Strange "Partial" Power On Behavior for Gigabeat F60

[Nate!]

Randomly, with my Gigabeat docked or not, powering on doesn't even get to the Toshiba splash screen that loads the bootloader.  I can tell especially when docked.  The green or orange charge icon is visible.  If I try to power on, the charge icon will disappear, then the lcd seems to power on but stays black, then the charge icon reappears.

To power on fully when this happens, I have to have an AC adapter.  I plug the AC adapter into the Gigabeat and switch the battery off.  Power on, when I get the Toshiba splash screen, I quickly switch the battery back on.  (Otherwise it will boot and give the battery low error and power back down.)

Using the latest official bootloader, April 21.  This seemed to start around two weeks ago using official builds.  I doubt that this is a Rockbox issue because the anomally occurs before the bootloader even loads.

Does anyone have any ideas?
Is anyone else experiencing this?
Could this be a battery issue?
If so, has anyone purchased and successfully replaced a Gigabeat battery?

Thanks.

[Llorean]

Have you tried or are you running an unofficial build? There's been at least one patch that has caused some strangeness in boot behaviour (though not that sort of strangeness) in an attempt to shorten boot time by making it use sleep instead of a full shutdown.

If so, you might want to try running Official Rockbox for a few days and see if this behaviour sticks around (especially important is doing a full power off, including turning off the battery switch and not being plugged in, as this seems to be the way to clear up the strange behaviour resultant of the patch).

[Nate!]

Thanks for the reply.  I haven't tried Shoora's patch yet.  The only patches I use are the Album Art and Gigabeat rotate patch.  Come to think of it though, I've been using MadCow's updated bootloader up until I started testing the behavior with a supported state.  (Official bootloader/Official current build 13394)  I've been using this supported combo about two days now with previous official current builds.  I do believe the problems started a little before using an unofficial bootloader though.

Hopefully it will go away.  I have a trip to Germany in a week and a half.  I can't remember if Lufthansa has power to the cheap seats.  If not and this happens, I'll be fooked.

btw, this post seems to somewhat mimic the above behavior.
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=8519.msg66136#msg66136