I have just joined this community, maybe I should post a short introduction. I have studied communications engineering, and I have worked for IBM for 28 years as hardware design engineer. My hobbies are, in addition to the IHP-120 of course
, shortwave listening and building electronics for it. I play the cello, and I am mainly interested in classical music, but not only. I have read that it has happened to some people that they connected an 'inappropriate' charger and killed the IHP-xxx. After that, the IHP normally doesn't do anything anymore, and I am sure many of them were discarded. However, there is a chance to repair those units, provided one knows how to handle a very thin solder iron, and how to replace SMD components. And you will need some luck, there is no warranty that it will always work.
In order to keep the supply voltage clean, free of digital noise etc., the supply voltage of any mp3 player is buffered by tantalum capacitors on the board. Small black cubes of 2-3mm size, one side marked with a white bar. Because they are the smallest and cheapest, and because the iriver is a 5V-device. they will have used 6.3V types, or even 5.5V types. If the voltage exceeds 5.5 or 6.3V only slightly, those caps turn into a solid piece of wire, shorting the supply voltage to ground, and the current limiter of the iriver avoids explosions or fire hazards. The Iriver seems to be completele dead. The good thing is: Those caps will most probably die before the voltage gets high enough to damage the irreplaceable parts. That is why the harddisk often is not killed although it is supplied by the same voltage.
If I had a fried Iriver, I'd remove those caps, one at a time, and check if the iriver starts. It will work to some extent without those caps, maybe faulty, but one should see an improvement. After having removed the last cap that shorted the supply voltage, one can replace them, they are cheap and easy to get. Important: When removing the caps, write down the position of the white bar. Those caps are polarized, soldering them into the board the wrong way will kill them immediately after power-on.
Maybe some will try it... if the iriver is fried anyways, you can't make it worse, and 200$ are probably worth a few hours of tinkering
