A neighbor dropped off an ancient (antique? the thing must way 2 pounds!!)) Visio VTAB1008 for me to look at. After a day on the charger, it's stuck in an endless reboot loop (can't tell it NOT to try to turn on and to, instead, just charge battery!).
I can divert it to recovery mode which seems like it is stable enough that I could leave the tablet waiting for input for hours without a problem. I've wiped cache and separately restored factory settings (haven't, yet, tried to reinstall an image from a uSD card).
When charger is disconnected, I just get a momentary flash of the softkeys before it shutsdown.
Summarizing:
While its possible there's something corrupted in the boot image (that doesn't affect the recovery mode), I suspect that the real problem here is a toasted battery? The fact that it won't start on battery -- coupled with the fact that it RESTARTS endlessly when supplementally powered (by the charger) seems to suggest this.
I doubt friend is going to be keen on buying a new battery for such an old device.
OTOH, I'm wondering if it will have any value to *me* (when he opts to discard it) without purchasing a battery. I.e., can I hack together a "battery eliminator" and live without the battery (for a desktop appliance permanently wired to the mains)?
[One would have hoped that the charger would be sufficient to allow it to operate with a bad battery
]
I can divert it to recovery mode which seems like it is stable enough that I could leave the tablet waiting for input for hours without a problem. I've wiped cache and separately restored factory settings (haven't, yet, tried to reinstall an image from a uSD card).
When charger is disconnected, I just get a momentary flash of the softkeys before it shutsdown.
Summarizing:
- - on charger, endless boot loops that look like they are TRYING to succeed (Vizio logo, softkeys illuminate but the reboot happens almost immediately)
- - on charger, recovery mode appears to work but attempts to reboot lead to the above problem
- - on battery, brief flicker of softkeys (no Vizio logo!)
While its possible there's something corrupted in the boot image (that doesn't affect the recovery mode), I suspect that the real problem here is a toasted battery? The fact that it won't start on battery -- coupled with the fact that it RESTARTS endlessly when supplementally powered (by the charger) seems to suggest this.
I doubt friend is going to be keen on buying a new battery for such an old device.
OTOH, I'm wondering if it will have any value to *me* (when he opts to discard it) without purchasing a battery. I.e., can I hack together a "battery eliminator" and live without the battery (for a desktop appliance permanently wired to the mains)?
[One would have hoped that the charger would be sufficient to allow it to operate with a bad battery
]
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