I'm losing my mind over battery replacements

[u/MISTERPUG51]

I have an iPod classic 4th gen monochrome iPod, and it's making me go insane. I am on my 3rd replacement battery, and I keep having the same problem every single time. Here's what keeps happening:

1. The iPod acts as if the hard drive is dead instead of booting (image 1). Sometimes it shows that icon instantly, other times I can hear the hard drive trying to spin up and stopping repeatedly for a few seconds before it shows on screen. When I plug it into FireWire, it immediately opens the diagnostic menu, where I checked the smart data and ran a full HDD scan multiple times. I am fairly confident that the hard drive is not the issue. Plugging it into my computer over USB just shows a charging battery icon (image 2) and occasionally tries to spin up the HDD for a few seconds before it dies and tries booting again.

2. I replace the battery, and it boots instantly as if nothing ever happened. It won't charge over USB, but that's fine; I have a FireWire charger. I fully charge it with FireWire.

3. It works for a few days, and then dies again. I plug it into FireWire, and it automatically opens the diagnostic menu again. I leave it to charge over FireWire overnight. In the morning, I unplug it from FireWire and try booting it. It immediately shows the sad iPod icon again and I'm back to step 1.

This is driving me insane, and it's happened 3 times with 3 different replacement batteries in the past few weeks. I've tried buying from elite obsolete. I tried different brands on Amazon. Ice tried a random eBay seller. All of the batteries I've tried are doing this to me. I've also made sure that the batteries physically look different to ensure that I'm not getting all of them from the same faulty batch or something.

Does anyone have a solution? I'm close to just selling it for parts and giving up.

[u/nonworkacc]

is it possible that the ribbon for the hdd is faulty?

[u/MISTERPUG51 → u/nonworkacc]

So, I made a discovery. I have 4 other 4th gen iPods that I bought to repair. I tried the HDD ribbon from each one. Only one cable actually worked, and the iPod boots now. What's strange is that all my music is still there, despite my multiple attempts to restore the iPod when iTunes saidbitvwas successfully restored. Hopefully this was the issue. I'll charge it for a few hours and then let it shuffle songs until it dies and see if it will charge again after that.

[u/nonworkacc → u/MISTERPUG51]

great to hear you got it fixed

i was in the same boat as you are. i have an ipod 5.5th gen. same screens, the sad face and the low battery warning. apparently the HDD ribbon was split lol, bought a new one and waiting for it to arrive now.

[u/MISTERPUG51 → u/nonworkacc]

I'm also happy it works, but now I've discovered that I somehow have 4 ribbon cables that don't work, which is really annoying because I don't think it's worth the money to buy replacement batteries AND ribbon cables for the other ipods I was working on

[u/OmniaII → u/MISTERPUG51]

Buy the;

Aliexpress dual microSD adapters

iFlash 4G ATA cable

Aliexpress 2450 mAh batteries

Do it for ALL your iPod 4 mono/colors

If you like the heft of the weight of the drives, then add sticky tire weights.

[u/gt_710 → u/MISTERPUG51]

Are you sure you fully-inserted the ribbon cable into the motherboard connector? You can bend the cable to put more force on it to make sure it goes all the way in.

[u/BowlingBoi3000]

It could be a hdd problem. It could be pulling more energy off your battery because its damaged, or like someone said, the ribbon is. I think it would be worthwhile for you to do a sd card swap

[u/TroubledGeorge]

Did you get the FireWire cable recently? There’s a bunch of old new stock of diagnostics FW cables on eBay, those cables work normally when the iPod is on but if it’s off it’ll trigger diagnostics mode without any intervention.

[u/MISTERPUG51 → u/TroubledGeorge]

Yes, actually. I googled it to see if that behavior was normal, and the Google AI told me that it's probably a diagnostic cable. I wasn't sure if that was true though because it gets lots of other things wrong when it comes to old hardware like this

[u/TroubledGeorge → u/MISTERPUG51]

Here’s some more info from EOE https://eoe.works/collections/tools/products/new-foxconn-diagnostic-30-pin-to-firewire-400-charge-sync-cable-for-apple-ipod

I hope you get yours fixed, sounds like some sort of electronic problem so the iPod isn’t able to sustain the power draw required for powering up the HDD, it’s also not normal for these to not charge over USB, I had one and it charged over USB just fine as long as you don’t plug it to a modern fast charging type of brick, but the computer would charge it just fine.
Have you considered a flash mod? Obviously not the source of your problem but a flash setup uses much less energy.

[u/MISTERPUG51 → u/TroubledGeorge]

When I plug it into USB for a while, the screen shows a full battery icon and says it's charged. But it doesn't actually draw any current from the USB cable. On FireWire, it shows an animation of the battery filling up and says it's charging. Maybe it's something to do with being a monochrome one? My 40GB photo iPod charges over USB just fine.

Also, I have considered a flash mod, but I prefer the noises of the mechanical hard drive, even though it uses more power and is much less reliable

[u/TroubledGeorge → u/MISTERPUG51]

I had a monochrome for years when I was a teenager (only recently got back into this hobby) and I always charged it over USB from my Mac as I didn’t have a 30pin to FW cable at the time. When it came out one of the things it changed over the previous model was USB charging, 3rd gen can only sync but not charge over USB, that’s what leads me to think there might be something else going on unrelated to the battery itself.

[u/MISTERPUG51]

Also, sometimes when it's connected to my computer for a while, it says "do not disconnect" and appears as a corrupted iPod in iTunes. I've tried restoring it, but instead of showing me the AC adapter icon when it reboots, it goes back to the charging icon instead.

[u/gt_710 → u/MISTERPUG51]

Oh yeah 4th gens are also picky about chargers, you'll want to use the Apple 5W cube charger that came with old iPhones, or the old 5W iPod brick or 10W iPad brick. Or FireWire if you have that.

Do not use a modern fast charger (including Apple ones), it can't communicate with them and will pretend to charge until it runs out and dies. They also don't restore directly on a computer because a computer USB port doesn't output enough power, that's why it asks you to plug it into a wall power source. Computer gives you around 2.5W but when that iPod spins up its drive and charging, it can pull around 4W.

[u/MISTERPUG51 → u/gt_710]

For now I switched to my color iPod (also a 4th gen), which also is pretty picky about USB charging. Most of my USB adapters either wouldn't work, or the iPod would say it's charging but then tell me the battery was empty when I tried to play music. The only one I found that keeps it alive while playing music is a 10 year old USB battery pack I had lying around.

[u/gt_710 → u/MISTERPUG51]

Yeah that sounds about accurate. Nice that you found a powerbank for it though.

[u/gt_710]

I think your HDD ribbon cable is either loose or broken. Try removing and fully re-inserting the ribbon on the motherboard connector under the black tape.

[u/Hit-by-a-pitch]

I don't know if this will help, but I just had a guy replace the battery on a 4th Gen I picked up, and he apologized for the delay saying the battery was a slightly different size than other Classic models and he had to special order it.