Satnav Disassembly.

M

mosaix

Shropshire, U.K.
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Feb 13, 2006
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Shropshire, U.K.
Apparently, it's a common fault on the Tom Tom 910 for the rechargeable battery life to diminish dramatically after a year or two and my wife's was no exception.

Replacement batteries are available on the internet along with the torx screwdrivers to fit them.

Unfortunately it appears that the first thing that is fitted into the chassis is the battery and consequently it's that last thing to come out. First, off comes the casing, then out comes the GPS antenna board, then the main circuit board, then the hard disc, then the screen and finally the battery. Along the way there's a couple of wires and a couple of ribbon cables to disconnect.

Then the whole lot goes back in, in reverse order. About an hour and ten minutes in total.

The thing's on a 24 hour charge now, then everything should be good as new.

All credit to whoever designed the thing, packing so much into to such a confined space must have taken a good deal of thought.

Anyone else ever need to do the same, drop me a PM and I'll let you have all the details and a few hints to make the job easier.
 
A little additional information on this. After replacing the battery the unit seemed fine but periodically rebooted itself.

I suspected that there was some kind of software corruption and, as the unit came with a USB cable for software updates I connected it to my desktop and had a look round. Its hard disc seemed to have a standard file system structure so I backed it up to my computer, formatted the disc, restored from the backup and installed the latest application and map from Tom Tom's web site.

The unit seems as good as new, the battery lasts ages and the thing hasn't rebooted once since the disc reformat.
 
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Mosaix, I only wished you lived next door. You'd come in handy as I cant put a fuse in a 3-pin plug:eek:
 
Rechargable batteries are generally having that fault, eh ??
Battery life suddenly dramatically diminishes - you say after a year - yeah about that.
I can recharge the batteries, put them in a special case/not loading them as long as the camera isn't in use.
Then one day I load the camera thinking everything is taken care of - and THEN, do you know what that haughty bitch says ??
It got the nerve saying: "Recharge batteries".
May be better have a second carrier as rechargeable battery producer - then slowly dimish the time they can function according to their purpose - one year, 9 months - 6 months etc.
He-he - got it ??
 
Well done mosaix. They made it as difficult as possible and you defeated them!

On an unrelated note, the first time I updated my Tom Tom XL's software, it took over two hours. Anybody else have this problem? Or did Europe just get a hell of a lot of new roads between the manufacture of my XL and the first update?
 
Strange, Alc, yes it took about that amount of time to load a new map for me. On the other hand restoring the complete disk, including application, multiple maps, voices and preferences takes only ten to fifteen minutes.
 
Good to know it wasn't just me then. Battery life, eh? Sometimes I wonder if the manufacturers have no interest in developing longer lasting ones.
 
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