Don't throw away the mp3 player

Many people who have brought mp3 players when they first came out have most likely replaced it with one with GBs capacity. The old mp3 players are bulky and can't store enough of your favourite songs.

Some re-use it as a thumb drive as the flash chip still has many thousands of cycles to go. The problem is new thumb drives that are flashy, shiny and ever so easy to lose cause their small, thin and comfortable to carry. This makes their old mp3 player bulky uncomfortable and not prefered as a portable data travel mate.

I recently had this same problem as a 128MB and 256MB mp3 player got replaced with a 2GB player. I still wanted to use the flash chip even though 1Gb thumb drives are $10 these days because it is just bad to waste good technology no matter how the new marketing adverts make you feel about new technology.

My solution was simple, a case mod that makes the player slim. Method, break open the case and remove it. The hard part for me was my lack of knowledge for electronics and i was fearing that removing certain components from the circuit board would break the connection and operation of the drive all together (i.e. series circuit) in my scenario i was able to remove the buttons and LCD screen.

Now the hard thinking part what things will be fit for making case? many ideas on the net such as Tic-Tac box etc. won't work on my player as the shape and size of the circuit board was larger than most usb thumb drive boards. After a bit of trying i decided to just wrap it in duct tape, it is thick and strong enough for protection and feels light but thickly padded. Doesn't look cool but compared to a Tic-Tac box i would say I've made it fairly thin.

Yeah, I think I've just about covered it all, now i just have my portable apps with me on the drive. Haven't used it in public so not sure if people would say cool, what is that or wow your so cheap.....