Problem with Customer's iPod mini

[mand0rk]

Hello fellow Mac people! I'm hoping someone out there has experience with older Apple hardware, because I had a customer come in with an iPod mini. It had music loaded onto it by someone close to him that is no longer in his life, and he had recently tried to switch out the battery, damaging connectors and causing mayhem in the process. I was able to order the exact same working model off ebay, which I then swapped the drives out with. Now, while I was able to connect it to my Mac and pull off all his music to keep it safe, I can't get the iPod to work correctly. The display shows the Apple logo when starting up, and the proper display when connected. but the menu and regular interface of the iPod doesn't show. I know it's on because scrolling through the invisible menu makes those clicks that brought back waves of nostalgia. Anyway, on a whim I switched out the screen, but it exhibits the same behavior. Is there something I can try next, or should I consider myself lucky I was able to retrieve his music files?

 

[Rod]

Under normal circumstances one could restore the contents of an old iPod to a new one from an iTunes backup on the Mac that it was paired to. I'm assuming that is no longer possible?
Sadly, it's entirely possible that the CPU or GPU are either damaged or simply worn out. It may even have been the reason for the attempted battery change in the first place.
I think you have done a great job to save the music files, the question is what to do with them. I can only suggest replacing the iPod mini with a similar device.
I'm not sure what options the user has, for example do they own a Mac computer or an iPhone?
Need to know what the situation of the owner is, are they elderly, disabled etc?

 

[Raz0rEdge]

You might want to go down the route of grabbing a miniHD adapter and connect the drive directly to an external ATA interface than you can then attach to a Mac as an external drive.

That way you can directly access the data and find where the MP3s are held and grab them.

 

[mand0rk]

Under normal circumstances one could restore the contents of an old iPod to a new one from an iTunes backup on the Mac that it was paired to. I'm assuming that is no longer possible?
Sadly, it's entirely possible that the CPU or GPU are either damaged or simply worn out. It may even have been the reason for the attempted battery change in the first place.
I think you have done a great job to save the music files, the question is what to do with them. I can only suggest replacing the iPod mini with a similar device.
I'm not sure what options the user has, for example do they own a Mac computer or an iPhone?
Need to know what the situation of the owner is, are they elderly, disabled etc?

Good points. I didn't think the iPods had a separate GPU chip, but that would explain the behavior. I'm thinking at this point I can give him the files on a USB stick, and load them up onto his smartphone if he has one. He's the behind the tech curve by 5 miles truck driving type, but he's good people and I wanted the iPod transplant to work. Oh well. Thanks everyone for your help and insight.