H120 and hot LTNP chip

[ShinyFalcon]

I may have noticed something a bit abnormal with my H120. On the left side of the CPU, there is this cylinder thing that seems to be hot to the touch. On the other side of this cylinder is a tiny little chip, slightly obscured, but can read the chip's marking, which says LTNP. This gets very hot, enough to burn my finger. This is the DC converter chip, if I read the hardware pages for H120 correctly.

Anyways, what I'm experiencing is a constant rate of battery drainage. With the 2200mAh battery, I get 7 hours of play time. With the stock 1300 mAh battery, I get 4 hours. if you set up your proportions, with t being the unknown time in hours, you'll see that t = ~7. I don't know what could be the problem, because the battery drainage is constant despite the H120 being completely idle or doing its decoding. I suspected the hard drive being the culprit, but the little cylinder/LTNP still seems very hot even when the hard drive is not connected.

Anything I should look for?

[LinusN]

Sounds like you have a short circuit somewhere. Did anything happen to your player before this?

[ShinyFalcon]

I'm not sure, because I bought this "brand new" in March and attempted to charge via USB, which didn't do a whole lot since it's unsupported. It didn't come with a charger, so I had to supply one. The stock battery was completely drained, and I recall attempting to turn it on numerous times while it was charging. This charger has been working well for a while before I shifted to the official one, did not plug it in with incorrect polarity, at 4.5 volts. The only short circuit I can think of is at the plug level, because it was slightly loose when I played with the plug. Or maybe the reset button, since I wasn't aware that you have to move the paper clip downwards to click on that silver button, not push through.

The very next day I ordered myself a 2200 mAh battery, and its life isn't what I expected it to be. And here I am now. I do notice that a lot of heat comes out when the hard drive is being used, like me skipping around songs, so that may worsen the problem a bit, to the point where it shuts down spontaneously.

I plan on CF modding it and trying to see any improvements. At best it should extend the life slightly since power draw is ~100 instead of 500 for the hard drive, if I got my sources correctly.

[LinusN]

You might have damaged the internal voltage regulators by using only 4.5V. The player is designed for 5V.