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slider · Jan 20, 2005, 12:58 AM

I just wanted to share an experience with my fellow iPodders. Today I attempted to charge my 4G iPod using one of those USB port car chargers and a Firewire/USB port adaptor from www.sendstation.com and, of course a USB cable. Well, I fried my iPod. I believe I reverse the polarity of the battery rendering it useless. I have a new battery being shipped to me. Needless to say, don't use one of these car chargers with the USB port. I don't believe it had anything to do with the sendstation product. Oh, and the battery got really hot too. I'll post back once I drop the new battery in.

ibook_steve · Jan 20, 2005, 01:12 AM

I'm not sure I understand how you "reversed the polarity." Do you mean you put the cable in backwards or something? It doesn't make sense. And are you actually opening your iPod to replace the battery? What if there is more damage than just the battery?

Steve

Eug Wanker · Jan 20, 2005, 01:55 AM

There are bad car adapters and there are good ones. A good one should cause no such problem. Same goes for cell phone chargers.

slider · Jan 20, 2005, 02:45 AM

I believe Eug pretty much nailed it, I think it's the quality of the charger I used. No I did not put it in backwards, that would require some force. I might be using the wrong terminology too, when I am saying reversed polarity I am talking about the effect you get when you put a pos to a pos and a neg to a neg, rendering you battery useless. I believe the charger I used was indiscriminate, which might have been fine for what it was used for, PDAs.

And yes, I opened my iPod. There is nothing obviously wrong with the components. By plugging and unplugging the iPod to the battery charger and my Mac it kicks on for a sec with the Apple icon and then dies. I have gotten the folder icon with a big explanation mark, and also a do not disconnect and ok to disconnect screen when disconnecting from my Mac. These are things I would expect from no power. The key here is that it was stupid to even try the setup without knowing, I guess I just thought USB power was USB power. If the battery replacement works then I am right, if not, well, I got some spare parts. Either way I will have learned something. Again, as soon as I get the battery in there I'll post the results.

slider · Jan 20, 2005, 07:30 PM

Well, I am not sure what happened, but I left the iPod charging over night. When I got up this morning I attempted to do a hard reset to no avail. I continued charging through out the day. I played with this evening and was still having the same error icons flash on then go dead. I unplugged the charger to the iPod away until the battery came in and I got the Apple splash screen and then the main screen, looked to see if my music was still on there expecting it to have been wiped, nope still there. Plugged in the headphone jacks and I am jamm'n as I type. I plugged the charger back in and it's charging. No idea what is going on there. So I will have a spare battery and I got a look inside. Having replaced my battery on my 2G iPod getting a first hand look at the interior of that one, I can say the 4G iPod is laid out much better; due to smaller components no doubt. The 4G is harder to crack though.