Cassiopeia E125 not charging - advice welcome!

Hi, guys.

I picked up an E125, cradle, wall-wart power supply and CF laser barcode reader module at a car-boot sale yesterday for £5. When I connect the cradle to the power supply, switched it on and put the E125 in, the amber LED ligt up for a second or two, then went out. The main battery doesn't seem to be charging, and the E125 won't power up, either in or out of the cradle, when the Power button is pressed. Am I right in thinking that the main battery is dead, and that even in the cradle, with a dead battery, the E125 won't start? I tried it with a 3V DC power supply (I have one of those universal PSUs) going straight into the power socket on the E125, and that didn't work either.

I tried hard resetting a la manula, but that didn't work, and I'm guessing the backup battery is flat too. Am I going to need to buy a new main battery to see if I can get this PDA going? They seem to be available on eBay for about £10.

Cheers, Jon.

This should be posted in Off Topic, since the E-125 is a Pocket PC, and we deal with Handheld PCs (the ones with the core Windows CE desktop screen and, usually, a built-in full keyboard) here.

The E-100 series requires a working main battery in place in order to power on. It does sound like the main battery that it came with is dead. I've seen lots of these on eBay here in the US - they should turn up on ebay.co.uk too.

Been there myself. E-125 was my all time favorite CE3 pocketpc...loved the big full 3 inch screen. I've owned the E10, E11, E100, E105, E115, and the E125.

CEGeek is correct in that it sounds like the main battery is shot, but wrong in that the device needs a working main battery to power on.

There are 3 contacts for the main battery...jump between the outer two with a wire and then try running it off only the a/c adapter. If the unit is good, it will run off the a/c adapter with no battery in the unit at all. Be sure to slide the battery cover lock switch in the proper position as if the battery was in the unit...

Rich

Oops, also owned the EM500 as well. Forgot about that one for a second...that was the one that I got scammed on with an phoney eBayer and turned the FBI onto him...got all my money back! Wo wo!

BTW, one more thing, check out this auction...so cool: HERE

Edited by Rich Hawley 2008-10-20 7:21 PM

Well, if you're gonna get technical, Rich . . . .

I still love my E-105. Best Palm-size PC ever made. And the E-125 was probably the best MIPS Pocket PC (though admittedly there wasn't a lot of competition). (Whoa - a NIB E-125 for $50 - sweet!)

(You didn't get the E-15, Rich? Even I have one of those. )

Edited by CE Geek 2008-10-21 3:03 AM

Oh...I forgot about the E15...yeah I had one of those too, but actually only bought it a couple of years ago on eBay...kept it for like 2 weeks and resold it.

For a while there I had almost 2 dozen of the various units lying around in various states of disassembly, using one digitizer with one lcd to fix one up for selling. I even had a chart I had made up once showing which digitizers worked with which Casio, how on some you had to invert the ribbon cable, etc...

Triophile, let us know how you come out...

Thanks for the advice, guys.

I tried jumping the battery contacts, but to no avail. I then whipped the back off for a quick look inside, and it looks as if the two solder points (at the open end of the power socket) which appear to provide structural support to the socket have either lifted off their pads, or pulled the pads off the board. Given this, and the fact that some of the soldering on the socket and a couple of other larger components looks pretty dodgy (lumpy, dull and with quite a lot of flux left on it), I might open it up again tomorrow, take the board out, remake any dodgy looking solder joints, apply a bit of contact cleaner to switches, connectors, etc, and make sure all the cables are properly seated.

Cheers, Jon.