Well folks, let me give you a piece of advice. Be EXTREMELY careful if you decide to ever take your iPod products apart. It could go badly - very badly.
2 weeks ago, I wanted to investigate the potential for upgrading my iPod Mini's battery with an aftermarket one that claimed to extend the playable life 12-16 hours per charge. That's a pretty sizable performance gain over the near-8 hour lifespan my mini gets now.
The problem was that I am now, and always have been, a bit of a do-it-yourselfer and tinkerer - especially when it comes to electronics. (Just ask my parents.) Depending on how hard it was to take apart would influence whether I sent my iPod in for the upgrade or if I sent of for the battery and performed the transplant myself.
Well, as it turns out, while the mini is fairly sturdy and resitant to knocks, drops and generally light abuse - at least one piece of its innards is VERY delicate. The click wheel. Specifically, there's little ribbon connector that serves as the umbilical from the click wheel to the motherboard. It's supposed to pop out (based on the instructions I found), which it did, but apparently I placed my microscrewdriver in the wrong place and dislodged some of the connector wires!
I attempted to reassemble my iPod almost immediately to assess the damage. No luck. It turned on via the hold switch, but the click wheel failed to make any noticible action in the device. I was sunk. Not only did my daily-used iPod not work, but I knew that Apple would be reluctant (or VERY expensive) to help me since I voluntarily opened up their product. I also knew that my days with a soldering iron were few and primitive at best. My only hope was that there was someone, ANYone, that could help me.
Well, there was. In fact, there's lots of them. In my haste, I bid on a replacement new click wheel via eBay. However, I later discovered that there are many kind souls that work for companies that provide just such services. In what is kind of a dullard's moment for me, many are the same companies I had reviewed in evaluating whether I wanted the replacement battery that started this whole mess.
In any case, I sucessfully received my replacement click wheel and installed it lickety-split. In less than a few minutes time, my iPod was back again, pulsing with my favorite songs, delighting my ears and my heart. All was well with the world again... :)
Moral of the story - be gentle with things you hold so dear. It may be best to pay someone else to be responsible for any issues. At least you'll have someone besides yourself to yell at if things go poorly.
Later.