From: Nuutti Kotivuori <naked_at_iki.fi>
Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2002 18:48:30 +0200

So, my problem is thus:

I have a Archos Recorder 20, bought december last year. Now, it's
broken, it won't boot. I'll spare you the details of how it all came
to this condition and how it progressed during several months and so
on - so let's jump to the current moment.

My archos is open on my desk - I have removed all the exterior covers,
but I haven't separated the top and bottom circuit boards. I have the
batteries installed. The battery connections are fine - I have tested
them several times and the voltage is stable between the mattering
ends of the battery connectors. Right now, this thing says it's 4.38.

Now, the power on button - I have tested it, without the batteries
that it connects the two pins when the button is pressed and otherwise
it doesn't. Then when the batteries are on, the voltage between the
two pins is the same - and it is stable. Ofcourse when the button is
pressed, the voltage "disappears" since the pins are connected. So the
power on button is just fine, and it gets power just fine.

And now the real problem: When I press the ON button, the unit either
doesn't turn on at all, turns on only for a moment - or turns on, but
doesn't feed enough power to the harddrive to spin up. Sometimes when
it's on a very good mood, it allows the disk to spin up, only to shut
power off again in a few moments. I often can make the device boot
better if I hold down the power on button - but the unit often shuts
itself down when I release it. The problem is definitely affected by
movement of the device - but it does behave like this pretty often
when stable as well.

Now, currently I have the harddrive detached and sitting on my
desk. The harddrive seems fine and doesn't seem to be the cause of the
problem. Now I am looking at the ide-connector from the other side. I
measure the voltage between the power pin in the ide-connector and
ground. When the unit is turned off, there is obviously no
voltage. When I turn the unit on and it starts booting - at the moment
it tries to spin up the disk, the voltage jumps up to whatever it
should be and stays there. When I move the unit and it loses power
(either momentarily or permanently), the power disappears from these
ide-connector pins as well. But during all this time, the power is
stable in the battery connectors and the power on button.

So, my logical conclusion: Battery connectors are fine, power on
button is fine, harddrive is fine. Either the mechanism that controls
"power-on" state is broken or some connection leading to or from that
mechanism is broken. The off-button works entirely fine, shutting off
the unit only after it has been pressed for a certain amount of time.

But I have no idea how to continue. I couldn't really decipher how the
power is routed along this system, I could find the chip that handles
power-on and power-off stuff, nor could I even find the solder points
on this thing on how to separate the top board from the bottom
board. They don't seem to be soldered into the frame in this model.

So, here's a dilemma to think about :-)

Thanks in advance,
-- Naked
Received on 2002-11-09