"Self-inflicted" charging problem

[mgeral]

Hey all,

this is my first post, but I've been reading the forums a lot before. Really great and helped very often!

Now, I've built a battery charger for the UX using the cradle and a self-made connector (because I did not want to open the Clie and mess it up...). Well, in a moment of total mental absence I managed to insert normal alkaline AA batteries instead of the NiMHs that were charging (which supply 6.5V when full).
Now that fried the cradle (or what seems to be a Zener Diode ZD1 directly next to the connector of the AC Adapter).

Well, no problem I thought, Clie was still running... yeay. But then I did the USB charge mod and tried to charge the Clie. Nothing happening, the green light stays green. I tried to fix the cradle as well using a Zener Diode but with my skills I'm sure the cradle is gone - anyway, nothing happening there either.

So, did I fry the clie charging circuit or is it just that I've made a mistake with the USB charge mod. Don't have another cradle for now but when I connect a USB plug there's +5V between USB ground and the + pin on the outside (where the cradle connects).

Could anybody help? Is it possible to fry the charging circuit without anything else? Does it contain any fuse that I could repair/replace? Where would the charging circuit be? Any other thoughts?

I took apart the whole Clie and did not see any "fried" resistors or alike, could not find the charging circuit though I found which lines on the "push-down" connector connect power to the MoBo. So in short, I am clueless!

Thanks a lot in adcance ;)

[DCBAKER]

Your problem sounds similar to one I experienced a while back. See this thread: http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97479&highlight=flickering+LED

My final conclusion was that I had fried something internally in the UX charging circuit either by plugging into unregulated voltage with my car charger or my external homemade battery extender. I never did figure it out. You may want to see if anything smells burned on the inside of the UX.

Hope you have better luck than I did.

[dragonsgames]

Welcome to 1src!
There is always that faint chance that you did the USB mod wrong, but if you did it right, fried charging circuit.

[MM MD]

Hey all,

this is my first post, but I've been reading the forums a lot before. Really great and helped very often!

Now, I've built a battery charger for the UX using the cradle and a self-made connector (because I did not want to open the Clie and mess it up...). Well, in a moment of total mental absence I managed to insert normal alkaline AA batteries instead of the NiMHs that were charging (which supply 6.5V when full).
Now that fried the cradle (or what seems to be a Zener Diode ZD1 directly next to the connector of the AC Adapter).

Well, no problem I thought, Clie was still running... yeay. But then I did the USB charge mod and tried to charge the Clie. Nothing happening, the green light stays green. I tried to fix the cradle as well using a Zener Diode but with my skills I'm sure the cradle is gone - anyway, nothing happening there either.

So, did I fry the clie charging circuit or is it just that I've made a mistake with the USB charge mod. Don't have another cradle for now but when I connect a USB plug there's +5V between USB ground and the + pin on the outside (where the cradle connects).

Could anybody help? Is it possible to fry the charging circuit without anything else? Does it contain any fuse that I could repair/replace? Where would the charging circuit be? Any other thoughts?

I took apart the whole Clie and did not see any "fried" resistors or alike, could not find the charging circuit though I found which lines on the "push-down" connector connect power to the MoBo. So in short, I am clueless!

Thanks a lot in adcance ;) In addition to what has been said, and I really don't know if it's safe to say that you fried your charging circuit yet and hope not, I would do the following:

1. Bypass your cradle's circuit completely by connecting a USB output (+ve 5v and ground) to the cradle's pins, be careful with polarity.
2.Try to charge the clie, if that works you might have fried the switching/regulating circuit inside the cradle and your clie is OK. If not, one of 2 things would be the reason:

a)Your USB mod might have touched more points than you need :), try to revise it or take it completely down (I suggest using a magnifier and a very thin iron tip), put everything back to it's original state and retry charging. The clie should charge normally with a USB.
b)You really fried your clie's charging/regulating circuit. In theory this is something that can be bypassed, I don't know the exact details of the location of the circuit, but you actually can bypass it internally (inside the clie), hook the battery directly to the pin-outs on the bottom and build your own charging circuit in the cradle, this means you'll not be able to charge the clie in any different way other than this particular cradle, but it's a half-better solution than a complete loss.

Sorry for being so wordy, I hope this helps.

MM MD

[mgeral]

Thanks for the replies. I will try to charge in a different cradle first.

Though it really sucks to see your beloved Clie trickle discharge to its (possibly) certain death... what would you do with a single, last battery charge?! :confused:
But its my fault, so no complaining ... :)

[JAmerican]

If you fry your charging circuit, you won't be able to tell. I did this on my UX40 and could not tell whatsoever. It still worked liked nothing had happened to it (until I tried something and killed it).

JAmerican

[mgeral]

Thanks for the replies. I could not figure out how to fix the charging circuitry, tried a different cradle and stuff but the battery never charged...

Well, then I decided to follow the many examples around this forum and try a mod myself.
See the other post for details...

Regards,
mgeral

[Romeol]

You could always use another PDA or something to charge the battery and put in a new one each time the old one is about to run out. :)

[kjbad]

I fried the charging circuit on my UX a while ago. Not wanting to give up on it, I decided to take one of those APC external USB batteries (http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=UPB10) open it up, hook directly to the output that charges its battery, and power the UX through the contacts on its bottom. I removed the internal battery; the APC unit is the only thing powering the Clie and it is possible to charge using the APC's USB port. A little Velcro to allow quick removal of the battery for RESET button access, and it's good to go.
If you look closely, you can see my SJ33 taking the pics of my UX50... :)

[kjbad]

...and you can also tell that the MS Cam takes really grainy pics. :)

[kjbad]

Thought I would post an update to this thread since I am always looking to solve the charging circuit issue...

I have long wanted to use inexpensive (not cheap!) NiMH batteries to power the UX; since the charging circuit is already dead, I'm not worried about frying anything with 5.5V input. So I removed the APC battery and tried playing with a few configurations. Boundary conditions: less than 1/2" thick, could not stick out from the back of the UX50, and had to allow use of the reset button.

Well, after several tries I came up with an 8-AAA battery solution. 2 pairs of 4 batteries in series, wired in parallel. The NiMHs are rated at 1.25Vx4 = 5V at 1000mAh, so wiring in parallel nets me 5V at 2000mAh worth of Clie power! Each bank of 4 can be swapped while the other 4 preserve internal memory, so I keep 8 batteries on the charger at all times and swap when I need to. I can charge 8 batteries faster than I can discharge them in the Clie, so far no power worries or weird side effects. Well, there is one - the power indicator on the Clie glows solid orange instead of green. Otherwise, I backup once a day just in case and swap batteries once a day out of habit. When I get some pics, I'll post some.

[Rainshadow]

I did the same thing trying to connect an external battery pack to my UX50, but I moded a PSP battery to mine and now it works GREAT.
http://home.comcast.net/~matthew.balch/clie_ux50.htm

[m0nkeyb0y]

Nicely done ;)