XO-1 not charging, won't start up

[justin_in_nc]

I have an XO-1 laptop that I purchased through the G1G1 program, receiving it in Jan. 2008. It worked fine up until the last few weeks, when it suddenly stopped charging and won't start up. When plugged in, the battery indicator light does not come on. I took it to a local computer repair store, and they estimated it would cost $210 to fix, which obviously I won't be doing.

So I'm trying to figure out what my options are. I've done minor computer repairs in the past, but I'm not even sure where to start with this. Anyone have any advice as to how I should fix this? Or should I just try to sell it on eBay or somewhere else?

[culseg]

If you follow the steps for testing power on issues at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Troubleshooting_Guide you may find out if your XO has a problem with its internal battery that can best be fixed at one of the volunteer repair centers, see: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Directory_of_repair_centers

There may also be a problem with your main battery, see these pages for help:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Troubleshooting_Battery

Though unlikely, if you had never updated your XO you may have a problem with its internal clock...you can read more about fix that by entering 'fix clock' in search bar above, or best contact one of the volunteer repair centers.

If fixing your XO is not what you want to do, you could find a place to donate it, see:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Donate_Your_Get_One

[justin_in_nc]

I was unable to get it working again, so I've listed it on eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180436259282&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT#ht_500wt_1171.

It was a nice little machine, but I don't have the technical expertise to repair it, nor do I want to spend any money getting it fixed.

[ncarrol]

I hope to be the highest bidder.

Want to test a theory: replace the RTC battery and wait 30 days for the clock to roll over.

Will send it back to you if it all works out (only at your request ,of course, and at cost).

There seems to be a number of XO's reporting this failure mode of late.

[ncarrol]

I did not have the winning bid, but I obtained another XO with a very loose battery holder.

Waiting 31 days will not yield a bootable XO. TOO bad

I set up a test arrangement using Sparkfun (sparkfun.com) USB to serial breakout board (BOB-00718) and a three wire null modem cable (do not connect XO 3.3 volt pin -- power supplied from USB). Used a second XO with YUM install of minicom ( see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Serial_adapters and http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Fix_Clock ). All the drivers are included in the XO linux kernel. The only additional setup from the links is to change the configuration of flow control to software (YES) and hardware (NO).

I set times to a few minutes below roll over time with days 28, 30, or 31 (month 00) and waited well beyond what should have been roll over time to month 1. The "bricked" XO would never boot. Simply changing the month to 01 (and all other to 00) was sufficient to get booting (does display "time error" message, but time can be set using the linux "date" command).

I do not have documentation for the RTC circuit, but it appears that a month value of 00 is an undefined state or defines another counting modulus.

As a side bar, the driver ttyUSB0 is recreated in /dev on each boot of the XO used as a terminal, so if the breakout board is not wired correctly (my mistake of hooking up 3.3 volt pin), the driver never appears in /dev. Also, you can see the breakout board as device "fdti_sio" by using the linux command : lsmod on the XO used as a terminal.

[SallyLap]

If you follow the steps for testing power on issues at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Troubleshooting_Guide you may find out if your XO has a problem with its internal battery that can best be fixed at one of the volunteer repair centers, see: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Directory_of_repair_centers

There may also be a problem with your main battery, see these pages for help:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Troubleshooting_Battery

Though unlikely, if you had never updated your XO you may have a problem with its internal clock...you can read more about fix that by entering 'fix clock' in search bar above, or best contact one of the volunteer repair centers.

If fixing your XO is not what you want to do, you could find a place to donate it, see:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Donate_Your_Get_One

Hey, guys! I know this is an older topic, but I was having many of the same issues with my laptop. Luckily, the troubleshooting battery link you provided did the trick -- so I thought I'd come on here and personally thank you guys for helping me out. These laptops are really wonderful and they've helped my son with his education. I was so worried that his laptop would be out of commission.

In case this type of incident occurs again and it's un-fixable, is there another place that sells education laptops? How about hh gregg? Do they have anything available in terms of pc's and laptops for educational purposes? Thanks, folks! =)