An article from my old site that’s popular with the search engines. On dropping an iPod Shuffle into the toilet, and learning something as a result…

Long drop

After riding to work I used to get changed in a cubicle in the gents’. Unfortunately, one day I forgot that my iPod Shuffle was clipped onto the waistband of my Ronhill Bikesters, and on removing my T-shirt, the Shuffle pinged off, danced around the seat in one of those slow-motion moments immediately preceding disaster, and fell into the water.

Fortunately, the facilities had been cleaned the previous evening and didn’t appear to have been used in the meantime, and the device must have been under for no more than three seconds. I whipped it out of the water, shook it vigorously, and wrapped it in paper to take up any water from the gaps around the switches and from the socket.

Flat

Once the Shuffle had dried out for a couple of hours, I risked turning it on only to find the battery indicator in the red, sometimes not illuminating at all. Not a big surprise: the water had probably discharged it, I thought. Things were fairly hopeful, as it would still play music through the headphones.

The problem

At home, I plugged it into the iTunes PC (running Windows 2000 at the time, now running Ubuntu Linux), but it wouldn’t charge — the expected orange light didn’t come on. I tried all sorts of things, with an increasing concern that I’d trashed my first iPod after less than a month, eventually solving it by plugging the dock into the (Windows XP) laptop.

The solution

Armed with this clue, I found out this piece of quirky behaviour: to get an iPod to charge under Windows 2000, it must be enabled for disk use. The only disadvantages of this setup are:

1. you must manually disconnect the iPod within iTunes before unplugging;
2. you cannot see the charge status on the Shuffle, as the LED flashes orange to warn you not to unplug it without disconnecting.

Luckily for me (the Shuffle was a Christmas present from my wife) it works perfectly now. I guess my warranty with Apple has gone (…wait for it…) down the pan (!) as a result of writing this article.