Gigabeat F - how to tame the touchpad?

[ej0rge]

I recently bought a box of partially disassembled "as is" mp3 players on ebay.

Included a Gigabeat F40 that was inexplicably all opened up and disassembled but works fine after reformatting the harddrive back to fat32 from NTFS - go figure, eh?

Aside from the fact that the external plastics are in rough shape and the front and back were bent up by the ten-thumbed technician who formatted it with NTFS, it works great.

Except that the touchpad works perfectly when the front panel is off, and is super-sensitive and easily gets stuck 'down' in any direction when the front panel is on.

When i search for gigabeat touchpad issues on google, it seems to come down to replacing the touchpad - but it works fine when the front panel is off so i don't think i need to replace it.

Does anybody have any tips? I'm guessing that the front panel still isn't really flat and ends up pressing on the touchpad board. I'm thinking about installing some spacers between the front panel and the battery

[burkjavier]

I remember that auction - I almost bid on it.  There was an iRiver in that mess too, as I recall?

As for the pad - yes, it's very sensitive (and annoying as hell - it's the thing I hate the most about the F series).  I have four F series players in my house (all in different states of disrepair, don't ask) and none of the pads sits quite the same way.    My only suggestion is to check either the font case itself, or the battery below, to see if you can adjust things.   The battery should have two small "feet" at the bottom, that lift it away from the board.  This will also lift the touchpad, slightly.

If all else fails, I would recommend getting a broken F10 or F20 on the cheap, and then using it for parts.  Except for the back case and HDD, all the other internals for the F10/20/40's are interchangeable.

[ej0rge]

Two irivers actually - an H320 with the 'always connected' problem and some damage to the inner case, and an H10 that, aside from noting that the harddrive works and the front panel is filthy, i haven't looked into.

Also a 6gb microdrive philips gogear, a samsung 512m thing that's worthless without the proprietary usb cable, and two little 2gb insignia players that seem to work just fine.

I'm considering sanding down the plastic on the inside of the touchpad cross bezel. Right now I'm just not going to bother with it - i was up too late last night with it already.

[Nate!]

Not sure if this will help, but I added the 100Gb drive to my F60 and was having touchpad issues.  I simply bent the inside corners of the cover up slightly and things seem back to normal.

[ej0rge]

Just an update on this - when i went to try the "remove the strips under the battery" method i noticed that the factory battery was all bulgy. It's a little balloon, and was pushing hard against the pluspad.

Tonight I replaced it with that cameron-sino ipod battery, after which the pluspad got pretty tight again.

I intended to remove the pluspad bezel and shave it down. I got it off, and since i have miles and miles of industrial-grade double-sided mounting tape -- the same stuff cell phones and mp3 players are held together with -- I decided i was going to completely remove the old tore-up and greasy tape and lay down new.

Then, having removed all traces of the tape, I realized that the tape really is probably about the same thickness i was going to remove from the back of the bezel.

So i reassembled with the bezel loose. Which is pretty fiddly to do, but the pluspad works better now than it ever has. Easy to use. Doesn't get stuck in any direction.

I've noted this path to functionality on the wiki page about the battery upgrade.

[burkjavier]

Great to hear that things worked out for you!