An ewaste find that deserved beeing revived. An A1040 iPod, a bit of the ugly duckling stop-gap. Between the touch-wheel and the click-wheel, so it has four buttons below the screen. It has a dock connector, but not USB charging, only firewire. I verified the iPod was working by setting up a dodgy charging setup to get enough power to verify functionality.

[{"url":"charge.jpg","alt":"Charging the depleted original battery","title":""},{"url":"usb-mod.jpg","alt":"Soldering 12V, 5V and GND wires for the step-up converter board","title":""},{"url":"usb-mod-working.jpg","alt":"USB charging mod during test. Works great","title":""}]
After seeing the iPod booting, and the display working, I ordered a new battery. Batteries ship slowly, so while waiting I researched some more modifications. A solid-state storage device would be nice, and USB charging even better. I found a series on youtube explaining the modifications, and ordered some more parts off AliExpress.

CF card adapter fixed with thick double sided tape. CF card secured with tape to the slot. DC-DC converter wrapped in shrink tube and secured with double sided tape. Carefully assembled and closed up again. The final touch was some polishing with a magic sponge. It now runs RockBox, and even plays Doom!

[{"url":"insides.jpg","alt":"Insides organized","title":""},{"url":"complete.jpg","alt":"Complete with backlight","title":""}]