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iPod Classic 6th Generation. Model A1238 / 80, 120, or 160 GB hard drive / black or silver metal front

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Is it a bad click wheel or hold switch?

I’ve performed several iPod surgeries over the years, typically replacing batteries or hard drives. In my latest endeavor, I attempted my first logic board replacement. The existing board was fine; I was upgrading from a 6th gen to 7th gen to maximize the capacity of an iFlash Quad board.

I swapped out the logic boards, reconnected everything, and plugged the iPod into my computer. It restored, but the click wheel was unresponsive. Thinking I received a bad board, I reassembled the iPod with the original board, restored via iTunes… and have the same problem. I cannot reset or get into the diagnostic menu because the buttons won’t work. When I plug in a power cord, the iPod powers up and the “lock” icon still appears and disappears on screen as I toggle the hold switch, but the click wheel does nothing.

The possible causes seem to be 1) I have a damaged click wheel (but wouldn’t the buttons on the board still be responsive even if the scrolling feature didn’t work?), 2) I shorted something on each board during assembly and fried the buttons on both logic boards (seems less likely), 3) the hold switch is faulty and is not unlocking the click wheel controls, regardless of whether the lock icon is showing on screen.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can narrow down the problem?

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I purchased a new click wheel and everything appears to be functioning normally with the 7th gen logic board. All I can think is that either the ribbon cable on the old click wheel got damaged during disassembly (of which I could not see any evidence) or, as I have read elsewhere, not having adhesive on the ribbon cable to stick it to the logic board right next to the ribbon cable connector resulted in a poor connection. In either case, I reassembled everything using the new click wheel and the existing 7th gen logic board, display, battery, headphone jack, and iFlash card. I was able to restore through iTunes and have a fully functioning iPod with 512GB of storage.

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It’s not the hold switch, because the lock icon still appears and disappears as it should, and it’s not the click wheel, because the click wheel is only responsible for scrolling.

It must be the buttons on the logic board that aren’t working. Make sure that all the buttons on the logic board still have the little black foam circles on them, as the buttons may not get pushed down properly if the foam circles are missing.

If the buttons are being clicked properly, but the iPod still doesn’t respond to them, you may be out of luck. it’s possible that both logic boards got damaged.

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