dudejediknight
Well-known member
Went out bargain hunting today doing the whole yard sale / flea market thing today. First thing of interest I saw was a vintage Mac 512k that was horribly yellowed. (It seriously looked like it had lived outside, or at least in direct sunlight, for at least the past decade.) He wanted $50 for it, and since he didn't even know for sure if it still worked... it was a definite pass. That's when I saw that he had a pair of iPods (nano and touch), and those prices were more reasonable. He wanted $8 for the pair, but since he had said that they weren't working properly I only paid $5.
Tried the Touch first, and it was in rough shape. It's missing the button and it looks like the connector for the touch surface had been broken. Not sure if that's just accidental, or from someone trying to carelessly dive in trying to repair some other problem. The Nano was in better shape, so I turned my attention to it instead.
Plugging the Nano into power revealed it was stuck at the Apple logo. Forced it to restart and got it into disk mode, and tried it on my Blue&White. I couldn't get it to mount in the Finder or ITunes on the old Blue&White. Turns out it's a 5g Nano, which needs 10.4.11 or later, iTunes 9, and USB2. Since the B&W lacks both USB2 and iTunes 9, it was out. That's when I turned to the iMac G4... it has USB2 and, as I recalled, can run iTunes 9 (and already had it installed, thank goodness). The Nano mounted as a generic HD, and after Disk Utility fixed a few minor issues, it appeared in iTunes. I had to download the iPod software and restore the Nano, but it seems to be working fine now.
The Touch (2nd gen going by the model # on the back) probably has major issues beyond the visible touch screen problem. Probably not going to try disassembling it until I can look further into it, but even if the 2g Touch ends up a total loss, a working 8gb 5th gen Nano is certainly worth the price I paid.
Tried the Touch first, and it was in rough shape. It's missing the button and it looks like the connector for the touch surface had been broken. Not sure if that's just accidental, or from someone trying to carelessly dive in trying to repair some other problem. The Nano was in better shape, so I turned my attention to it instead.
Plugging the Nano into power revealed it was stuck at the Apple logo. Forced it to restart and got it into disk mode, and tried it on my Blue&White. I couldn't get it to mount in the Finder or ITunes on the old Blue&White. Turns out it's a 5g Nano, which needs 10.4.11 or later, iTunes 9, and USB2. Since the B&W lacks both USB2 and iTunes 9, it was out. That's when I turned to the iMac G4... it has USB2 and, as I recalled, can run iTunes 9 (and already had it installed, thank goodness). The Nano mounted as a generic HD, and after Disk Utility fixed a few minor issues, it appeared in iTunes. I had to download the iPod software and restore the Nano, but it seems to be working fine now.
The Touch (2nd gen going by the model # on the back) probably has major issues beyond the visible touch screen problem. Probably not going to try disassembling it until I can look further into it, but even if the 2g Touch ends up a total loss, a working 8gb 5th gen Nano is certainly worth the price I paid.
