Unidentified power issue with a 1 GHz edition


Cliabhach

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Joined
Sep 17, 2013
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4
Location
New York, USA
I shut my 1 GHz Pandora down wth 20% charge in the battery about 24 hours ago. Since then, I haven't been able to use it:

- the charging light isn't lit

- the power light isn't lit

- the battery and cpu don't release heat

- the screen doesn't turn on

- there is no sound

Right before I shut it down, I had extracted the latest Slackware-current (5) rootfs on the right sdcard (I use the left one for PNDs). Trying to boot with any combination of keys pressed or sdcards (or battery) inserted hasn't worked.

I have not unscrewed anything or messed about with magnets, but I did leave it overclocked to 1100MHz for most of the 2 weeks I've owned it.

I saw a post that might be relevant . . but I'm not sure ( http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/9810-is-my-battery-in-need-of-replacement/?p=181773 ).

Any suggestions?
 
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Are you charging with the DC adapter or USB?

If the battery was fully drained, try this.. take the battery out for 30 seconds or so, then leave it on the DC adapter for an hour or so.. sometimes it takes that long for the battery to be charged enough to initially boot.
 
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Yeah leave it charging for a while and the light should come on again after a while. There may not be enough juice in the battery to power on the pandora.

And taking the battery out for a while resets the system I believe.

Also try using the pandora with the dc adaptor plugged in. Leave the battery out.

Some pandoras can run without the battery, my 1 gig unit can. Then you would know if it were a battery problem or not, but only if your panda runs without a battery, its random.
 
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Okay, I'll let you know what happens as I test 'em (probably by sometime tomorrow). Thanks for the suggestions.

Wrath of Khan, I had no success using the Pandora with the battery out - but I think that did work fine a few days earlier.

By the way, is there any way to use, say, a multimeter to figure out the battery charge?
 
You can measure the voltage of the battery with a multimeter directly. Should be something like 3.7V if full.
 
Oh, and in case nobody's said it yet, Don't put the battery in while your pandora is running off a mains power adaptor - this can confuse the power handling stuff and fry bits of your pandora!
 
Try charging with USB, could be that your charger is broken.


I suspect that it's not the case due to the 20% charge at shut down, but it's worth a try.
 
AFAIK charging via USB doesn't work if the battery doesn't have enough power to start the unit! But measuring the battery voltage and charger voltage would be a good idea. The Pandora needs at least about 2.8V to start, so anything below that would not boot up the Pandora.
 
I left the Pandora plugged in (and hopefully charging) overnight. No change in appearance, power switch, or reaction to pressing buttons. My meter is showing about 4V across the battery terminals and 5V on the charger when plugged in, so that's probably not the issue.

And Binky . . I think your advice might address my main issue. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point I unthinkingly removed/replaced the battery while it was connected to the mains. Great. Erm...what bits of the Pandora might've been fried, in a hypothetical sense?

And more importantly, should I fill out an RMA and send the device back for repairs?
 
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