Posted by Arny Krueger on 10/31/06 23:00

"el_steak" <beaurm@videotron.ca> wrote in message
news:1162317031.283955.45660@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com
> 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?

The itty bitty battery is probably there to keep some circuitry running when
you pull the main battery. It probably failed very prematurely.

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