Mad Skillz
I recently bought an old iPod, it's a second generation iPod Mini and my plan was the replace the 4GB hard drive with a 128GB SD card and install a new battery. Unfortunately it turned into a headache because the SD adapter that I picked up wasn't working properly and I had to run various tests to figure out whether the problem was the adapter, the SD card, or something else.
In the midst of all that, I managed to do the thing that I was specifically warned about. There is a tiny tiny component at the bottom of this board (marked as C78 in the image above) which can be broken off when reassembling the iPod. I assembled and disassembled it multiple times and at some point I broke off that component by mistake (as can be seen in the image above). If that breaks off than the iPod's click wheel will become unresponsive, as I learned the hard way. In short, breaking that chip off will murder the iPod and turn it into a paperweight.
Fortunately it seems that I have "Mad Skillz" because after murdering this iPod I was able to resurrect it through the power of MICRO SOLDERING. It's all working great now - I'm genuinely impressed that I managed to fix it and I have no idea how I didn't make it worse but here we are!
Unfortunately the problems with the drive are unresolved. I need to return the SD adapter I got, and instead I will be using a standard CF card. Maybe I can finish this project in a few days after the new CF card arrives.