Wayward power NH900

[sfbp]

Well, I thought I had better write this one up properly.

In another thread I noted that I purchased a MINT MZ-NH900 that the guy had clearly never used. The gumstick battery only worked after a lot of persuasion (cleaning of contacts), and then it would power up for 1 minute or 2 and then rapidly report "LOW BATTERY".

Funny, because:

a. the gumstick was still fully charged as reported by its ability to play in other unit(s), and the short length of time it took for the GP charger to restore it to "green light" state (ie charged) after reinsertion in the charger

b. the power seemed to be fine when running on 3VDC charger, or USB, or sidecar battery case with (even) NiMH AA battery.

If 'twere not for b. I might have thought that some setting in the NVRAM needed to be changed, to "allow" it to recognise the current from the battery. But the machine was mint after all. After trying various things (including recording for 8 hours straight to see if the machine simply needed to be burned in), I eventually concluded that the source of the problem must be a simple resistive drop at the contacts to the +ve of the battery.

Thinking "here goes nothing" I took out the battery, and opened the battery door, and applied intense heat from the soldering iron, to those contacts with the idea that perhaps it might burn off what ever was increasing the resistance.

BINGO! I now have a perfectly working, "brand new" MZ-NH900.

Just thought you'd like to know about this trick.

Stephen