Permanent hold (not a hardware issue) iPod 5G 60GB

[Pizzarth]

Note on post:
I posted in this forum and not in apple installation or hardware issues because it's not related to installation, and I don't believe it's a hardware issue. If this post is in the wrong forum, please move it. Thanks.

Hello everyone

A week ago or so, my 60GB iPod 5G fell in to a pool of water. I opened it up, gently wiped it and let it dry, then put it back together. After an initial scare, it turned on two days later.

The problem was that it was permanently on hold. The same was happening for the apple firmware. I figured I might have run in to problems with the hold switch (making it a hardware issue) so I opened the iPod up again and poked around. I noticed that no, the hold switch was still connected and it seemed to be doing fine.

Just for kicks I installed iPodLoader2, to see if that made any difference. Lo and behold, the hold switch works fine. within the loader, It properly detects the status of the hold switch and I can select my options just fine. I happily select the rockbox option thinking that my problems were solved.
They weren't.

When I entered rockbox, I was on permanent hold again. I deleted my .rockbox folder and reinstalled from the latest build. No luck. I can't enter the apple OS at the moment either. Before I installed iPL2 I dd'd a .bin of the apple firmware on to the first partition of the ipod, to see if that made it work. That got me in to an infinite reboot loop I haven't bothered to fix yet, I just installed the iPL2 to get access to rockbox again.

So, to summarize:
the hold switch works perfectly fine in the iPodLoader menu, which makes me think that it's not a hardware problem. However, when I boot in to rockbox, hold is on (the switch is off), which prevents me from doing anything..

Does anybody have any ideas on what to do?

Thank you

[yapper]

Try the built-in diagnostic mode:

http://www.digitalmania-online.com/ipod-diagnostic-mode

[dreamlayers]

This is a hardware problem:  it happens both in Rockbox and in the Apple firmware, and it started happening after your iPod got wet.  This doesn't mean that there is actual damage.  Maybe the water left behind some residue which can simply be cleaned off.  It's even possible that some area is still slightly damp.  There is information on online on what to do when an electronic device gets wet.

The fact that iPodLoader2 works doesn't disprove that it's a hardware problem.  It uses the hardware in a different way, and so it doesn't run into the problem.

[Pizzarth]

This is a hardware problem:  it happens both in Rockbox and in the Apple firmware, and it started happening after your iPod got wet.  This doesn't mean that there is actual damage.  Maybe the water left behind some residue which can simply be cleaned off.  It's even possible that some area is still slightly damp.  There is information on online on what to do when an electronic device gets wet.

The fact that iPodLoader2 works doesn't disprove that it's a hardware problem.  It uses the hardware in a different way, and so it doesn't run into the problem.

Thank you for insisting it was a hardware problem. I opened up the ipod again and noticed that the ribbon going to the keypad was folded and creased! I straightened it out and that fixed the problem. I was wrong.

Thanks again.