TheBassJunky

I recently bought a Dell Axim X5 PDA from ebay. It arrived boxed up, and brand new, but has obviously been sitting in stock for a few years.

Upon connecting it to the mains it seemed to be charging - showed a red light that after a few hours turned green - it switches on and works fine on the charger, but as soon as i disconnect it, it loses power completely. Doesn't even work for a few seconds.

The "Power" applet in the control panel shows it to have a 100% charge.

Does this sound like the battery, or a hardware problem with the PDA? As it has been sat for a few years I think the battery may just be f****d, is this likely?

I have tried charging it overnight and it made no difference. Also tried soft and hard resets.

Also, can anyone recommend a good wireless card that will work with this PDA (Pocket PC 2002)?

Cheers

Rowan

davrol

First of all welcome to the site :). You will find lots of useful information here. I suggest that you read Gigi's excellent tutorials.

Th X5 battery has five contacts. Make sure that all the contacts on the battery itself and on the Axim are bright, clean and not corroded. if your X5 is new it must be pretty old and tha contacts could have become corroded over time.

Then using a volt meter check the voltage between the various contacts. The battery voltage should be 3.7 volts. If you cannot find this then the battery is indeed dead.

TheBassJunky

I ordered a replacement battery last week and I am still having the same problem.

I checked the voltage on the battery, both seem about right (my replacement one shows 3.8v, old one 3.6v).

I have noticed that I can make the PDA switch on if I press the power button immediately after putting the battery in. It comes on for a second or two - sometimes to the point of showing the Dell logo, sometimes not - and then switches off again and will not turn back on until I remove the battery.

Any ideas what else it could be? The battery contacts are all clean and shiny, and I have checked they are making good contact. I have also checked and replaced the backup battery (oddly i noticed that it would not switch on at all without the backup battery in).

Is there anything else I should check, or is it stuffed?

Cheers.

rtabish

you are replacing/charging the main battery? have you checked/replaced the small quarter-sized battery? have you tried using a USB connector to charge your X5 or the stand-alone barrel charger? its my understanding that lithium-ion batteries will loose their ability to charge if they are left "on the shelf" for too long. they are better than nickle-cadmium, but have a limited life if they are not run down and fully recharged on a regular basis. this applies to PDA batteries, cell phone batteries, or any device that uses a li-ion battery.