Posted by el_steak on 10/31/06 17:50

My girlfriend has a Sandisk Digital Audio Player (SDMX1-512)
(http://tinyurl.com/7w9jq)

It went dead a few weeks ago. It would simply not power up, even when
using a fresh new battery. She would press the power button and nothing
would happen (no, the "HOLD" was not on;)

I opened it up to see if there wasn't anything obvious broken inside
but everything seemed to be fine ... except for the presence of a tiny
button-cell battery (the type you have in your watch) soldered to the
PCB board.

I checked the voltage of the tiny battery and sure enough it was near
dead (0.4 volt). I hooked up a regular 1.5volts battery to the (+) and
(-) of the button cell and bingo, the player came back to life.

After seeing that, I simply soldered 2 pieces of wire from the (+) and
(-) of the dead battery to the (+) and (-) of the main battery
terminals. The player works fine now.

I'm really puzzled as to what is the purpose of this battery. Is it
used for anything important in the player or is it just built to make
sure that once the battery is dead, you have to buy a new player?

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