The purpose of this updated post is to help avoid initial problems out of the box right at the onset of the original installation of the NiMh pack in the Pronto and/or to provide a detailed background and factual basis for de-bugging an installation already completed that has gone south on you.
I am recommending the very first step you take with a new NiMh pack is to take an eraser and clean the two outter flat nickel surfaces. It appears that somewhere in the manufacturing process in France or some kind of inter action between that surface and the plastic bag, an invisible film coating builds up on those two surfaces and acts as an insulator.
The Pronto takes power from those two contact points and the NiMh gets charged via the two gold/copper colored points. So, you can have a fully charged NiMh pack but a flashing low battery warning on the Pronto. In the past people have removed and re-inserted the NiMh and that appeared to bring it back, but the problem would re-occur.
I believe that this is due to the fact that re-inserting the NiMh causing a thin line scrape from the contact in the Pronto battery bay that gets through the coating. Therefore it works, but any slight shifting in use makes the problem raise its head again.
The above advisory aside, it is most important when intially installing the NiMh pack, do NOT have the bottom inside edge of the NiMh pack touching the bottom of the tray in the Pronto until after you have almost completely swung in the NiMh pack per the following.
Align the four springs so that they are seated in the indentations in the NiMh pack and without the bottom edge of the NiMh toughing the bottom of the battery bay, push downward on the NiMh pack against the springs, this may take some pressure, and rotate the it straight in toward the Pronto battery bay.
Once the NiMh pack is perfectly parallel and in position, if you slowly release the downward pressure on the springs, the NiMh pak will move toward the contacts along the upper edge of the battery bay and the center plastic tab will be in perfect alignment.
At that point you may have to push down on the large outter surface of the NiMh pack to fully seat it into the battery bay depending on how you handled the prior step, but you should not have the problem of mis-aligning/bending the small contacts since they should already be in alignment.
Using the above method you will not chance scraping the lower/upper inside edge of the NiMh pack on the contacts in the area of the upper edge of the battery bay, but actually wind up applying the intial pressure with a vertical motion as opposed to a downward motion.
This is a LOT harder to write than do. So, I hope you all get the picture.
You may also hear a snap/click as the as the upper plastic tab on the NiMh battery fits into the bay, but it should not be the "scraping" sound that some have described.
If you get scraping, there is a good chance that the upper edge of the NiMh pack was too high too early with respect to the distance from the springs due to insufficient downward pressure placed on the springs, and you will most likely then have the problems that people are describing.
This is due to the fact that a mis-alignment seems to be created if the "swing in pivot point" is too low. That mis-alignment will then cause undo pressure and scrapping against the contact points in the Pronto battery bay on the opposite side of the springs.
The presence of the s/n tag should not have anything to do with this issue as has been mention in some other posts.
Some additional intelligence:
A flashing led is indicative of three conditions. A bad NiMh, highly unlikely if a new one or less than a couple of years old, too high a temperature, or a mis-aligned NiMh in the battery bay.
The voltages across the four gold/copper contact points on the DS1000 itself are from left to right: _prox_ 16.7/- ref/+5.0/+.5 (I will edit that more precisely in a little bit)
The term stabilized on the transformer refers to the plug construction and not the voltage output which states 12vdc but meters at prox 16.7 with no load.
There are two different transformers. A 12vdc 700ma unit branded MEI and a 400ma unit branded with Philips name. The 700ma unit appears to only be used by Philips when they are out of the 400ma units. However, the label on the bottom of the DS1000 state 12vdc 700ma.
Last, I rarely see a truely "bad" DS1000. It's a prox .004 percent occurance and yes, it does happen, but it's normally a question of proper fit/installation/clean surface initially.
-Bruce
alpha2data
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This message was edited by alpha2data on 02/09/02 12:37.35.
