[tonewheel]

I was reading a web site that repairs iPods, sells batteries, etc. They claim that, sooner or later, original ipods with the firewire connector on top of the unit will eventually loosen and fail, due to the wiggling of inserting and removing a firewire cable. They say the solder will eventually weaken to the point of failure.

Personally, I believe this to be nothing more than sales hype/BS. I own two original iPods with no indication of such a problem.

Your thoughts? Anyone have such a failure on an original iPod? Is this even a real concern?

[-Q-]

My original 5 GB is still going along just fine. I think you're right - a bit of FUD to scare the consumer into buying something....

[slider]

There was a problem with the original iPod's firewire port. I believe the problem was identified as the solder connection on the board was a "hard"solder as opposed to a "soft" solder. I don't know if this was a universal problem or a problem for certian iPods coming out of say a particular work station. In that case it would have been a QC issue at the plant. Since the issue went away it was clearly resolved. If you do a search in the forums way way back you'll find some posts on it.