skyeyemachine
Member
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2009
- Messages
- 195
Hello all,
I know there's been some posts in the past about strange power drain issues while the Pandora is idle, but after looking through the support forum, but after trying a few of the tips seen there and not finding anything more recent, so I thought I'd start afresh.
My problem is thus; when I flick the standby switch to the right, my Pandora seems to power down successfully, the screen blanks, and I'll close it up and put it away, no problem. It loads up fine when I resume from standby, as well. There seems to be no difference whether the WIFI has been, or is, on or off before or while the standby is initiated. However, seemingly regardless of what programs my Pandora has running when I initiate standby mode, it will continue to consume strangely large amounts of power. For instance, if I charge it up 'till it's at 100% by the time I go to sleep, as has happened a few times, when I wake up, it's down to a shocking 70% or so (EDIT: 9 or 10 hours' time, I'm trying to say).
I think this problem has been with me since the beginning, actually, although for a while I didn't really clue into it; uni classes, etc kept me from thinking about it too hard. But recently I've tried re-inserting the battery and testing a little further, and I can't seem to get this problem to go away.
I am using the final release of Hotfix 5, installed on the left SD card in my unit. I usually have a second card mounted, but this one is just for data. Both use ext3 partitions, if I remember right, although the card with the OS on it has a small FAT partition just to hold the boot files, since I couldn't get the ext2-based bootloader to work. I should also note that, although I can't see any problems with how the battery fits in the case, the board-mounted battery contact pins seem to be ever so slightly twisted, by a few degrees or so. Maybe that's causing the problem, I don't know. I haven't tested, but I believe this problem was also seen when running from the NAND from when I was first using the device.
The one thing I've seen that strikes me as most odd which might be related is that, sometimes, when the Pandora is in standby, I will see the left SD activity indicator light blinking. I guess I have to assume that means the Pandora is trying to write or read something to or from the card, but I don't know what it would be, and this activity seems to go away if I resume the unit from standby and then put it in standby once again.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might fix this? I'm seriously considering sending my machine in for exchange or repair, or however that is handled. I have no other serious problems aside from occasional PND mounting issues (most often this seems to involve applications seizing network or sound interfaces and not sharing them with other apps, although I haven't looked into it that deeply), but this weird power drain is chewing up my battery pretty badly when it really shouldn't be. I'd rather go without my machine for a few weeks rather than spend extra cash on new batteries because the Pandora keeps abusing them. =P
Thanks for any help!
EDIT: Oh, one other thing. My keyboard doesn't ever seem to register a DEL keypress. As far as I can tell, the backspace key should act as a 'Delete' key when Shift is held, but it just doesn't seem to work. Am I misinterpreting the keyboard label, or is this a hardware issue?
I know there's been some posts in the past about strange power drain issues while the Pandora is idle, but after looking through the support forum, but after trying a few of the tips seen there and not finding anything more recent, so I thought I'd start afresh.
My problem is thus; when I flick the standby switch to the right, my Pandora seems to power down successfully, the screen blanks, and I'll close it up and put it away, no problem. It loads up fine when I resume from standby, as well. There seems to be no difference whether the WIFI has been, or is, on or off before or while the standby is initiated. However, seemingly regardless of what programs my Pandora has running when I initiate standby mode, it will continue to consume strangely large amounts of power. For instance, if I charge it up 'till it's at 100% by the time I go to sleep, as has happened a few times, when I wake up, it's down to a shocking 70% or so (EDIT: 9 or 10 hours' time, I'm trying to say).
I think this problem has been with me since the beginning, actually, although for a while I didn't really clue into it; uni classes, etc kept me from thinking about it too hard. But recently I've tried re-inserting the battery and testing a little further, and I can't seem to get this problem to go away.
I am using the final release of Hotfix 5, installed on the left SD card in my unit. I usually have a second card mounted, but this one is just for data. Both use ext3 partitions, if I remember right, although the card with the OS on it has a small FAT partition just to hold the boot files, since I couldn't get the ext2-based bootloader to work. I should also note that, although I can't see any problems with how the battery fits in the case, the board-mounted battery contact pins seem to be ever so slightly twisted, by a few degrees or so. Maybe that's causing the problem, I don't know. I haven't tested, but I believe this problem was also seen when running from the NAND from when I was first using the device.
The one thing I've seen that strikes me as most odd which might be related is that, sometimes, when the Pandora is in standby, I will see the left SD activity indicator light blinking. I guess I have to assume that means the Pandora is trying to write or read something to or from the card, but I don't know what it would be, and this activity seems to go away if I resume the unit from standby and then put it in standby once again.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might fix this? I'm seriously considering sending my machine in for exchange or repair, or however that is handled. I have no other serious problems aside from occasional PND mounting issues (most often this seems to involve applications seizing network or sound interfaces and not sharing them with other apps, although I haven't looked into it that deeply), but this weird power drain is chewing up my battery pretty badly when it really shouldn't be. I'd rather go without my machine for a few weeks rather than spend extra cash on new batteries because the Pandora keeps abusing them. =P
Thanks for any help!
EDIT: Oh, one other thing. My keyboard doesn't ever seem to register a DEL keypress. As far as I can tell, the backspace key should act as a 'Delete' key when Shift is held, but it just doesn't seem to work. Am I misinterpreting the keyboard label, or is this a hardware issue?
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