iPod 5G Bad Battery / Odd Behavior

[GWXerxes]

Just today I was able to get my hands on a used Fifth Generation iPod Video (Picture Below) purchased in April of 2006. The unit was in “Working” order but the battery would only hold a charge for about 15 minuets and the unit would sometimes lock up while running or hang on boot. I assumed this was either a bug in the current Firmware or some type of hardware issue.

Not being a fan of Apple I decided to install RockBox instead of flashing to the default firmware and it worked perfectly for a time (About 2 hours on charger. Music Playback). It first started to throw what looked like stop errors with a memory location following EX ‘0x00AB’. Then the unit would freeze and would take a hard reset to turn off and would not turn back on until at least half an hour had passed.

My main question is: Could these problems be caused by a bad battery? Or is it some other hardware issue?

--Full List of Problems--

STOP Errors: Unit ceased functioning and displayed a white screen with a memory location

Unit locks up on USB charger both connected to PC and to a USB wall charger (non Apple charger). Must be hard-reset with Menu+Select

Unit refuses to turn on until at least half an hour has passed since last boot. High pitched whirring noise (not hard drive) can be herd from click wheel area, usually boots when this noise stops.

Unit wont auto-activate when connected to USB cable

Will not boot original Apple firmware when hold switch is switched on during boot. Just hangs at Apple screen

--EDIT--
While trying a hard reset (Hold on/off Menu+Select the unit beeps three times with the middle note lower than the first and last
--/EDIT--

--iPod 5G--
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/hs245.snc6/179321_158571284195098_100001266819174_386876_1501699_n.jpg

Thanks in advance for any reply,
Samuel

[evilnick]

Try (overcoming your dislike of Apple[!] and) searching their site for mention of those three tones. That sounds like it might be interesting information.

Otherwise, I'd also recommend checking the filesystem for errors (chkdsk or equivalent) if it's an old device.

[GWXerxes]

Thank you for your suggestion. The three beeps I was getting are used as a notification during the iPod reset process.

I took the device to an iPhone repair guru and he agreed that it could be a bad battery that is keeping the iPod in some sort of low-power loop. He suggested that I purchase a replacement battery and install it. I will update when it arrives.