What have you done with an H/PC today?

My LG Phenom's charger is shorting out. When I went to check where, it was obnoxiously close to the H/PC end of plug, making this a FAR harder fix than it would have otherewise been.
So, I'm doing a terrible hackjob of an investigation, and documenting my findings here.
My EE skills are basically zero, I have some dupont M/F wires from a raspi project I never ended up doing, and I'm using those to hook onto the tiny pins on the Phenom.
The charger's model number is H-C120FN, and the H/PC is the LG Phenom H-120F.

With the H/PC right-side up, the pinout (on the H/PC itself, not the cable) is:
4|3
2|1

pin 1 (red wire, 3.6V) - seems to be main power, the H/PC runs without batteries in it if I hook this pin up to the red wire on the supply
pin 2 (blue wire, 1.4V)- not a clue, might be related to the charge circuitry?
pin 3 (bare/yellow wire) - ground
pin 4 (black wire, 3.6V) - not a clue, the H/PC doesn't appear to notice if this is connected, might also be related to the charge circuitry

The bottom of the device says that it takes 3.4V at 1.1A, and so does the charger.
Oddly, both the device and the charger also say that they output 3.0V at 2A, but I haven't been able to measure this. Maybe the power adapter does that when charging a battery? The battery pack that came with my device is stone dead, and it doesn't charge AA rechargables put in the device, there are some pins on the case of the battery pack that are probably charging related.

Were I more technically inclined (and less likely to just break something if I open the unit up), I'd go buy a barrel jack and solder that into the Phenom directly, since like, I don't think I'll ever find a way to replace the plug end of this, it'll let me use a different power supply easily if this one up and dies, and I will likely never be able to use the built-in battery charging. Plugging in dupont wires directly to the pins is also a total hassle.
Plus, it'll let me have something that I can reasonably take out in public without looking (at best) like a fire hazard.
Of course, were I that cool, I'd also look into seeing if I could get serial out directly onto a normal DB-9 port -- I am completely worried that my serial cable will short out too.

Edited by null1024 2022-10-10 10:25 PM






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pinout-small.jpg (94KB - 0 downloads)

I need to learn how to fix cords and cables...we cant always depend on buying it again on eBay..

As for what I'm doing with an H/PC...

I'm off Mondays/Tuesdays "My Weekend" and I'm a little bit drunk from Puerto Rican Rum, testing software on my MobilePro 900, taking screenshots, and adding compatibility data, and laughing for no reason..lol

As long as you're not spilling any Bacardi on your MobilePro . . .

Ayyyy nooo!
That's Cuban Rum!
I'm having Ron del Barrilitio

My MobilePro 900 is fine. I wish the battery life was better on it though, I was debating putting cmonex ROM 2.0 on it, but I was scared of "tainting" the SCL compatibility data.

Which H/PC have you used the most the last week?

(I'm having a second PB&J as we speak + Iced Tea)

Was mucking about with the terribly cursed Sylvania CE netbook that I got.
It's not very good at being a netbook, given that I can't get onboard wifi to work, lol.
That being said, I've finally managed to acquire another Raspberry Pi 4 (at MSRP even!), so I now have a proper semi-portable way to get the alleged netbook online, so I ended up doing all the things I said I'd do last time I talked about the Sylvania netbook.
I'd installed Chromium and WRP to the Pi, and now I can (painfully) attempt to browse the modern web with the netbook. I also set up VNC, but the VNC client on the CE device is still terribly slow.
I still end up using PocketIE via WebOne for most browsing on the thing, just because it's way faster than WRP, even if everything is some degree of broken.

I also added a soft shutdown button to the Pi since it's headless, entirely dependent on the netbook (or other network device) for user interaction. <https://www.circuitbasics.com/using-a-switch-to-startup-and-shutdown-the-raspberry-pi/>
You basically just add "dtoverlay=gpio-shutdown" to your /boot/config.txt and wire in a switch -- this does use one of the I2C pins, which is why it's not on by default.
Used an old external PC power button I had so I didn't need to carry a paperclip or something to power the unit off cleanly without SSHing in. It also turns the machine back on if you press it after shutting down if the machine is still plugged in.
It's a cheap piece of garbage and sticks, but a: it looks cool, and b: it doesn't need to be super reliable or anything since 90% of the time, I will just be able to SSH in and shut down properly.

Feels good. I did this whole thing with the Pi 4 because of the CE netbook, but now pretty much any ethernet-bound device I have (admittedly, not many) is now set to go online by just plugging in a cable.

I also have a semi-permanent repair going on with my LG Phenom's busted power port. I managed to use the original plug, so I don't yet need to go and solder in another cable. Only two of the pins are connected in the plug right now, however, and it's definitely a bit scrappy looking with the screw capped together wires.
I do have a set of replacement barrel jack plugs and sockets now, so if this situation ever fails, I'll just completely remove the port and replace it, along with the connector on the end of the power adapter. I'm still pretty sure I'm losing functionality because two of the pins will remain unplugged, but again, I don't ever expect to find a battery pack in usable condition for this unit.
I'd also opened the unit up to do some exploratory research -- did you know that the CPU is immediately under the PCMCIA slot and separated by a (very thin) piece of hard plastic tape? You need to pull that bit up to uncover some hidden screws that keep you from seeing the underside of the board and getting to where the power port is soldered in, bleh. The CF card slot has a similar hard plastic tape insulation keeping you from hitting the board with the card.
Disassembling and reassembling the unit was awful, but I managed. There's also like no free space on the board, they made the unit as small as they possibly could have, lol.

Edited by null1024 2022-10-24 2:27 AM

The Phenom's power adapter is finally 100% dead.
Was about to go to sleep last night, I noticed that the power icon had disappeared, then ended up getting out of bed, pulling out my multimeter, and checking it out.
No current from the wires at all. Was working one minute, then nothing. Thought something had simply shorted out around the hacked together plug end, nope. Got a chance to really poke around this evening, and she's dead. Not stone dead, as she does light up when plugged in, which looks like the unit could possibly still work, but it's definitely above my ability to fix.
Ordered a generic DC power adapter and a buck converter so I can dial in the voltage properly since most adapters are like 3v (might work as-is, might not, I've measured 3.3v out of a lot of 3v jacks before) or 4.5v (likely too much), and the unit wants 3.4v. Gonna step down like 7.5v or so from the generic dial-a-voltage adapter, since it said to give a 3v bit of headroom when dialing down.

I'm also going to replace the power port with a barrel jack to go with my entirely custom power adapter thing and hopefully not break my H/PC in the process, because again, I'm no EE guy, I did programming when I was in school.
In the meantime, it's stuck on batteries and thus very slow.

Alas. Really has put the kibosh on me playing around with the unit as much as I'd like for now.

Spent a ton of time trying to remove the power port on the Phenom's motherboard so I could put the barrel jack cable in.
A: I didn't manage, but also B: honestly, I didn't have enough room to do what I wanted anyway.
I ended up putting the thing back together, taking some female dupont wires, plugging them in to pins 1 and 3, filling in the port with sugru (it's like a soft glue epoxy-like thing) so the wires didn't come out, and then attaching a barrel jack connector to those wires. It's a disgusting hackjob of a solution, but I'm out of options.

As for the broken power adapter, building a new one was really easy, and I might just buy a little project box so it looks nicer.
I grabbed a generic adjustable power supply, set it to 7.5v (you need to be at least 3v higher than what you're outputting, so that was the closest setting), wired up a barrel jack port and connector to a buck converter, and then dialed in the adjustment screw on the converter until it output 3.6v.
The nicest bit is, even if the Phenom just dies and I have to give this whole thing up as a bad job, I can dial the converter to output 5v, attach a USB plug end to it, and now I have a USB charger that can put out a decent amount of amps (since the buck converter shifts excess voltage to amperage).

Now I just have to restore the internal RAM data from backup and I can get back to enjoying the device.

I ran into this post on Reddit with a user turning their Sharp HC-4500 into a camera with the PCMCIA card..

The photos are retro looking and seem pretty cool

https://imgur.com/gallery/2xIAvml

May want to try this idea!
I can't believe how great the condition is of the Sharp device they have!

Oh yes, those digital cameras that are PCMCIA!

I never tried them, but it looks very retro and nice.

The pictures taken by them indeed reminds me of the 2000's digital camera lol. (taken in 640x480 or smaller)

-stingraze

Hey, I'm new here. I'm Wiktor, I'm 18, and I have an Argox PT-90. I was looking for some games to put on it

Hi. Welcome to HPC:Factor. You’re in the right place!
We have an SCL - basically our version of a free App Store for your device.
I believe you’ll need to look for anything that says it’s for an “ARM” or “Xscale” processor, which is what I believe your device is.
A lot of the games should have screenshots so you have an idea of what they look like before you download them. Another idea is maybe you’ll enjoy some of those video game system emulators which are also available.

https://www.hpcfactor.com/scl/categories.asp

Also see this page on howto install programs

https://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/200267/understanding_the_diff...

Oh, thanks. I was wondering why some of the executables on the internet were win32 executables, and the second link explained it to me.

What kind of games do you like? I can try and recommend a few.

I have no idea. I know nothing about games because I don't play any except minecraft, and some RPG games. I'll be looking for anything that runs on Windows Embedded CE 6.0 on this site

Hmm try
https://www.hpcfactor.com/scl/432/NetHack_DevTeam/Nethack/version_3....
And
https://www.hpcfactor.com/scl/976/RedShift_Software/The_Quest/versio...