*re*solved No Power Led

[wylbur]

I was intrigued by the CF->microdrive switch, so I opened up my SL-C3200 and swapped a (dog slow) 1G Patriot CF card with the microdrive. After everything went back together, I flashed OZ, and it came up snappy and beautiful. Yay!

So I got a 4G SanDisk Extreme III 133x CF, opened up the Z, and swapped it with the 1G Patriot CF card. Put it back together, and now I get a blinking power led when I attach the AC adapter (battery in, lock switch on). I can't switch on the device at all, with or without the OK+power, with or without cards in the external and internal SD and CF slots.

No HD led action, no screen flickering, no sign of life. He's dead, Jim!

In the forums and on google, the diagnoses I've seen are a) fried battery; and  something mystical that fixes itself by leaving the battery out for a day or so.

I doubt that the battery is fried since the device is a month old and hasn't seen much use. I've certainly not run the battery anywhere near zero (I don't think, but I'm not sure how to test/confirm that) because I have mostly used it on AC.

Is there something obvious in the power system I could have b0rked in one of the pull apart-back together iterations? Any other suggestions/ideas?

tia -- wylbur.

[wylbur]

update:

I *can* get to the service menu using the battery out, reset, D+M, battery in+lock, AC on combination.

There's a menu there for charging, and it said "off." I clicked "full," and the power led came on. But when I exited, the led light went back off.

Resetting normally to reflash, I'm back to a dead on/off button and a blinking power led. I guess I'm going to let it charge overnight and see if it comes back to life  

-- wylbur

[wylbur]

Sigh.

While I was nudging the internal boards about, I must have pushed the three gold power lead coils back a bit. Pushing the battery forward makes all the contacts, the charging light comes on, and I can flash again.

-- wylbur.

[wylbur]

So I'm back to the problem of being unable to flash. Here are the symptoms.

When I do the AC out-battery out-battery in-lock-AC in-OK+power to get to the flash menu, I get no response from the Z. I've noticed that unless the amber power LED is on, the Z won't respond at all.

So I *can* get to the diagnostics menu by AC out-D+M-AC in. At that point, going to the low battery check (page 2 item 5) with no battery in the "Fatal Status" is "L" (which I assume means "low"?) and the "Main Bat:" reports "1.0V (53)"   (does the 53 mean mA?).

So then I put the battery in, without changing the menu. "Fatal Status" is now "H", and the "Main Bat:" reports "3.7V (199)" with seems reasonable enough. No amber light during any of this.

I skip down to charge on the same page (item 10), and it *always* says "off." I can force it up to "full" and immediately get an amber light.

But from there, I can't get to the "exit" menu leaving the charger set at "full." If I hit the cancel button, the amber light immediately goes off, and returning to the charge menu shows that it's off again.

If I tap the "full" box, it flashes green for a moment, then returns to yellow when I release. If I tap "half" or "exit", it flashes light blue for a moment then returns to yellow.

So there's no way I can force the amber light on long enough to flash.

Last time I had this prob, apparently I misdiagnosed it as the battery not fitting properly. The battery fits fine, as the charging stuff above indicates.

I'm going to leave it set at Full for a while, then see if (a) the low battery check reports different values, and (b) if I can get the amber light to come on when I want to flash.

Thoughts? -- wylbur.

[wylbur]

If you can't get the battery and the AC to cooperate (e.g., because the amber LED won't come on with the battery in and the AC connected), then you've b0rked the NAND and the Z is extremely confused. At that point, do a complete NAND restore (see "in case a backup won't work"), and from there you should be able to flash normally.

Sigh. On to the next thing -- wylbur.