Used ipod & battery life.

[iLee]

Hello.
First post I guess.

Well, I own a 1G mini which I bought second hand from a friend and replaced the battery myself, no problems there.

Cut forward 6 or 7 months to the present date...
An instructor (teacher) at school is going to sell me his mini which has a presumed dead battery. He let me take it home first to verify that it IS the battery, and I'm getting some weird symptoms from the ipod.

Anyway, to make a short story long,
I first verified that it wasn't the click wheel that was kapoot by plugging the ipod in to my Powerbook, waiting until it mounted (eg; turned on), and then navigated around the iPod.
Worked as normal. After dismounting and unplugging, the iPod immediately dies. Okay.

I took apart both ipod's, to swap batteries (My new battery with his presumed non-working battery). I fiddle around with the dead (we'll call it the Green ipod, because its green) ipod with the case open (so I don't have to close everything up) and plug in the new(er), mostly charged battery, connect the click wheel and press the click wheel a few times to boot up the Green Ipod.
The ipod doesn't boot up.
Strange, it would mount before even with the dead battery to my powerbook, so I mount it via firewire, and the ipod mounts. I dismount the ipod, and disconnect the firewire, and the ipod seems to be behaving normally.
It will play music, etc, etc.
I put the ipod to sleep (by holding the play button), wait until it falls to sleep, and then wake it up again.
So its behaving as normally, except I'm perturbed by this lack of initial wake up. I disconnect the battery, and reconnect, and the same thing occurs.
(I checked on my working mini [blue], on my mini when I connect the charged battery it will wake up without requiring to be mounted first).

So after testing a few more times with the charged battery by unplugging + replugging it back in, the ipod tells me that the battery is uncharged.

I plugged the battery back into my Blue mini and it told me the battery was dead, but after about 5 minutes of charging it went back to 1/3 full.

Now even when I connect the green ipod to my laptop (using a wall adapter on my laptop), it won't mount, it just displays the battery with the warning symbol (and will occasionally flash the warning symbol, as if its about to boot up but then stops, maybe?)
(also, at this point the old battery is back in the green ipod. But it mounted before, why wouldn't it now?)


So, a few questions:

Does constantly plugging and unplugging a battery cause it to go from half full to the "plug your ipod in"?

Or maybe the ipod is somehow draining energy super quickly?


One more thing to note, this green ipod charges hotter than any ipod I've seen.
It gets about as hot as my phone when its charging, so I would ordinarily not be too concerned, if not for the fact that my blue pod charges cold as ice.



Has anyone seen symptoms like this before?
Is this just a case of a dead battery or is something else to blame here?

He's asking CAD$50 for it... what should I do from here?

Someone give me some advice/suggestions/technical knowledge.

 

[symphonix]

plug in the new(er), mostly charged battery...The ipod doesn't boot up.

except I'm perturbed by this lack of initial wake up. I disconnect the battery, and reconnect, and the same thing occurs.

The iPod has a power management system that needs to work out a minimum and maximum charge for the battery. When you first connect a new battery, the PMU detects a power level but doesn't really know if this is full, empty, or somewhere in between.

While it is connected to external power and charging, the PMU monitors the power level of the battery. The highest point reached is calibrated as 100%, and when the power level is no longer enough to drive the iPod features (except PMU and clock) it logs that power level as 0%.

Only after a full charge/run/discharge/charge-again cycle does the PMU have any accurate idea of the power levels in the battery and the power levels required to run the iPod. Disconnecting the battery resets the PMU completely.

That is why I'd say that yes, it is a dead battery causing the problem. The other problems you are seeing are just normal side-effects of swapping the battery.

One more thing to note, this green ipod charges hotter than any ipod I've seen.

Again, once you've installed a new battery and gone through a few charge/discharge cycles the PMU should regulate charging more accurately and it should be normal again.

 

[iLee]

Ahh!
I had a feeling it was something like this.
(eg; the fact that the green ipod has been dead for so long some kind of internals are completely dead).

But you say when the battery is unplugged the pmu restarts completely.
If this was the case, wouldn't my blue ipod fail to boot up when the new battery was plugged in as well?