[ValVashon]

Patient:

First generation 5gb iPod. Purchased from craigslist.org. Craigslist poster stated that this was given to him by his brother, and that it had "stopped updating new music". Poster had taken it to an Apple store, and assured me that it functioned there when plugged into a charger, which he did not have. Unknown what else the Apple store told him. This one comes on with the Apple logo and "iPod"; mine comes on with just the Apple logo. Unknown what this means, if anything.

After arriving home, plugged iPod into charger and found that it indeed did work, all buttons and scroll wheel work and headphone jack is in good shape. Actually, it is in excellent shape cosmetically considering its age. Found that it indeed does not mount on the desktop or in iTunes. Discovered that the software was V 1.1 (!). Thought that might be part of the problem, so I put the hard drive in my working first generation hard drive and did the update, as my iPod with the V 1.1 hard drive mounted immediately and I was offered the update, so I did it. I also took this opportunity to use xPod to copy the music to my hard drive, so I'm pretty sure that it is a mac formatted iPod. I put the now V 1.5 hard drive back into the craigslist iPod that it came out of and still it won't mount. I tried the soft reset (the one that doesn't wipe everything out) and still it won't mount.

I tried resoldering the firewire port (I'm good with circuit board soldering, honest) but it did not appear to be broken to begin with. It charges just fine when hooked to the computer and the charger, it just doesn't mount. Charger works fine with my iPod and my nephew's windows iPod that I was fixing. Mine seems to mount on my computer without a hitch.

Any ideas on what to try? Find another computer to plug it into? Is there a more drastic reset that wipes it clean? Would that help? Can the firewire chip get fried and still allow the thing to charge?

Thanks for the help-

Val

[GORDYmac]

Have your tried Disk Utility or DiskWarrior? When I had issues with my original iPod, DiskWarrior fixed it. Don't know how, but it worked.

Have you tried putting your working iPod's drive in the purchased one? May be a hardware problem.

[ValVashon]

It's not mounting, so I don't think a utility will help. And yes, I did try my working hard drive in the craigslist unit and it still didn't mount. I looked on the Apple website and found that forcing it into disk mode will erase all the music, reset it and possibly take care of the "not mounting" problem.

Unfourtinately, when I charged it up just now, I noticed that the scroll wheel doesn't work, which would make it almost impossible to use even if I do get it to mount and update.

Val

[Big Mac]

Forcing an iPod into disk mode will not erase and reset it, the only thing that it will do is force it into disk mode. If the original drive works in your other iPod but not in its own iPod, then I would assume it's the logic board.