F20 Fried (Toffe come here please)

[JesusFreak]

So I went to a friend's house who had a gigabeat and saw they were selling it at a garage sale for a dollar because the touch pad didn't work. I bought it, removed the case, adjusted the touch pad and got it to work fine. Not bad, if I do say so myself. But recently I had a long car trip and didn't have a car adapter to charge it in the car, so i used my portable dvd player charger because it fit. (Obviously a bad idea, now that I look at it.) I had actually used many chargers for different items before and none had fried; let's just say I learned my lesson. As soon as I plugged it in I smelled the unmistakable smell of burning electronics and saw smoke rising from the player. Needless to say; I'm now out of a dollar. I opened up the case and saw one of the black things (It looks just like the processor but smaller) on the mainboard had a big hole in the black heatsink or whatever is on top of it. Whenever I have the battery switch set to on, the smell comes back and the black thing (capacitor?) gets very hot to the touch. I saw where some other people have made a similar mistake and wonder if there is a way to fix it. It seems a shame to throw away an (almost) perfectly good gigabeat because a tiny part of the mainboard blew. So, any suggestions? Toffe, I heard you fix these; what are your prices and how would I do it myself? I do know quite a bit about technical stuff, but sadly I have no soldering experience. I have attached pictures of the insides of my player.

Well, I have to go; I'm going on a vacation for a few days with no internet access probably and will bump this thread when I get back.

[AlexP]

Well, I have to go; I'm going on a vacation for a few days with no internet access probably and will bump this thread when I get back.

You may want to check out the posting guidelines, that prohibit bumping.

I'm afraid I can't help with the actual problem.

[Chronon]

Obviously you will, at the very least, need to desolder the burned IC from the board and identify and replace it.  I have no idea what other components might be damaged, so I can offer no guarantees that this will return your player to working order.

Was the voltage too high?  Or was it the wrong polarity?

[JesusFreak]

Yeah, the voltage was too high. Where can you get replacement parts?

[Chronon]

You can try Digi-Key, Mouser, Newark, the manufacturer.

[JesusFreak]

Thanks, do you have any sites you would recommend on learning how to solder it to the board? Also, would it be possible to buy a broken one off ebay and mix and match parts such as the hdd, the lcd, and the mainboard? Does anyone that owns a gigabeat be willing to open theirs and identify the name of the fried part so I can know which one to buy? I can't read mine. Also, I know we aren't supposed to PM people on here but I want to ask toffe about fixing my player. Would that be okay?