I ordered a replacement battery from eBay seller, Colordrives, a while back. It was cheap, and I didn't feel my existing battery was giving me enough juice anyway. Along with the battery came an instruction sheet along with two plastic tools to pry open the iPod case. So, I was prepared for almost anything and had a clean work area to do it all. I carefully read the instruction sheet and I start to go to work on prying open the case. The trouble was that the plastic tools didn't do squat! The more I tried to force them into the side of the case, the more gnarled the sharp ends of the tools got. I was trying to avoid using a metal tool in order to avoid scratching the case, but since the plastic tools didn't work I did find an eyeglass screwdriver that was pretty thick to handle but had a very small edge. So I was in luck. It took a few tries as I was putting it along the top edge of the case, and I finally worked it in there and then used the plastic tools to keep part of it pried open. Finally I got one side of it open and doing the rest was a cinch. the Mac Mini has a similar case design where it stays secure but it's a hassle to get open to begin with.

I finally open it, and to my shock the battery was SOLDERED to the motherboard! I thought to myself, "Oh man, there's no way I'm gonna pull this off safely..". I should have gotten a picture of it, but even now I don't feel like re prying it open due to the hassle and chances of damaging the case. Anyways the battery was in the lower to middle part of the iPod neatly tucked in an open spot, and the battery leads had 3 wires going to the top where they were soldered to the top of the motherboard. From left to right were the white, red, and black wires. There was also some tape holding the battery wires to the motherboard. I didn't have any flat mesh wire to remove the solder, so I just used the iron on the contacts to loosen the wires from the mobo (motherboard). I made sure to use an alligator clip to hold the wires near the top of the battery so there was less chance of the battery overheating (from the soldering iron) and exploding. That worked and I took the old battery out of its socket. The new battery already had the ends of it stripped a bit which made things easier, mainly since the wires were so thin to begin with. I spread the wires out from the battery so they wouldn't get in the way while I was soldering one of them, and put the alligator clip on the wires near the top of the battery. The white one went on ok, and the red and black were ok as well, not too fussy. I hit "up" on the disc and it booted! So I was pretty happy that I replaced the battery without hurting myself or the iPod. I'm all giddy, so I go to put the battery in the space reserved for it along the motherboard, only to horrific discovery that the battery wires were not long enough for the battery to fit in the socket!!! ARGH!!!

What to do? What to do??? Well, I figured that I wasn't gonna use or sell the old battery even though it was fully working, so I cut off the wires from the old battery rendering the battery useless. I probably could have cut less wire off, but in case I messed up when it came to stripping that wire I wanted to make sure that I had more room to work with. So I went back to the wires of the new battery, stripped a bit more off of the ends and got more solder off of them, stripped both ends of each of the old battery wires, then proceeded to braid the old wires to the new ones. With those twisted together (white with white, red with red and black to black) I put solder on the braided parts and let them cool a bit. Then I put solder on the ends of the wires that would be making contact with the motherboard, like you're supposed to. After the braided parts had cooled off thanks to me blowing it and the fan helping (as well as cool me off from sweating in nervousness) I got small pieces of tape and put those around the braided parts. I wouldn't want any exposed metal from the battery wires to make contact with any metal parts on the motherboard, or else I would have cried from my iPod dying or shorting out. The work was a little awkward, but I managed to lie the wires down so they weren't too raised and I wouldn't have issues getting the back of the case back on to the iPod. Now I had still spread them out a bit, so I soldered the white wire to the board first, then red, and then back. A few attempts were made getting the wires to stick to the contacts, but I got it working. Naturally the battery did fit in the socket this time, so I flipped it over, powered it on, AND IT WORKS!!!

I thought I had succeeded, but I must have made a movement to the point where the black wire was not totally cooled off yet, and the black wire came off and the iPod shut down! I tried booting it up again, but it wouldn't turn on! I thought I was a goner for good. My iPod being a white paperweight now, at least until I could maybe get another battery. That was just my luck too; getting lucky like that only to have it break again! I don't know what got into me, but I just had this notion that there must have been some login soldering those wires in the order that I did. So I took it back to the desk, un soldered the three wires, slightly coated them again since I wanted to start fresh, then re soldered them again in the same fashion that I did previously. This time I was sure to let it cool off longer than I had it cool off before. I flipped it over, powered it up, and it booted! and YES it stayed on too!