I've been using the same music set up on my bike for years now and I can't imagine riding distances without my tunes. For those interested, I use the iPod Mini in conjunction with a Griffin Airclick wireless, full-function remote. I mount the remote to my handlebars and never have to go fishing in my coat to turn my music on or off. The remotes are $5 SHIPPED on ebay. Cheap and available. So recently I decided it would be a good idea to buy a backup Ipod Mini for when mine finally dies. I started looking around on ebay and found that people are actually taking these old minis and upgrading them from a spinning hard drive (called a microdrive) to static memory using an ordinary CF (Compact Flash) memory card that many DSLR cameras still use today. The benefits of the upgrade are that the ipod will no longer be prone to hard drive failure if you drop it, the static memory is just more reliable, and the battery life is improved because you're not spooling up a hard drive. But arguably the biggest benefit is that you can expand the memory from the factory 4 or 6GB to as much as 128GB. A 128GB CF card is not cheap, but a more moderate upgrade to 16GB will only set you back $22.91 from Amazon dot com.
I procured 2 working Minis recently for $20 each. One from Craigslist and one from the Want Ads at work. I've also scored 4 more off ebay recently. They were sold in paired lots. Those were cheaper at around $12 each. I figured I would "hop" one of these up for John as well since he has been trying to get a wireless set up as well. By the way, here's what one of these tiny microdrives looks like on the inside. Skip through the video and see how cool this little drive is. About 1.5 inches long and tall and a couple of millimeters thick. Pretty cool.
And here's the workstation. I won't go into the details about HOW to take the ipod apart. Just takes a lot of patience. There are plenty of DIY pictorials on the internet about how to do this task. But the CF card is a straight plug in to where the old microdrive was. It's a 50 pin connector. Simple as can be once you get the dang thing apart. I tried it with a couple of old 2GB CF cards first just to make sure it actually worked. When I had success, I went ahead and ordered a couple of 16GB CF cards off Amazon. I had enough Cashback from Discover to pay for it. Fun Money!!!
While I was at it, I decided to go ahead and upgrade the battery in this one as well. From the factory, these came with a 400mah lithium ion battery. That battery in my old faithful Mini used to last me a full day of riding in Arkansas. I never had my battery go dead on me once. However, I had to charge the battery every single night. The upgrade: I purchased TWO brand new 1300mah batteries off ebay for $7.28 SHIPPED. So, in theory, if I'm understanding MAH ratings correctly, these new batteries should last me over three times as long as factory......IF I were still running the old microdrive. I would expect the battery to last even longer now that I've upgraded to static / flash memory. And the result: My first 16GB capacity Ipod Mini.
