Battery replacement - what did I do wrong?

[static____]

Misticriver, you mislead me!

After reading various threads and the battery replacement wiki, I was under the impression that battery replacement was something that was routine and easy. Not so!

I bought a 2200 mAh Cameron Sino battery from Liketysplit auctions on ebay, where others have recommended buying their battery. I thought that it was a drop in replacement, but when I finally I got the new battery in the player wouldn't turn on at all after install (ie no power).

Don't the batteries come charged, or at least with a little bit of charge? So that makes me think there is some other problem... I noticed that the red and black wires on the new battery are reversed from the old battery. Does this mean the battery has the wrong polarity (ie they sent me the wrong one or something?). Is there any danger in swapping the wires and trying it that way?

With some hesitation I tried plugging in the AC and the player did boot up (so I didn't wreck anything... yet), but the battery doesn't charge.

Any help would be appreciated because the connector on the old battery came apart when I was taking it out, so I can't even go back the way it was...

I'm really regretting the decision to upgrade right now.

[static____]

After posting this, I realized that I could check the polarity myself using a multimeter, and sure enough, the red was "hot" on both the old and the new batteries, but on the original h120 battery, red was the "left" wire, while on the new battery, red was the "right" wire. So that answers one question - reverse polarity doesn't hurt the h120 because I had it hooked up like that for 24 hours (at least I hope there are no long term effects).

So I swapped the wires in the molex (actually really easy to do... I don't know why everyone was so worked up about that) and then like a moron I hit play to see if it had power, and it did, and it turned on stuck in an error state because there was no HDD. So then I had to very carefully remove the power again, without touching anything else.

Anyways, if you take anything from this, CHECK your battery polarity first, don't just trust that it will be what they say it is. If you lack the tools / knowledge to check the polarity, don't swap the battery. I'm serious - I feel that the danger of bricking your player with this procedure has really been downplayed.

[Dunno]

The Cameroon Sino batteries advertised specifically for irivers DONT need the polarity reversed, the CS batteries advertised for the ipods DO need their polarity reversed if used in irivers, now I know that it is stated in several places that _YOU_ must check the polarity at ALL times, and RED is ALWAYS positive, all the time and everywhere, and common sense dictates that one should look at the old and do the same for new. I have personally replaced three of these batteries with no incident.

[jamato8]

Yeah, I have replaced about 4 or 5 and you must always check the pos and neg, well that is true of anything. At least you can service them. I am glad that different hard drives and batteries can be used. The 120 and 140 should have a very long life since unless you mess up the board, it should last a very long time as well.