iRiver H10 : Powering problem

[zulunation]

Hi All,

I have an iRiver H10 Player.
It was lying for several years unused because battery was discharged and I couldn't find a new one.

I decided to power it on from an external power supply. A lion battery with 4V voltage.
I have soldered the wires to the connector in the player case. I have removed the original battery.
There are three pins. One is for temperature sensor. I left it unconnected. Other two are ground and power.

When i press power on button the screen shows the symbol that battery is low and turns off.
So the players CPU is running fine but how it measures the power of the battery is unclear to me.
Maybe there is a problem with ionistor? Maybe it can't power on the hard disk drive?

Does any one knows the power metering logic?
I don't want to do a PCB reverse engineering.

Thanks,

[vitt13]

Hmm.. Do you have the original battery? Probably you have to use protection board taken from the original battery.
I think the solution is replacement only battery cell with your original battery protection board like in those videos about new iPhone battery replacement, with spot welding device.
But you also may try to use an external power supply (3.7-4.2V) passing through original battery protection board if that board has some intelligent battery level control and uses third pin for that.

[zulunation]

Hello vitt13,

Thanks for reply.

This is good idea. I have tried it. But unfortunately I didn't soldered battery pcb pins to player pins directly i just took the case and connected two parts holding both with my fingers. The screen was on but i didn't managed to notice if player was started.
I guess i have short circuited something on a battery pcb because now i can't launch player through battery pcb.
But i will try again. I will solder everything together.

I was thinking that third pin is a temperature sensor and player can run without it but maybe player expects to see some resistance on this pin or voltage just for security reasons.

[zulunation]

Hello,

I have managed to power on the player. I have soldered the battery pcb between battery and player and now it starts fine.
So the third signal is important to the player.

Now I have another problem. The vertical slider is not working. It is connected to PCB via flexible cable.
I have tried many times but it doesn't work.
Maybe there is a known protocol which describes the signals between slider and player?
I guess if Rockbox firmware is used on H10 player this protocol must be already reverse engineered?
Should I check the Rockbox source code?

[vitt13]

There are Wiki for this player. It starts here https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/IriverH10Port.html and goes on related pages.
The flexible cable on the photo https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/IriverH10Info.html looks like silver traces on the film. I have experience in recovering damaged silver traces with silver conductive glue.

[zulunation]

Hello,

I have notices that my cable is broken where it goes inside the slider case. I think it would be hard to repair.
I want to put two buttons. Up and down instead.
I always wanted to have a buttons instead of a slider.

I checked the wiki.
The slider controller is CY8C21434.
Is that correct? I can't find it on a PCB. Maybe it has different marking?