bricked H320 (works as a flashlight now): help please?

[damasta]

hi everyone!

posting the first time here, since i never had problems before. :-)

sometime recently, my H320 (running rockbox r18274) was playing an AAC file (i think) on external power when it somehow crashed. i think i was fast forwarding and/or skipping to the next track or something... no more response from keyboard or remote, even though it kept playing. since it would not shutdown either, i pressed the reset button. it will not start up since.

symptoms:
-> when i plug in the AC adaptor, the screen will flash bright white every second or so. it will not react to _any_ keys, including the reset button. this continues indefinitely (even over night), until i remove external power again.
-> when i unplug the AC adaptor, the screen stays (white) lit at low brightness. it will not react to _any_ keys, including the reset button. this continues until the battery is empty (charging obviously still works)
-> USB is completely dead. the PC will not detect anything, the h320 stays dark (off?) and does not seem to react to any keys either.
-> the harddrive does not activate at all. the drive produces no sound whatsoever.
-> no audio-signal comes out either - not even a "plop" when power is applied.

i am afraid i have a hardware problem, but i just wanted to make sure before i either toss it out and/or attempt to repair it.

any help would be greatly appreciated, since i have not been able to locate a different MP3 player which suits my needs as well. i want my iriver back! :-)
(shame iriver stopped producing/developing this fabulous device!)

thanks in advance,

dominique

[Febs]

If you pressed the reset button and are still experiencing the issue, you definitely have a hardware problem.

Were you using the original power supply when this happened?

[piscator]

Dominique,

Grab another H320 off Ebay and don't look back!

Febs,

I was thinking the same thing.  The ongoing 'fried' player experiences resulting from incorrect chargers seems almost epidemic.  Don't know that that's the case here.  I fried one myself after forgetting to reset my variable charger back to 5v -- one of dumbest things I've ever done! Now I use the factory charger -- EXCLUSIVELY!

piscator

[damasta]

thanks guys - my thoughts as well. just wanted to verify with the experts! ;-)

as a matter of fact i wasnt using the original charger, because i use(d) my h320 in the car. i set the charger for 4,5V (the next up was 6V) and never changed it since. it worked fine for over a year and a half.

surely, running the h320 at a lower voltage wont destroy it?

[piscator]

Damasta,

Let's let an expert confirm this, but my understanding is that lower voltage will indeed destroy you iRiver.

My understanding is that the iRiver charging circuit tries to compensate, when it is not getting enough 'juice.'  If the power source is unable to supply that current, the player fries.  Lower voltage = less available current.

surely, running the h320 at a lower voltage wont destroy it?

iRiver engineers specified a 5v 2amp charger.  They must have done that for some reason. 

piscator

[ej0rge]

if the charge controller includes a 'charge pump' type of circuit to boost the voltage it's receiving, having too low of a voltage would certainly make it work harder.

But i don't think there is any reason why more than 5.0 volts would be needed to charge a 3.7v lithium pack. Maybe I'm wrong on that point.

As for chargers with a lower amperage rating, it's possible that they simply meant to use a charger with an unusually high rating vs. the required charge current for the battery + everything needed to run the DAP simply to avoid getting an ugly jaggy waveform from the power supply under load.

Aside from their obvious capacitance and voltage tolerance ratings, capacitors are also rated for what frequency of repeated pulse they can service and how many miliamps can be drawn from the capacitor between each pulse. A badly jaggy power supply would certainly make the capacitors work much harder.

But we're talking - we hope - about voltage regulated chargers here. A linear regulated 5v 2a brick would weigh a couple pounds, so we're talking about a switching regulated power supply. Some of these are going to switch at much faster rates than others.

If i let the battery drain to the point of exhaustion and then hooked up an ammeter between the power brick and the h320, and then fired up something heavily cpu intensive like a video speed benchmark or a database rebuild, i doubt we'd see the h320 draw more than 4/5ths of an amp - and I'm being generous.

But better quality of the power it receives is more easily achieved by using a higher current rated supply than by using a lower rated but more aggressively regulated supply.

[damasta]

gentlemen, i appreciate your feedback!

the charger i was using - while not original, complied to the same specs: 5V 2A. it is the original charger for my tomtom go700 automobile satnav system. i assumed that both devices would have similar demands on the PSU in terms of noise, hum, transient behavior etc...

well, i finally managed to grab a "new" h320 off ebay for 105,00 €! fourth attempt tho... i am surprised to see other h320s go for 150+ €, which is about half the original price! amazing. these are 3-5 year old devices and in this day and age of "throw away" personal electronics, i am impressed. seems to be becoming something of a collectors' item...

i guess it just confirms that iriver really landed a major milestone at the time, which even today is hard to top.
from personal experience i can say that after surfing for an alternative to the h3x0 series, still nothing else comes close to what i need from a personal mediaplayer...

thanks again guys!