Disclaimer: This information is provided for academic curiosity and as a testamonial to what I was able to do. It should not be followed unless you are aware that you may permanently damage your iPod and are willing to risk losing your iPod. I'd love to hear from people who successfully repair their iPods, but if you fail, don't come asking me for a new one.

To access the firewire pins please see my disassembly tutorial.

The image files are quite large, feel free to open them in their own tab or window to see them full scale.

This is an image of the firewire pins on my 5GB iPod. Stress from plugging and unpluggin my firewire cable had broken the solder points of the six pins and two of the four thicker pins holding the port to the board. My local electronics shop re-soldered the connections in about 10 minutes for $5.