Troubles with charging.


mindlord

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This one has got me stumped, because it doesn't seem to make sense to me at all why it's happening.

I have a Classic Pandora that doesn't seem to want to charge the battery properly.

I have two batteries the original charger that come with the Pandora, a PSP100 charger from a PSP 1000, and various 5v adapters at numerous amperage for charging via USB. 

I've tried several firmwares ranging from official 1.52 through 1.54, Debian on SD, SL4P, but not ARCH. 

Often when plugging in the official adapter or the PSP adapter I get nothing for several seconds and sometimes it won't even start charging unless I unplug it and re-plug several times. When it does finally start charging it is not constant or consistent. It will charge awhile, maybe up to 40%, stop for a long while, start again up to 77%, stop again, and then slowly trickle it's way up to 91% or so and then never charge again until I unplug it and re-plug it again.

USB charging behaves more like normal, except in that it takes understandably longer, but still never quite reaches full charge. Perhaps only hitting 97%. In order to get this result I have to use the strongest 5v adapter I have, which is 2 amps. Anything less and it's hit or miss whether the charging cycle will even start, and if It does start will run to completion. 

Bear in mind this happens with both batteries.

Does the battery charging circuit have some sort of memory that can get fouled up?
 
AIUI, the normal charging circuit will charge up to full (which may be a little off 100% - check with the system info app) then allow the system to discharge down to 80% before charging again. That's to extend the life of the battery a bit, but does mean you're unlikely to ever see it at 100% when you unplug it.


As I understand it, it does have a system whereby if you leave it plugged in for extended periods, like months, it's designed to drop down to 40% before charging, but I've never left mine plugged in for long enough to check that. Perhaps something in your machine's getting confused around that percentage.


I don't know what you could do to rest battery behaviour, sorry, though surely someone around here does.
 
Try using "Sysinfo" to see what the charge is actually doing.  Link

You could even leave the charger in and ever hour or so check back and record what it's doing; or at the very least, check back whenever the charge seems to fluctuate.
 
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Did you try deep discharge? Keep it on, ignore the warnings (you got a few seconds to click the popup away, or it will autoshutdown to protect itself) and let it the battery die (remember to backup your data, potentially it could kill the SD card data). Then fully charge it again.
 
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