From: Neon John <jgd_at_johngsbbq.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2006 17:18:52 -0500

As I noted yesterday, both my trusty old JBR and its backup quit.
Fortunately I'd planned for such dire emergencies.

I got to do what is for most folks, a long gone act - I broke the
shrink wrap off the box of a brand new JBR, one of the ones I hoarded
when production ended. What a nifty experience :-)

I had forgotten just how bad the Archos firmware was. Ditto that old
Hitachi hard drive. I stuck ROMbox and the audio book I'd been
listening to on the original drive and used it for a day. Gawd, what
a boat anchor. I thought the drive was crashing every time it parked
the head. And battery life was back down to a lousy 8 hours or so
playing 32kbps book files.

I dug the low power Toshiba 100 gig drive out of the failed unit and
placed it in the new one. Nirvana! Almost total silence and battery
life is back in the 16 hour range.

BTW, for cloning a drive, this freebie utility is very nice.

http://www.xxclone.com/

This utility is not a sector copier. It copies files just like xcopy
but does tricks to copy the registry and other windows files when
cloning a windows boot drive. A major feature of file-by-file copy is
that it inherently defrags the destination drive.

Anyway, I've serviced/upgraded quite a few JBRs, mine and others, and
have developed a procedure for making it last a long time. This
procedure addresses the mechanically faulty points.

On just about every JBR I've opened up that has had any use at all has
had the earphone jack, the power jack or both at least a little loose.
They're held down by tiny, thin solder webs that are easily broken by
force on the jacks. The same situation exists for the board-to-board
connections at the battery connectors.

The first thing I do to each jack is apply an alligator clip to press
the jack tightly against the board. I resolder each connection. Then
I apply thin superglue to the juncture between the jack and board and
touch it with a drop of accelerator after the glue wicks in. This
practically welds the jack to the board. I've never had one break
free even when dropping the unit and having it land on a connector.

I do a similar thing to the board junctions at the battery connectors.
These joints are HIGHLY stressed, as the batteries significantly flex
the boards. First, I grip the device in a Panvice. Then I apply a
weight to press the end board onto the side board. A touch of the
soldering iron and some flux reflows the solder. Then I peel back the
metallic tape in the battery compartment to expose the back side of
the joint. I clean it with alcohol and then run a fairly heavy bead
of medium thickness superglue (hobby shop) to make a fillet between
the boards. A touch of accelerator makes it set instantly.

This forms an extremely rigid and strong joint and yet it can be
released if necessary with some superglue remover or acetone.

The last thing I do is gently squeeze the opening of the headphone
jack with smooth jaw needle nose pliers while gently heating the
plastic with hot air using an SMT hot air needle with the heat turned
down. The objective is to make the opening slightly oval so as to
tightly grip the headphone jack. This eliminates the annoying problem
of the cord pulling out during vigorous activities.

Button 'er up and she's ready.

John

---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
Don't let your schooling interfere with your education-Mark Twain

Received on 2006-11-24