Major Problems with iHP120

[iammemnoc1]

So I've had my iriver for a while now (couple years) and have been using rockbox for about 5 months and love it. Not to long ago, I was looking for an alternate adapter for the player and ended up using a Nokia one with 3.7v, .35A and correct polarity (looking back, it was a pretty stupid move). Anyway, i used that to transfer some files and stuff, but didn't use it after that. I started using my regular adapter which I had found and that's when problems started.

For a while it would turn on, but the screen would be scrambled and it would take minutes for the any action to occur (not that i could tell what was going on with the scrambled screen). Eventually, it got to where the only way I can turn on the player is by pressing the reset button, which brings up the logo and stops (no hard drive activity). If i hold play and push the reset button, it goes into the Rockbox boot loader and i get the following:

Rockbox boot loader
Version 6
Batt: 4.23V
Loading firmware
Length: 507EC
Checksum: 1962B7A
Model name:h120
Sum: 1962B7A
Result: 0

and it freezes here. If USB is plugged in and i turn it on the same way I get access to the harddrive so i can drop different rockbox versions in (or format or whatever). I even tried taking the battery out and running it, but that doesn't change anything. I'm pretty stumped.

[Dunno]

you aren't the first to fry your player by using an incorrect charger, those nokia chargers are bad news for iriver H series players. There's a whole thread here about fried players.

not much you can do except try and source a working board from somehwere, not many of those around now.

[Dommo]

My brother's really lucky, when he practically just had his iriver, we went to our uncles house, a couple of hours away, and he'd forgotten to charge his iriver. He charged it up at my uncles house though... With a Nokia charger! Luckily it's fine...

[iammemnoc1]

I assumed that since it still actually turned on and could still go into usb mode that there was a chance of salvaging it somehow. Does anybody know what, if anything, that boot message indicates? Additionally, I should mention that I've opened it and couldn't see any physical damage on the capacitors (suggested in another thread) which gave me a tiny bit of hope. Is there anywhere else to look?

[HorstIriver]

3.7V and 0.35A is not enough power to load the battery and to supply the iriver. Especially when it turns on the hard drive, it will draw more than 0.35A. I assume it is a stabilized power supply with an electronical current limiter. Those power supplies sometimes have nasty characteristics when you overload them. First they detect overcurrent, they limit the current, and as a consequence, the output voltage drops as well. Because that reduces the current as well, the current will somewhen drop below the critical value of 0.35A. The power supply realizes that the current is OK now, but the voltage is way too low. The power supply increases the output voltage as fast as it can, and often an overshoot is the result, exceeding the specified output voltage. The worst case scenario is an oscillation between those two states: overcurrent and undervoltage. The output voltage looks like a sawtooth voltage, with a large overshoot, slowly frying the most sensitive parts first. The manufacturer of the power supply will tell you that the overcurrent protection has been designed to prevent fire or damage of the power supply - but not to save an inappropriate load, drawing too high a current. In your case, the scrambled screen shows that something with the processor or its environment is wrong, maybe slightly fried, and unfortunately those problems are the most diffcult to solve. No way to do it yourself.

[Llorean]

That boot message means "Everything that Rockbox cares about with regard to booting is fine: We found the file, it has the right checksum, and we've succesfully opened the file on the disk."

[iammemnoc1]

Crud. Well, thanks guys.. I sorta suspected something pretty bad had happened. The crappy part is I know better than to mix power supplies but I took a calculated risk (and forgot to carry the one, so to speak). Anyway, looks like I'm going to be in the market for a new player - thanks for all the help.