Wiz Not Charging?


Illuminerdi

Member
Joined
Jul 22, 2008
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112
Just got my new Wiz, super excited - emus are great, everything seemed hunky dory. So I plugged in the cable, and got the prompts for NAND/SD, so it seemed like the cable was in and working, but for some reason when the USB cable is plugged in I get no indication that the Wiz is charging. I've looked around and from what I gather the power light is supposed to turn on (with various color states) when the cable is plugged in and the Wiz is off to let you know it's charging. I've also heard that when it charges a screen is displayed to let you know it's charging - but I get none when powered on/off.

When plugged in and turned on, there was no graphic change for the battery icon to indicate to me that it was charging.

Is this normal, or could I be looking at some kind of issue with my Wiz?

1.1.0 firmware is currently loaded, and I'm reflashing the firmware, though that might have been stupid since if the battery dies in mid flash I'm probably screwed. Cross your fingers for me on that one.

Could it be that my newer iteration of the Wiz just doesn't use the light to indicate charge? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
Well, it doesn't show anything on the screen when charging, but the LED on the side turns Purple when it's charging and on, red if it's charging and off, Blue if it's charged and off.
 
Mr.TwisT said:
Well, it doesn't show anything on the screen when charging, but the LED on the side turns Purple when it's charging and on, red if it's charging and off, Blue if it's charged and off.


:( I get no LED change. Only LED I get at all is blue, when the unit is on, so clearly it's not charging. I've had it plugged in and turned off for about 2 hours and the battery is still saying it's low.
 
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If you dare, take the cover off of the adapter that plugs into the Wiz and see if the red wire isn't attached or on the wrong pins. There are a couple topics around about bad soldering here in the Wiz section. This is what I would do before getting an RMA and having to be Wiz-less for a while waiting for a replacement. If you have no way to solder it, then you are best to just return it all and get a replacement. It won't be any fun when your battery runs out after several hours and there's nothing you can do. :(
 
The EXACT same thing happened to me when I received my new Wiz yesterday. My computer recognized my Wiz using the USB cord (and I had access to NAND and SD card), but it would not charge -- there was no LED response at all, and I left it plugged in for hours to see if there was a change to the battery level, but no such luck. I contacted gp2xstore about it and responded quickly. They let me send my send the defective Wiz back and will send me a new one once they get my clunker. I just hope it's not a bad batch, since you had a similar issue recently. :(
 
MWeston said:
If you dare, take the cover off of the adapter that plugs into the Wiz and see if the red wire isn't attached or on the wrong pins. There are a couple topics around about bad soldering here in the Wiz section. This is what I would do before getting an RMA and having to be Wiz-less for a while waiting for a replacement. If you have no way to solder it, then you are best to just return it all and get a replacement. It won't be any fun when your battery runs out after several hours and there's nothing you can do. :(

Thank you very much for the suggestion - that was actually going to be my next move, though your information about the wire colors will help, as I would have been flying blind :) I do indeed have a soldering iron, so if there is a loose pin, I'll see if I can fix it (and hopefully I won't short it and blow up my new toy!)

Thanks! And good luck with the Pandora production - I may have just bought a Wiz, but I'd be lying if I said the Pandora didn't still have me itching to break out the credit card again.
 
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MWeston said:
If you dare, take the cover off of the adapter that plugs into the Wiz and see if the red wire isn't attached or on the wrong pins. There are a couple topics around about bad soldering here in the Wiz section. This is what I would do before getting an RMA and having to be Wiz-less for a while waiting for a replacement. If you have no way to solder it, then you are best to just return it all and get a replacement. It won't be any fun when your battery runs out after several hours and there's nothing you can do. :(

Decided to pop the cover off real quick and take a look before bed: the red wire seems to be soldered ok - not great, but enough to make contact/pass current, as far as I can tell. It's jacketed in the connector in the slot directly right of the green wire (if looking down into the connector, from a "Wiz eye view" as it were)

Would you happen to have a pinout/diagram or something for this cable this so that I can double check the rest of the connectors?

Haven't had a chance to check the USB cable at the other end, could possibly be there, but that connector is much harder to take apart, and I'm going to catch hell from the woman if I don't get to bed soon. Any further help you can provide would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thanks again!
 
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I just got mine yesterday too. Ordered it from the Gp2xStore.com. Same problem with charging, at the same time as everyone else. Bad batch maybe?
I sent their support site a message yesterday, at around 2;30 pm, but I haven't gotten a reply yet.
I sure hope it's just a bad USB cable, since I really don't want to ship out my new baby - I haven't even peeled-off the screen protector yet! ;-)
 
Nekonomicron said:
I just got mine yesterday too. Ordered it from the Gp2xStore.com. Same problem with charging, at the same time as everyone else. Bad batch maybe?
I sent their support site a message yesterday, at around 2;30 pm, but I haven't gotten a reply yet.
I sure hope it's just a bad USB cable, since I really don't want to ship out my new baby - I haven't even peeled-off the screen protector yet! ;-)

Mine too came from gp2xstore.com. Sounds like the bad batch theory is correct. I've checked my cable and it was soldered ok, though I might resolder or otherwise try to splice it once I get a pinout, as I don't want to send it back if I can fix it myself
 
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Illuminerdi said:
Mine too came from gp2xstore.com. Sounds like the bad batch theory is correct. I've checked my cable and it was soldered ok, though I might resolder or otherwise try to splice it once I get a pinout, as I don't want to send it back if I can fix it myself

If you get the pinout, will you post it? I popped mine open, and everything seemed ok. Then again, I wouldn't know how to tell otherwise!
 
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Before doing any RMAs, please check if it REALLY doesn't charge or if it simply doesn't indicate it's charging.
If GPH did some new revision, they might've broken up the charging indication as well.

Play until your battery is dry, try to charge for a couple of hours and then start playing again.

Also do make sure the USB port you connect it to does have enough power to charge the WIZ. A PC or passive USB hub might not be enough, try with an active hub or even better with a USB AC Adaptor,
 
EvilDragon said:
Before doing any RMAs, please check if it REALLY doesn't charge or if it simply doesn't indicate it's charging.
If GPH did some new revision, they might've broken up the charging indication as well.

Play until your battery is dry, try to charge for a couple of hours and then start playing again.

Also do make sure the USB port you connect it to does have enough power to charge the WIZ. A PC or passive USB hub might not be enough, try with an active hub or even better with a USB AC Adaptor,

Thank you for the suggestions - I have actually already tried them all. I've checked about 6 different USB ports on 2 PCs and one monitor, none of them give any indication of charging. I thought the same about it possibly being a new revision so I left it plugged in anyway but the battery has shown no signs of being charged, even after leaving it plugged in for several hours.

I also tried my iPhone's wall USB AC adapter, and got no results there either. Today I'm going to pick up a volt meter at the suggestion of MWeston and actually check to see if the cable is giving a charge or not. If so, I'm going to RMA the Wiz, if not, I'm going to try fixing the cable.

Thanks for the suggestions though - they're good ones that may help someone else who reads this :)
 
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Illuminerdi said:
I also tried my iPhone's wall USB AC adapter, and got no results there either. Today I'm going to pick up a volt meter at the suggestion of MWeston and actually check to see if the cable is giving a charge or not. If so, I'm going to RMA the Wiz, if not, I'm going to try fixing the cable.

Mine didn't charge either after 3 hours plugged to a powered hub, on a drained battery. I checked the cable with a voltmeter, and it was giving me 5V. At this point, it's either a bad pin alignment, or the unit itself is screwed. I just hope the support people don't ignore me and send the RMA number, since it doesn't look like I can fix it myself...
 
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Ok, it's really late (I should have been in bed 2 hours ago - just got done rearranging my SD card for my Wiz!), but I wanted to quickly let you know how I fixed my problem.

So, after some helpful info from MWeston (thanks, you're awesome!), I checked my cable with a volt meter and got the same thing - +5V on pin 16, with ground pins 19 and 12 correct as well (EDIT - I should point out that I was only able to test the voltage at the wire, my volt meter's probes were too large to fit into the plug itself to test the pins directly, so it's unknown where the real problem lie). So I don't know what's up with things - if the Wiz's internal Pin 16 is defective, or just something really funky with the cables - I tried soldering onto another USB cable and that didn't work either, so it's either the cable's prong itself, or for whatever reason this batch just doesn't want to charge with +5V on 16.

However, after checking a pinout, I discovered that pins 21 and 22 on the cable were ALSO inputs for +5V, meaning that technically the Wiz has redundant placement of voltage in. After confirming with MWeston that hooking up more than one of these won't fry my Wiz (apparently his cable is like this) I desoldered the USB signaling wires (the Green and White, for those playing the home game) from their pins and used a pair of needle nose pliers to move the prongs themselves to slots 21 and 22 - it was pretty easy, just pull them down and out and put them back in - just take care not to bend them during these operations, and make sure you retain the facing so that you don't put it in backwards - this shouldn't hurt anything, but it won't work either. Then I threw a big glob of solder across pins 21, 22, and 16, so that the red wire was attached to all three, and the green and white wires were unattached.

Lo and Behold - IT WORKED! I jumped for joy when I saw that little red light turn on on my Wiz when I plugged it in.

Here's the rather large caveats, please read before you bust out the soldering iron.

1: I have no idea if this is a good idea or not. While technically MWeston's Wiz cable is like this, he's probably better with a soldering iron than I'll ever be, and if Pin 16 wasn't working like it should, then who knows what it might mess up to have it soldered like this long term. God only knows what else is wrong here. Just because mine hasn't blown up yet doesn't mean it wont...

2: This disables the USB function of your Wiz cable - for me, I didn't care, I have a USB SD card reader. I can't load things onto the Wiz NAND now though, but I'm not sweating it too much, I'll care more when my SD card is full (16gb - cheap as dirt these days), which it isn't yet. However, if you intend to use the NAND, this is not really a solution.

3: Soldering iron, accoutrements, and knowledge of soldering techniques are necessary. While this is a pretty simple operation with a fairly low margin for error, there is still the potential for you to blow up your Wiz. Don't do this unless you're prepared for the worst and/or comfortable with the risks of getting out the solder and iron. I take zero responsibility here. Test your cable thorougly before plugging into your Wiz - my recommendation is to test with a wall socket AC adapter (I used one for an iPhone, btw), so that you don't potentially blow up a PC if you short the wrong wires. Maybe that's a bad suggestion, but I trusted my house's surge protector to be smarter than the USB ports on the front of my reasonably expensive PC...

I personally am going to try getting a replacement cable from Korea which hopefully will work for charging and USB to see if that will fix the problem without needing an RMA, as otherwise things are working fine. I just completed a full charge and I'm very happy to say that so far it's working great.

Thanks again to MWeston, ED, and everyone else who offered advice and suggestions. If requested I can post pics of my cable for those that want to see, it's not that special though.
 
I am having the same problem as everyone else with the Wiz not charging. I just received mine a few days ago. I found that it will charge the battery with an old LG phone charger I had in the garage. The light on the side doesn't light up while charging though. I contacted the GP2X Store and asked if I could have a replacement USB cable, but I am betting this won't fix the issue.
 
Now I have a success story of my own -
The iGo universal wall charger and a A104 tip (for LG phones) did the trick. The tip had a similar enough pin configuration to the Wiz one: grounds on 12 and 19, power-in on two adjacent pins, soldered together. I only had to screw-open the tip, pull the power-in contacts with needle-nose pliers and relocate them to the 21-22. No soldering needed on my part. I did have to grind a bit the plastic on the bottom of the connectors, to accommodate the three small metal tabs on the Wiz. Didn't have to sacrifice the USB cable from GPH, and My Wiz is charging right now :)
 
Nekonomicron said:
Now I have a success story of my own -
The iGo universal wall charger and a A104 tip (for LG phones) did the trick. The tip had a similar enough pin configuration to the Wiz one: grounds on 12 and 19, power-in on two adjacent pins, soldered together. I only had to screw-open the tip, pull the power-in contacts with needle-nose pliers and relocate them to the 21-22. No soldering needed on my part. I did have to grind a bit the plastic on the bottom of the connectors, to accommodate the three small metal tabs on the Wiz. Didn't have to sacrifice the USB cable from GPH, and My Wiz is charging right now :)

Excellent, glad to hear you found your own unique solution to the problem. Hopefully between the two options we've posted here, we can save a few more people trips to RMA hell.
 
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The GP2X Store thinks I got a faulty unit and gave me an RMA number to return the Wiz. I hope the next one charges correctly. Does anyone know how long it takes to get a replacement Wiz from the GP2X Store?
 
Received my Wiz yesterday from the GP2XStore. Same exact charging problem. What a disappointment... :angry:
 
I do not mind RMA'ing my Wiz. Why should I have to jury rig a cord or tear open my new device just so it will do what it's supposed to do right out of the box? I know it's not GP2Xstore's fault -- they didn't deliberately sell me a faulty unit. But if a product you buy doesn't work, you should be allowed to return or exchange it. GP2Xstore realizes that and they were very quick and helpful in resolving my problem. Here's hoping the replacement unit doesn't have the same flaw...
 
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