Is there a way to read data directly from the iPod HDD w/o the iPod?

A few years back, my father was handed this iPod Classic 7th Gen that had one major problem: the original owner had thrown it. Breaking the screen, bending the shell and displacing a ton of parts. To add insult to injury, the original owner took it apart and did further damage. My father was commissioned with retrieving songs from it. Fast forward 5 or so years and I dug it up from a junk pile on a shelf. It was looking sad and the chance of it ever working again was slim. It was in a red antistatic bag. The motherboard isn't working as it won't show up in iTunes. Is there a way to get the hard drive's files from it without the motherboard of the iPod?