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Aximsite Prospect
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 5
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Battery may not be dead
Your backup battery might not be dead, it might just have entered a 0 V state which is preventing it from being charged (the charger will not try to charge it).
If you have a voltmeter and a bit of skill you may not need to buy a new battery. I just bought an axim x3i from Ebay. On arrival it had the "battery abnormal", battery has failed screen, exactly as shown in pictures in this forum. I tried the suggestions in other threads about charging without the main battery, putting it on the cradle while on, do it for several hours, etc, etc., no go in my case. I did some reading at the sites of the manufacturers of these NimH button batteries and learned that if they get completely drained during shipping they may "die", but can be revived. The battery enters a 0 volt state, and most chargers will not attempt to charge a 0V battery, as it thinks the battery is dead. The axim behaves the same, if the voltage dropped to 0v it will not charge the backup battery anymore and will display the "abnormal" message. Most of the time the battery is not truly dead, and can be brought back to life. How? You need to jump start it with 1.5 to 2x its rated voltage. I just did that a few hours ago, and my backup battery is now back to a "normal" state and holding charge. The way I did it:
Took 2 AAA batteries, used electrical tape to connect them together in series, along with wire leads at each terminal. Checked with voltmeter for voltage at the wires from the rigged batteries, reads 2.54 volts. Good. You might want to attach the other end of the wires to something pointy, like a nail or needle, as it will make it much easier to do the next step. To check the voltage of the backup battery (bub) there's no need to remove it from the wrap. The tiny white connector has a couple of small, recessed silver tabs on the top of it, where the wires come in. It is much easier (though still a bit hard) to put your probe there then to try to stick it in the little holes in the tip of the connector. These silver tabs are also the easiest place to connect the wires to jump start the back up battery. When measuring the voltage in my bub it read 0 volts, as expected. Time to jump start it. Touch the positive wire from the rigged AAA batteries to the positive terminal of the bub. In my case, that was the red wire. At the same time touch the negative wire to the negative terminal of the bub, in my case it was the grey wire. Do it for only 5 seconds first, and check the temperature of the bub with your finger. If it got really hot, you might have the polarity wrong. Check the voltage of the bub again. Mine read 0.01V, hey, better than zero. Jump start the battery again, but now hold the connection for about 10 seconds. Careful not to short the wires, they are very close together, and if you do the rigged AAA cells will get very hot and.... ehr.. let's not think about it. Provided your bub is not very warm, do a third cycle, this time for 20 seconds. My bub got warm after this, but not hot. Checked the voltage one last time and.... it now reads 1.3 V. Yay! One word of caution: leave reconnecting the backup battery for last, after all the other screws and connectors are already in place and you are ready to screw in the back cover. Why? You don't have your main battery connected, and your revived backup battery has very little charge in it. If it gets drained to 0V again while you're fidgeting with the back cover.... you're back to where you started. Call me paranoid, but I connected the charger to the axim first, so I'd have main power, then I plugged the white backup battery connector in its socket. Next I quickly put the back cover in place, popped in the main battery, and screwed down the back cover. Anyway, this worked for me, but your mileage may vary.
Ah, one last thing about disassembly: for those following the picture in another post, after you take the 4 screws off the cover you must remove 3 more screws: 2 at the bottom, beside the power connector, and one at the top, which actually holds down the wifi antenna on the x3i. If that's your case, you'll have to disconnect the little connector from the antenna as well and remove it, it just unplugs like a miniature tv cable, cute. For everyone there are now 3 ribbon cables preventing you from lifting the motherboard enough to access the backup battery. You only have to disconnect 2. You can leave the largest cable on the right where it is, and just "hinge" the board up. But you'll have to disconnect the smaller cable next to it. You'll notice that there are clear plastic tabs on the side of the connector. Those slide back if pushed with the tip of a small screwdriver, releasing the "grip" on the ribbon so you can pull it out. The other ribbon cable at the bottom, close to the power jack, is trickier. The brown plastic thing sitting just under the ribbon is a one piece "shim" that is applying pressure on the ribbon cable for good contact. It has two little prongs that are "hinged" on the sides of the light colored motherboard connector. If you lift it up slightly, as if opening the lid of a chest, it should release the pressure on the ribbon cable and you can pull it and the cable out. Note that this cable is short and "springy", so its tendency is to want to stay in the connector. To put this back, revert the procedure: hinge the "shim" back in the connector, then slide the ribbon cable over it into the connector, push the shim down.
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