Gigabeat F40 low Battery Shutdown error

[derekvan]

Hi,

I'm having a problem with my gigabeat F40, on which I've had Rockbox for years.  I recently had a problem where it would refuse to turn on.  I would plug it in to AC, and it would have the green indicator, showing it was fully charged.  I could turn it on while plugged into AC, but once it started to boot Rockbox, it would say Low Battery, Shutting Down, and then it would shut down.

I thought this was a problem with the battery, so I replaced it.  This did not change anything, and it would still refuse to turn on.

I booted it in Bootloader mode while plugged into the PC, and installed the newest version of Rockbox (r20991  3.2-090323).  It then turned on fine while still plugged into AC.  As soon as I unplugged AC, it turned off again.  I switched the battery switch on and off, then tried to turn the Gigabeat on with just the battery.  No luck.  Will turn on and play while plugged into AC though.  However, sometimes it will still give the "low battery" error and shutdown.

This seems like an error people have run into before, but I haven't seen any solutions that have worked for me.  Can anyone help me out here?  I love my Gigabeat with Rockbox, and would be really bummed if I had to find a new player.

Also, just noticed in "rockbox info" menu setting, it thinks the battery is at 0%, even though when the player is off, the green charge light shows.

Thanks!

[Llorean]

You said you switched the battery on and off. Do you mean "off and on"? Make sure the battery switch  really is in the right position for use.

As well, r20991 and 3.2-090323 are not the same thing. One of those is the current build, one of those is the 3.2 release.

[derekvan]

Ok--sorry I wasn't clear before.   

I switched the battery off and then back on.  It is in the correct position.

I am using the 3.2-030923 release.  I am still somewhat confused by the numbering system here, but I checked in the system menu, and that is what it indicates.

[Chronon]

The numbering is either

<release #>-<yymmdd>

or

<svn revision#>-<yymmdd>

where "yymmdd" is the date that the firmware was built.

I'm sorry to hear about your trouble.  My gigabeat (F) is my favorite player. You could try removing the Rockbox bootloader and try to boot the original firmware to see if it suffers the same problem. 

[derekvan]

Yep--still exhibits the same problem with the original Gigabeat firmware (v.3).  Grr.  Anyone else have any experience with this?

[toffe]

I f you have the some problem with rockbox and the OF, it can be a hardware problem
You should check if the battery is charging using a multimeter.
It can be a blown fuse on the board (there are 7 fuse on this board if I remember)