well, with the assistance of rick, james, ronny and jarrod, we managed to replace my ipod battery successfully - it's soaking up its first charge as i write this.

the battery (from pdasmart.com) came with two identical three inch long cylindrical tools. each had one end whittled down to a wedge. this 'wedge' end was much like the head of a phillips screwdriver, but because the tools were made of a softer material, i guess there was less danger of marking the outside of the ipod, screwing up traces on the pcb, breaking the tabs that joined the white front panel to the metal back panel, etc.

getting the first wedge into the right-hand side of the case, between the white and metal panels, was surprisingly easy. widening the "split" took some more dextrous wigglin' activity, and prying the two halves apart at the corners was probably the most difficult part of the opening operation.

once the two case halves were separated, there was only an orange ribbon cable (the fragility of which all the online guides take pains to emphasise) running between them. this cable's length had been carefully chosen to have ever-so-slightly less slack than you'd need to lay the two halves side by side, open on your desk. for that reason, we worked with the white half laying face down, with the steel case still attached by this ribbon cable. the two halves were flipped open like a book, around 120 degrees (i.e. a little more than a right angle), with someone's hand supporting the steel half (which was on the left, sticking up in the air somewhat). by keeping the two halves together, we avoided having to disconnect the orange cable from the white connector which attached it to the white half of the case, which didn't seem particularly easy to do.

as i said before, many hands made light work - having someone on hand to support the steel half while two other people worked on the white section which contained the hard drive and battery worked surprisingly well.

the next step was to lift the hard drive, to get access to the battery underneath. the lower end of the hard drive (the end closest to the orange ribbon connector and furthest from the white battery connector) was not fixed to anything, and could be rotated as much as 70 degrees around the fixed short side next the white battery connector. side note: the hard drive is fucking tiny. 40gb should not be able to fit on something that small.

once the hard drive was angled up, we had access to the original battery which sat underneath it. the battery connected via three wires running to a jumper-style connector. the wires were (intentionally, by the looks of it) run partly underneath a protruding tab on the PCB. disconnecting the battery jumper from its socket on the PCB was fiddly and required a bit of force. having done that, manouvring the now-free end of the cable around the protruding PCB tab to clear the cable from the PCB was also quide fiddly, and took a couple of minutes' work. eventually, however, the battery was free. during this stage of the operation, we had james' left hand supporting the steel case, me holding the hard drive and keeping the white panel stationary, and rick clearing the battery, for a total of five hands.

next we had to introduce the battery to its new home. the new battery was, surprisingly, a half-inch or so longer than the original battery. some doubt was expressed as to whether it would fit in the rectangular area cut from the PCB. rick routed the new battery's cable (which was perhaps two cms longer than that of the original battery) under the PCB tab in the same way the original battery's cable ran, and we began to position the battery itself. again, concerns were raised about its size. i was optimistic, though, and a bit of light force was sufficient to click it into place.

having connected and positioned the new battery, it was just a matter of putting everything back into place and snapping the case closed. as we hadn't disconnected the orange ribbon cable, there wasn't actually much to do here; we just carefully positioned the hard drive back on top of the battery and PCB, confirmed that its blue shock-proof frame sat correctly above and below it, and then sat the two case halves together again. it took a few squeezes and clicks to fully join the two halves, but once that was done, there were no new bulges or scratches.

the moment of truth came when i sat the iPod in its dock. lo, the apple icon did verily get displayed, and yea, unto windows xp didst the removable hard drive reveal itself. i disconnected the usb cable connecting the dock to my workstation and tested playing a song directly on the ipod, which worked fine.

so, pending an actual playtest on a full charge, it seems as though my ipod battery problems may be a thing of the past (and, of course, the future, after i've used another 300 recharges or so)...