Old iPod mini: Take apart or sell?

Hey, you need to go take a look at what those minis are selling for on ebay. I wanted one, looked at ebay and the prices are increasing quickly right now. Used, new AND non-working. I think I'll wait until after Christmas. I have looked at the video ipods, and they just don't interest me. Am I nuts?

This might seem really random and inappropriate for this topic, but I've been looking for a pink 4 GB mini and would love to buy yours. Email me if you want to sell it to a poor college student! lauramferguson@gmail.com

I would try to sell on Ebay. I've heard from lots of people that they are not happy with the Nano and want a mini. Good luck. The inscription might actually help!

Here is a thought. Keep using it! I have five iPods. Here are two suggestions. It is not worth selling them; you might as well keep them or give them to your kids or your parents as you upgrade. I keep them. Second, it is never wise to upgrade to the biggest, top of the line iPod -unless you really need the capacity. Apple upgrades the iPod so often that it is not worth the money to carry a heavier unit with extra capacity that will go unused. As to what to do with your old iPods, there are better uses for old iPods than throwing them away, or taking them apart for the fun of it. You can set them up with docking station and powered speaders anywhere you want to listen to your music: your office, your bedroom, your kitchen. I mean, I've got iPods spread all over the place. I go into the kitchen; I've music. I work in my home office; I've music. I work on my real job office; I've music. I go to sleep; my docked iPod wakes me up in the morning. I entertain in the living room; I have a video iPod hooked up to my stereo system and TV. Powered speakers have great sound; they are relatively inexpensive. Pair them with your older iPods. The music is still the same, and as we all know, it is all about the music. And if after reading this, you still do not what to do; heck, give it to me. I'll give it a good home.

Collin, yes. I was thinking about this (http://hackaday.com/entry/1234000840067578/) when I thought of the transplant.

You mention at the end putting the 4 GB of data into the CF compliant card. By that, do you mean putting the storage device itself into the CF card that "speaks" the appropriate language?

From what I recall, the drives in the iPod mini don't have an onboard controller, it actually sits on the iPod's own logic board. That's going to give you two problems: 1. The connection from the board to the raw drive isn't going to be IDE; in fact it's probably going to be proprietary and undocumented. 2. Even if you have tiny fingers like a capuchin monkey you're not going to be able to simply connect the controller from your CF drive to the raw iPod drive. Quite apart from the soldering involved being impossibly tiny, they're not going to be compatible. There's so much more you can do with an iPod mini from installing Linux on it to selling it on eBay to lining it up with all your newer ones and making a Flickr stream called "Haha look you plebs I have so many I don't even use them all" that you shouldn't really feel you need to tear it apart.

it still makes an excellent firewire/USB-drive... Now let's all hope there's gonna be some OSx86-Live-image (probably from dubious sources) and astonish everyone with booting OS X from a pink iPod mini :D, but you could put a Linux Live-Image on there as well of course... (and old? I bought my golden mini in April this year, that's 7 months ago... even though it's discontinued and by ipod-standards obsolete, I can't think of it as old...(no offence though))

Don't throw it away! Install linux on it and boot your macs off it. Isn't the ipod mini 6gig one of the last firewire-bootable ipods?

there is NO way it wil work. when the ipod mini and all the microdrive based devices came out, the 4gb microdrive was referred to as "precious bounty." people would buy the creative muvo2 4gb player because it was cheaper than buying a 4gb microdrive through retail. apple was smart and "locked" the drive somehow. don't try to salvage it. too many people have tried and failed. just google the topic