow and progressive external output were added, but the capacity of 160GB newly added in the Classic generation did not exist in the music players of competitors at that time, and a large amount of music library was added. It was a very welcome product from my music lovers. At that time, I believed in the "Hi-MD" promoted by Sony, and dubbed my favorite songs and albums from the approximately 3,000 soundtracks and J-Pop CDs piled up at home to MD. , Enjoyed the music. In addition, he advocated an abnormal and exclusive idea that "compressed sound sources are not in music", and commute by putting many Hi-MDs with linear PCM dubbing in his bag. However, the disc replacement gradually became awkward, and in the fall of 2007, Hi- Converted to iPod, which has greatly increased from MD to 160GB. Since then, I've been using and buying more 160GB iPods. The reason for the additional purchase is the "iPod-R" faith that was devoted at that time. As you know, HDD records data on a disk called a platter. However, if rewriting and erasing are repeated many times, the data will be fragmented (fragmented) and reading will be slow. This is an unavoidable operation due to the structure of the HDD, but there were very occult rumors in the audio area that "fragmentation and defragmentation adversely affect sound quality." When I asked an engineer of a major HDD manufacturer about this rumor, he was laughed at, "There is no such thing." Because he was hit, he opened his eyes, saying, "What you believe will be saved." We set my rules such as "Data is lossless (AIFF only. Artwork cannot be registered with WAV)", "Recording is only appending", and "Do not re-edit such as deletion", and practice "iPod-R" of writing once on the iPod. As a result of continuing, I noticed that it would grow to 12 units. Seeing the belief of the iPod-R and the bizarre appearance of always carrying 3-5 iPods (I couldn't figure out what song was on which iPod in the middle), all my friends and colleagues were all the same. I called it "iPod metamorphosis" or "I'm doing something wrong", but at that time I was ashamed to say, "There are only a few people in the world doing this. ■ Remodeling the capacity of iPod Classic to 1,600GB Let's start remodeling now. As mentioned earlier, this time we're modifying the 160GB iPod Classic. By replacing the HDD inside with an SSD (to be exact, a microSD card), we aim to increase the capacity by 10 times to 1,600GB (1.6TB). By the way, there are two types of 160GB iPod Classic, the early model released in 2007 (thickness 13.5mm) and the late model released in 2009 (10.5mm thick). Unfortunately, with the iFlash conversion board to be combined, the early model cannot be converted to terabytes (up to 128GB), so the late model (MC293J / A: silver) was used here. The tools used for the remodeling are as follows. [Tools] -Conversion board: iFlash "iFlash-Quad" -microSD card: 512GB x 2, 400GB x 2-Art knife: OLFA "157B", spare blade "XB157H" -Tweezers-Antistatic gloves-Double-sided tape・ Insulation tape ・ Absolute ethanol ・ Cleaning paper Approximately the cost of tools is about 5,000 yen for a conversion adapter and about 3,500 yen for knives, gloves, tape, etc., and the SD card cost for the capacity is added to this. In the article, I was quite greedy with 1.6TB, so the SD card cost alone exceeded 30,000, but if you choose an inexpensive SD card with a small capacity, you should be able to keep it to about 10,000 yen. 【step 1. Open the back panel 2. Remove the HDD 3. Install the conversion board 4. Check the operation 5. Fix the conversion board 6. The procedure itself to close the back panel is simple. Open the back panel with an art knife and replace the HDD inside and the prepared conversion board. After initializing the iPod with iTunes, fix the board and close the panel to complete. It is necessary to be careful about static electricity in winter, but since there is no work such as screwing and soldering, it is a relatively gentle category in terms of the difficulty of remodeling. All generations of iPods are treated as "obsolete products," and Apple's official repair service has already ended. Some shops accept repairs of iPods for a fee, but please refrain from taking responsibility for any troubles or troubles caused by personal modifications before starting work. 1. 1. Open the back panel First, use an art knife to remove the tabs on the back panel that are caught on the side of the main unit. There are 11 claws, 4 on each side, 2 on both sides of the dock connector on the bottom, and 1 on the side of the top earphone jack. If you insert a knife into the crap, you will not be able to remove the claws, but you will damage the internal parts. Let's insert the knife after grasping the location of the claws in advance by referring to the picture below. How to remove the claws is as follows. 1. 1. Insert an art knife horizontally into the gap on the side of the iPod. 2. Make the knife vertical while applying force so that the knife blade does not come off the gap. Make sure the blade is biting into the back panel 4. Push the blade all the way in. 5. With the blade stuck, loosen the holder and separate it. Insert the spare blade into the holder and return to "1" In the case of the author, when facing the front, insert a total of eight claws in the order of right side (4) → top (1) → left side (2) → bottom (1). When I removed it, I was able to cleanly separate the main body and the back panel. When you insert the knife into the back, you will hear a strong rubbing sound of the metal and you will be a little nervous, but if you insert the knife carefully and boldly by the above procedure, it will take less than 10 minutes. Moreover, it should be possible to remove the back panel without deforming it. Derail a little, but remove this claw. It took a long time to reach the optimum solution mentioned above. Looking at the blogs and videos of the ancestors who worked on the remodeling early, this part seems to have been the most difficult, and they are trying to open the abdomen with various items such as a flat-blade screwdriver and a metal spatula. At first, I bought a disassembly / repair kit and tried to remove the claws, but it didn't work and I struggled. At the end, I pried it open with a flexible stainless steel spatula, but it took almost an hour to open the abdomen, and the metal spatula was moved many times, damaging the sides, distorting the panel, and destroying the claws. He also tried plastic spatulas and hard metal spatulas, but personally found the OLFA art knife to be the best choice for opening the back panel of the iPod Classic. Let's get back to the main subject. After separating the main body and the back panel, slide the panel slightly with the front side down, and you can see the orange ribbon cable that connects to the battery in the lower right, so grab the cable of the connector part with tweezers and pull it up. Once the cable is disconnected, the back panel can be fully opened sideways. 2. Remove the HDD Next, remove the HDD. The HDD with the blue sponge attached is connected to the board near the Dock connector. When you tilt the HDD toward you, the connection part and ribbon cable on the back side will appear. There is a black claw that fixes the ribbon cable on the connector part of the HDD, so hook a sharp object (such as the blade of an art knife) on the black claw and rotate the claw upward 90 degrees. Then the cable will come off and the HDD can be separated. 3. 3. Install the conversion board Insert the four microSD cards firmly into the four empty slots on the conversion board. The conversion board connector also has a black claw, so rotate the claw 90 degrees upward as before and connect the ribbon cable to the connector part. You can fix the cable by tilting the black claw. Four. Check the operation Check if the conversion board or microSD card recognizes it properly, or connect to iTunes before closing the back panel to check the operation. First, reconnect the battery cable that was removed at the end of "1. Open the back panel". With the back panel open, connect your PC and iPod with a Dock cable. After a while, the iTunes screen will display the announcement "I found an iPod in recovery mode." Click the restore button as instructed. After a few minutes, the iPod will be initialized and the iTunes screen will switch to "Welcome to your new iPod". When you remove the iPod from your PC, the iPod display transitions to language selection. If you select Japanese and check the capacity in [Settings] → [Information], "1685GB free" is displayed. With this, it was confirmed that all four microSD cards were recognized. Five. Fix the conversion board Before closing the back panel, fix the conversion board so that it does not shift. A double-sided tape (width 3 cm x thickness 0.2 mm) cut to a length of about 2.5 cm is attached to the back of the liquid crystal display and the metal plate, and the conversion board is glued. Just in case, attach insulating tape in two places. 6. Close the back panel After connecting the battery cable, replace the back panel. When you press the peripheral part of the main body strongly with the fingers of both hands, you will hear a clicking sound and the back panel will close. Look around the main unit and check that the back panel is firmly fitted. Wipe the body with a cleaning paper with absolute ethanol to finish. This completes a modified iPod with a capacity of 1,600GB. ■ Super-capacity yet lightweight iPod explosion! Immediately after all, I transferred 1,600GB of lossless sound source (37,885 songs, transfer about 23 hours) from my library to the modified iPod and played music. There is no body or lid to write such a thing, but the sound quality of the iPod is not particularly good. I feel the reproducibility of the low range and the thickness of the sound, but compared to the iPhone 13 (using the Lightning-3.5mm conversion adapter), the high range does not extend, and I am worried about the narrow range and bad SN. But I'm not looking for the best portable sound on my iPod, so that's fine. If you really want to strengthen it, just dope it with an item such as Potaan. What I felt again when I touched the modified iPod was that the appeal of the iPod was that it couldn't be changed to anything else with a simple UI and wheel operation specialized for music playback. I was worried that the modification would hinder the operation and operation, but even if the library has tens of thousands of units due to the super capacity, I will follow the hierarchy (as long as the metadata can be organized on iTunes). You can quickly recall songs from the desired artist or album, and as before, you can comfortably operate the wheels such as play / stop, skip songs, and adjust the volume. Although there are a few cases where iTunes does not recognize the modified iPod even when connected to a PC (it can be recognized by plugging and unplugging the cable a couple of times), there are no other problems and it is working very smoothly. Moreover, by using SSD as the recording medium, the weight of the HDD has been eliminated, and the weight of the main unit has been significantly reduced from 136g to 97g. The operating noise peculiar to HDD has disappeared, and I feel that the battery life has improved a little compared to when using HDD. This remodeling was a great success when it came to the explosion of the iPod, which is super-capacity, lightweight, noiseless, and energy-saving. After all, the iPod was the strongest and invincible. The author's library includes J-Pop artists (Yuki Kimura, D-LOOP, D & D, etc.) that I listened to in my youth, live sound sources from BD / DVD, soundtrack labels Varese Sarabande, INTRADA, and La-La Land. Limited editions such as the limited editions, FYC discs (promo CDs distributed to the academy judges), boot discs, etc. The situation that I can't let go of is likely to continue. For the time being, the plan is to convert four more iPods to terabytes and use different iPods by genre, such as "Soundtrack 1", "Soundtrack 2", "Japanese music 1", "Japanese music 2", and "Western music / others". Currently, the used price of an iPod is about 1,000 yen, which is much cheaper than before. If you are interested in this article, why don't you get and modify your iPod and enjoy your iPod life with good distribution? [Caution] If the product is disassembled / modified, the manufacturer's warranty will no longer be available. The AV Watch editorial department, the manufacturer, and the shop where you purchased the product will not be liable for any damages caused by the actions (disassembly, etc.) performed by reading this article. The description about the internal structure etc. is about the individual used by the editorial department and may not be common to all products. The AV Watch editorial department answers individual questions and inquiries about this article. I can not do it.

AV Watch, Kunihiro Abe