Ipod gurus, insight wanted

[EWAYota]

I broke my lcd screen on my 4th gen 20gb ipod. I'll be ordering a new lcd screen off of ebay. During my search, I came to ponder if its possible to upgrade any of my ipod with different parts.

Anyone know if I can put a larger hd from another 4th gen (40 or 60 gb), or possibly a color lcd screen in it? I'd assume if I wanted a color, I would have to have a hd that makes it compatible.

Just curious to see if anyone knows or has even done it.

[MTL_4runner]

I used to design displays for PDAs and cell phones (as well as repairing them for a little extra gas money) so I can tell you that not all iPods are created equal. The upgrades you can do to yours will depend on what was an option at the time you bought it (ie you should only be swaping parts with 4th gen iPods). I can tell you for sure that you won't be able to swap for a color screen because the color screen (TFT) on the iPod Photo and the monochrome screen (LCD) on the regular iPod use different motherboards. If you want a color screen then you'll need a new motherboard too (you'd have basically built yourself an iPod photo). The iPod Video (5th gen) and the iPod Photo (4th gen) screens are not interchangeable either so if you do go the color route, then make sure you get the right screen for the motherboard. You can see in the attachments I did that the connectors are not located in the same place, nor are they the same size on the TFT vs LCD or even 4th gen TFT vs 5th gen TFT.

You can upgrade hard drives far more easily (since that interface is standard for both iPod types) again as long as that hard drive was an option at the time. On 4th gen iPods there were 20, 30, 40 and 60 GB versions. The 20 and 30 GB version use the same back plate so you can swap to a 30 GB pretty easily from your current 20 GB. The 40 and 60 GB will require you to buy the drive and a new backplate since those drives are thicker than the 20/30 GB drives.

You can see why this is so....

Here's a 30GB:
http://www.rapidrepair.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/MK2006GAL1-1.jpg

Here's a 40GB:
http://www.rapidrepair.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/MK4006gah.jpg


Here's a few good tear downs on iPods.....

New HD for 4th gen:
http://www.faqintosh.com/risorse/en/guides/hw/ipod/ipod4ghd/

New LCD for 4th gen:
http://www.faqintosh.com/risorse/en/guides/hw/ipod/g4screen/

Ipod layout (this is a 5th gen):
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/ipod3.htm