SL-C860 not charging, please help!!

[Unit21]

Just got my SL-C860, but I have a little problem.

I live in Norway, but my Zaurus comes from Japan, and has a 110V charger.
We have 220V here, and so I had to get a different charger.
I bought one with the same specs as the one that came with the Zaurus, but when I try charging the charge-led of the Zaurus just blinks rapidly.
It doesn\'t seem like the Zaurus is charging either.
It will not run from the AC-adapter only, but when  I flashed it with the Cacko ROM yesterday it didn\'t complain about not being connected to an AC adaptor.

Does any of you know what a flashing charging-led means?

[Unit21]

And one more thing,  :wink:

Does the charger for the SL-5500 work with the SL-C860?!
Cause I have a charger for the SL-5500, but it is rated at 2 Amperes as opposed to the SL-C860 charger which is rated at 1 Ampere....

[g0dless]

I just use a 220 to 110 convertor and the original sharp adaptor, I tried a 220 charger but when I disconnected it it always had low power

[Unit21]

I dug the SL-5500 charger out of the closet, connected it... and it worked!
Seems like 5V 1 ampere isn´t good enough for the SL-C860...

[omega]

Hi Unit21,

The charging light blinks rapidly because the zaurus is constantly going on/off charge. I have the same problem (being in 220volt land myself). I use an ipda usb charge/sync cable (you don\'t know how handy/cool it is!). If i\'m on a machine with a lower voltage usb (unfit powersupply) then i get this result. The reason is that when the Z is not charging the voltage is high enough for the Z, which then tries to start charging, which drags the voltage down, which stops the charge. rinse then repeat and you get a blinking led.

The difference between a 1A and a 2A powersupply is only the maximum power (energy) it is rated to supply. If you connected a 10A powersupply it wouldn\'t matter, as the Z would only take what it needs to charge the Li-Ion battery properly (it\'s internally limited). The main thing is the voltage regulation, i.e. that it stays at five volts, and that\'s obviously where the problem is with the other poor quality charger.

[waalkman]

I dug the SL-5500 charger out of the closet, connected it... and it worked!
Seems like 5V 1 ampere isn´t good enough for the SL-C860...

It\'ll work fine. I\'ve modded CE-BC21 to take the bigger \'08 battery (meaning that I drilled a hole in the charger left of the first brass conductor to make room for the tab on the battery).

http://conics.net/shp/pda/zaurus-sl-c700/c...1-mod-small.jpg


Any regulated five volt power supply should work.


From posts gone by...

\"As for using an \"off-brand\" adapter (be it AC or be it DC), be sure that the \"tip\" (the inner part) is the + and the \"ring\" (the outer part) is the -

(I just checked mine using my Fluke).

Failing to do this could damage your unit. Otherwise, any decent, regulated, 5 volt supply should do the trick.

And as for a USB charger, keep in mind that it can only draw 500ma (500 milliamps).\"

http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?n...3948&highlight=


And

\"Here is the datasheet on the lm7805 (5 volt 1 amp regulator). Skip down to page 23 and check out the circuit for the high current design.

Dead simple.\"

http://www.fairchildsemi.com/ds/LM/LM7805.pdf

http://www.zaurususergroup.com/index.php?n...4167&highlight=


And possibly the reason why the 220-to-110 convertor doesn\'t want to work is because it wants to see a resistive load along with the inductive load (this is a problem that some invertors experience).

Translation: Add a 110 volt light to the 110 load (in parallel).


John

[TonyOlsen]

Unforntunately, 5 volt power supplies aren\'t easy to come by in the US, unless you find a place online.  I went to Walmart and Radio Shack, but couldn\'t find a 5V adapter.  I\'m thinking 5V is NOT standard.

I finally chanced buying a 700 mAmp 4.5 V adapter and it \"appears\" to be working fine.  Anyone have any inside knowledge on this?  Will a 4.5 V adapter cause any damage on a 5 V system?  I know that \"officially\" the Zaurus is only rated for 5 V + or - 5%, which is 4.75 - 5.25 V... so 4.5 is under that.

...but it looks like it is charging fine... so far...

Let me know if you\'ve heard anything about how 4.5 V does or doesn\'t work on the Zaurus... (SL-C860)

Thanks

[Ling]

Actually, in the last few months, I needed a 5V power supply for my usb harddrive. That seems to be common. I got one online delivered for under $20. It is labeled AK II and is made by the AK II Power Supply Co., LTD, Taiwan. Input power is 100-240Vac and output power is 5V 1.6A. If you do a bit of searching, I imagine you can find it. It has worked well for me on 110 and 240. It was cheaper than a comparable item for Radio Shack and quite a lot smaller. Here is where I got mine:

http://www.bixnet.com/5vacpowaddaf.html

Here is another similar one:

http://dallaslogic.com/miva/merchant.mv?Sc...Category_Code=3

Good luck.

[waalkman]

Unforntunately, 5 volt power supplies aren't easy to come by in the US, unless you find a place online.  I went to Walmart and Radio Shack, but couldn't find a 5V adapter.  I'm thinking 5V is NOT standard.

I finally chanced buying a 700 mAmp 4.5 V adapter and it "appears" to be working fine.  Anyone have any inside knowledge on this?  Will a 4.5 V adapter cause any damage on a 5 V system?  I know that "officially" the Zaurus is only rated for 5 V + or - 5%, which is 4.75 - 5.25 V... so 4.5 is under that.

...but it looks like it is charging fine... so far...

Let me know if you've heard anything about how 4.5 V does or doesn't work on the Zaurus... (SL-C860)

Thanks

Actually, 5 volts is one of the voltages that your PC runs on. And TTL runs between 4.75 - 5.25 volts. Should be rather common actually.

I like the 700ma limit, I'm guessing the the failures are current related and not voltage related (as long as we keep things at 5 volts of course). 700ma will charge it fine, although kinda slowly.

Be careful with "cheap" chargers, some of them publish specs that describe the voltage at full load. Unloaded the voltage can go much higher (this would be an example of an unregulated supply).

The lower voltage is a concern if the Z's internal charging circuitry doesn't use LDO (Low DropOut) technology. Otherwise you will get a .6ish volt voltage drop (0 to very little with the LDO technology) which will limit the chargers ability to "top off" the battery.

So charge it up and post the voltage you get off of the fully charged battery.

Here's a neat little writeup on Li-Ion battery technology:

http://dataweek.co.za/news.asp?pklNewsID=9...klCategoryID=46


John