Motherboarding

I should open my own repair service as long as it is an old moped or an obsolete ipod. You might ask why I would go through the trouble and expense of repairing a motherboard of an old ipod but this particular 4th generation 40gb black and white ipod has a remote control port that none of the new ones have. And I own the remote control and have it rigged in my van so I can change songs on the go by reaching up to the ceiling above my head as I drive. The alternative was letting go of the wheel and getting out of the seat at 40mph and quickly skipping that Sade song in favor of something by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. That's against the law even in liberal Texas.


Of course my life in the frigid arctic caused some problems with the charger so it overloaded something called the "battery voltage regulator" a tiny integrated circuit on the motherboard and the battery no longer could be charged. I'd plug it in and nothing would happen. I also ruined the charger with my careless solar panel experimentation. But the ipod hard drive is ok and the battery is new and it has that remote control port so I spent weeks and months trying to find this particular motherboard match. Man, it was was a real chore. You wouldn't believe what people want for an old ipod only good for parts. I wanted to do it myself and not mail it to a repair shop but I had no luck finding parts for a good value. If I remember right, I actually tore a ribbon cable in half when I was changing the battery and I had to replace the click wheel...weeks of research and hunting for parts...absolutely no different than a guy with a 1730 horse carriage living in 1750. Nothing has changed and nothing will ever change. More people will eat more food and demand more comforts and the process of supplying those things will impoverish more people who will demand more comforts...on and on..in a cycle of insanity that will never end. And the funny part is that every species of life on Earth has gone extinct except for the ones living in this brief 2 million year period and our timer is clicking away on a destiny with complete oblivion. We'll either be the first species ever to survive a cataclysm or our efforts to survive the cataclysm will actually cause an even greater cataclysm that we don't survive. The odds are totally against us.

Foxconn relics. I found a note from the assembler that said, "help me"

But I must have music in the van and this ipod is the one I wanted so I finally found a motherboard match with an operational battery voltage regulator IC. It takes some work and delicate touch with my Parkinson trembling hands to get those ribbon cables out in one piece. There is a tiny clip/lock that has to be lifted on the connector. An flathead electronics screwdriver is essential. The trick to getting the LCD screen ribbon cable back in was to lift the LCD screen out of the case so I could work with it in the right direction. Lock the connectors down...put it all back together with the new battery wire slipped under the motherboard...put it back on the charger and pray.

It worked! I think my immediate goal is to have the repair knowledge for every single item I own because it's possible to have some kind of dominance of my possessions if I don't let the numbers or complexity get out of control and I spend most of my free time researching their nature. But I maintain that this kind of lifestyle is an abomination, that we have all bought into a kind of surrogate parenthood to obsolete junk that was designed to break and my pride at the rescue of my junk is pitiful and indicative of a weak character manipulated by commercial think tanks.