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There were a number of
problems with my jukebox and I think I have now sorted them all out.
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Fault 1
Broken / dry solder joints holding the circuit board to the metal lugs on the back casing. This has happened to a JB6000 I had also and I fixed it the same way. Come on Archos, do you really expect these solder joints to hold the PCB in place adequately? These problems are easy to spot if you apply gentle pressure to the circuit board next to each of the lugs using your finger or flat head screwdriver, you will see the board come away from the solder joint and daylight between. There is obviously a voltage drop when these lugs separate if you squeeze the casing when the MMJB is running, and the MMJB turns off. The answer is to resolder these lugs firmly to ensure good contact. (I also used a spot of superglue, if anyone thinks this is or isn't a good idea then please tell me!) |
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Fault 2
Battery contacts This is incredible! Look at the picture to the side and spot the deliberate mistake? I've zoomed in a bit on the next pic. Some Muppet at the factory either bent the battery contact too far in or not far enough out for it to reach the second cell of the battery pack. So my MMJB was running on one cell all the time! You can see that the battery rests on the Line Out (Headphone) socket when it is fully pushed in and doesn't reach the contact! Absolutely amazing, couldn't believe it. So I bent the contact back into place and cleaned the contacts with some degreasing multisurface cleaner diluted with a bit of water and a cotton bud. I'm not sure what the little contact in the middle is for but I cleaned it anyway! (I think it is just to isolate the PCB from the battery as there is no corresponding contact on the battery itself) This little fix solved the Spin-up of the hard drive issue and the battery life problem It was a bit annoying really as this sort of thing should have been picked up at the factory in QA/QC and Archos should have repaired it under warranty, but hey ho. I think this might be fixable without pulling the jukebox apart with a bit of wire, a torch and some patience, if anyone tries it and it works then please let me know.
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Fault 3
Earthing & Grounding of IC components / Battery and connectors. The battery had some of the foil coming off and the insulators at the positive end had come away. I don't know how critical this is but I glued them on again. I think the battery is covered in the silver foil to insulate it from the PCB but the foil doesn't reach all the way up to the metal casings at the negative end of the battery so it would be best to try and improve the insulation. Tape might work but it seems a bit thick so I used a very Heath-Robinson technique of wrapping it up in plastic cling film. I figured that if it didn't work I could always take the battery out again and try something else, but it seems to be OK. This solve a particular problem of the Jukebox turning off if you pressed it at the top near the battery cover. I think it was grounding at the edge of the battery casing against the edge of the circuit board near the small screw we removed to get the plastic case off. Hard drive earthing I wasn't happy with the very thin clear plastic insulating the hard drive from the metal casing so I covered it with Insulation tape on one side. And also over over the top edge, the bottom pic shows the drive before. Be careful not to cover the hole which says "Do Not Cover" Bottom edge of the PCB This looked a bit dodgy so a bit more insulation tape covered the exposed connections which could earth against the metal casing. (Might be a bit of over-kill but I'm not taking the thing apart again!) With Hindsight I might even have used more insulation tape at the long edges of the circuit board and the top (Basically anywhere the board or components might earth against the case. These things seemed to fix all my problems so all there is left is to put it back together again!
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