This has been annoying me for ages. Until a few months ago I used a perfectly good, but old ipod in the car to provide a good choice of music – but suddenly, it died. Aah…

I suspected it was the battery, it was pretty old and abused. A new one, plus the tools to open the ipod case were less than a tenner on ebay. I’m always happy to have a go at repairing something old like this if the parts are cheap and alternative is is throwing it away or selling it for parts on ebay. The other “secret” is a good set of instructions with lots of photographs. I used this guide from ifixit.com, very easy to follow. The most difficult bit is getting the case open in the first place – I guess Apple don’t really want you in there!

With the new battery inside, the machine fired straight up again and all my music was still on it. It’s happily charging up as I type. The whole operation took about 10 minutes.