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I have an inmotion speaker set with embedded ipod dock circa 2006. I love it and it sounds great. But the dock does not work with the newer model ipods / iphone etc. I'd like to try my hand at hacking it to upgrade the dock. Any thoughts on how to do this? Seems to me that somehow I could replace the old connector with the part of the new one.

phirschybar
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Does it just not work at all, or does it just not charge?

In order to get audio out of the dock connector you have to have an apple security chip that authenticates with the iDevice before the iDevice will output any audio. It may be that the older devices that you talk about do not require this chip while newer do, or that the chip has changed. Either way, it is beyond hobbyist level to hack it if the security chip is the issue. In fact it is difficult for even the experience cryptographers.

However, if it is an issue of it just not charging, then there is a hack that can be done with resistors on the data lines of the connector. I am pretty sure there is a question around here going over that, but I can not find a link to it at the moment.

Kellenjb
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  • thanks for the response. yeah actually it just won't charge but audio does work. I get an error alert on the ipod saying that it is not compatible. – phirschybar Apr 25 '11 at 17:02
  • @phirschybar since that is the case I will go look a bit harder to see if I can find some links for you. It is pretty common to do so there are lots of people that show how they have done it on the web. – Kellenjb Apr 25 '11 at 17:07
  • You can get analog audio out of any model without any authentication chip, but digital audio requires it and a microcontroller, etc. Ladyada reverse-engineered a charger to get the resistor values for a 1 A charger that will work with any modern iPod/iPhone model: http://www.ladyada.net/make/mintyboost/icharge.html http://www.ladyada.net/images/mintyboost/usb4res.png – endolith Apr 25 '11 at 18:02
  • I read the article. While fascinating, I am not sure how to proceed with hacking the dock connector so that it circumvents the charging issue. – phirschybar Apr 26 '11 at 14:03