Weird F200 Behaviour... Help!


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Jan 31, 2006
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I have bought an F200 from a guy in Germany, after my other F200 was stolen at customs. Finally I do have one now! The seller sold it as he claimed it wouldn't run with rechargeable batteries. He sent two normal batteries along with a psu and the unit itself.

Now a few symptoms of my problem:
1. The gp2x F200 does not boot with my stock gp2x wall-plug. The power LED lights but the screen stays black. My F100 does boot and run perfectly normal with, so the stock adaptor is not broken or anything.
2. The wall plug that came with the F200 (dunno which brand) is set to 3.3V but I cannot find out which polarity it is set to. I would assume though, that if the polarity would have been set wrong, the unit wouldn't turn on at all. It does turn on though, the boot screen appears after the white screen and the jingle were shown/played. It does not boot though, it gets stuck on the load screen. Shit.
3. My 2700 rechargeables do not get the unit to turn on either. The screen stays black, no LED lights.
4. The batteries the seller put in the parcel have let me boot the F200 once. I was able to navigate through the menu, then it seems they ran out of juice.


I can conclude the following out of these observations:
The unit is not fried as it turns on.
The unit must have taken some sort of damage as it isn't booting properly at all.

Can anyone suggest something to try or does anyone have a clue what the problem could be? I could imagine that the guy I bought it off had his wall plug set to the wrong voltage and popped a capacitor or two. Or maybe he killed the psu... Whatever the case is, I think I got screwed. AGAIN! DAMNIT!!!

Another one of my theories is that the unit might have gotten a little damp during transport. Maybe if I let it vent a little and put it onto the radiator it might stop acting weird. I will try this next. Still doesn't explain why the unit is not working with my wall plug but with the one the seller gave me, and why it is booting with normal batteries but not with heavy duty rechargeables that have worked perfectly in my F100... Fuck.
 
If it plays the jingle and shows the loading screen then freezes it should be an easy recovery (the firmware is probably botched, but uboot is still kicking) Just look around for firmware v4 for f200 (not the f100 versions) and reflash (by putting it on the sd card in the root and holding select & start while booting)

*Note: I'm posting this in a rush at college inbetween bites of pizza, so maybe go to somewhere like #gp2xdev on EFNet using irc and get some interactive help there, they know what they're doing ;) (atleast most of them ;) )
 
well, the firmware is probably not screwed as I managed to boot into the menu a couple of times. I am sure the firmware is be okay. I will open the device tomorrow or on the weekend and test continuity of the solder spots with a voltmeter.

Keep the ideas coming guys, this is helping me alot! Thanks...
 
Rechargeable batteries have a nominal voltage of 1.2V, while alkaline batteries have 1.5V. So, two rechargeable batteries make a total of 2.4V and two "normal" batteries 3V.

These 0.6V somehow make a difference in your machine. Maybe the circuit that maintains a constant voltage was fried after wrong input voltage? That's the only explanation that I can imagine for your situation.
 
If you need it running, do the trick where you replace the battery tray bar with a single AA in a battery holder, it will run that way.

Just pry out the connected set of battery clips, and replace with single clips, connect those to a AA in a single cell holder.


Tray-------------------------External-------------------- Tray
{+||||||-] New spring {+||||||-] New contact {+||||||-]
 
But what about using it with a wallplug? I don't like to play with batteries when I could be using an ac-adaptor. Do you guys think that the power regulator could be fooked like juanvvc said? I think ED mentioned that he could fix that, maybe I should ask him to fix the unit for a little compensation?

Is there a way to check if the regulator is faulty? Some kind of IC I need to look out for and that I can check with a voltmeter? I think my voltmeter can take currents up to 12V so I guess I could check it on runtime when the unit is powered. I am in no way an electronics expert or any where near that... I would appreciate if someone knew if that circuit was documented anywhere or could tell me the component label on the pcb so I could find it.
 
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