My EA-BL06 had been in almost constant use since August 2005, since I always leave my Collie plugged into it's AC adapter. And, there were signs it might be losing the ability to charge. For over a year, the charging light would occasionally turn on for no apparent reason and that was happening a lot the last couple of months.
So, when I could not turn my Zaurus on one morning, I was not very surprised. Fortunately, I had been making weekly backups and I had two brand new batteries in unopened boxes, waiting to be called into service. So, I looked at my manuals, opened up one of the boxes, and replaced the old battery with one of the new ones. I plugged the AC adapter back in to the wall socket. And...oh, no! The charging light did not come on. Panic. Is it my Zaurus? Is it a bad battery? Is the AC adapter or cord broken?
I suppose that I should have immediately tried the other new battery instead. But, it was first thing in the morning and I was in a hurry. I had other things I needed to be doing. So, since my only email access is via my Zaurus, I phoned a friend and asked him to send an email to another sl5500 user for me, who has more hardware experience than I do, asking him if this was normal experience for a new battery. He said, "Maybe."
So, although I knew from my own experience that the charging light should come on the moment a battery is receiving power, silly me waited the 24 hours dictated by the instructions in the sl5500 manual before I faithfully tried turning my Zaurus on, and nothing happened.
Uhm, oh no, that did not work. Now what do I do? First, I decided to make labels for the three different batteries to keep from getting confused about which one was which, "OLD", "NEW1" and "NEW2." Then I double checked my AC adapter again, turning it on and off, and then changed batteries, putting in the one labelled "NEW2", and the charging light came on immediately. My Zaurus was saved! Hurray!
I think that, even thought it was brand new, maybe it was just a bad battery, although I am not sure because, in the frenzy, I do not know if I followed all the steps properly the first time. My friend had suggested that I remove all expansion cards and perform a hard reset, which I may not have done the first time.
And, after much more experimentation, I am not sure it was the battery at all, it may have been a broken AC adapter plug or malfunctioning connector inside my Zaurus. The only way to know for sure about the batteries themselves would be to remove my current working battery and try recharging one of the other ones again, and I have not been brave enough to do that. I liked having a working Collie too much.
And, except for the charging light coming on and going off occasionally for no reason, my Collie worked quite well for about a month. But then, one day when I was using Opera browser online at gmail, the screen went totally black. The modem light stayed on but the screen went black. My Zaurus died.
Performing a soft reset did nothing again, so I removed my SD card and CF modem from the Zaurus, and turned off the power to the AC adapter, which I have plugged in to an On-Off switch at the wall. I opened up the battery compartment, pulled the battery out, and put it back in again and closed the lid. Then I turned the AC adapter back on and, a couple of seconds later, the charging light came back on. Whew! I was relieved, that was a close one!.
This time, the charging light turned off (i.e., stopped glowing) after a while, before it should have, and I do not recall, now, exactly how long it was before that happened, maybe an hour or so. What I do recall is that it did not stay consistently on, and that more was wrong than just an old battery, but I will save that saga for another post.
At this point, the one thing I did learn for sure is that if the Zaurus will not boot and the battery light will not come on when I try to use the AC adapter, the things to do are to remove all peripheral devices and cards, turn the AC adapter off or unplug it, remove and replace the battery in the battery compartment, and then plug the AC adapter back into the Zaurus.
Be forewarned that this is highly likely to result in most, if not all, files and data getting erased from internal memory on the sl5500, and your Zaurus will be taken back to original factory settings or the configuration it had when you last flashed a custom ROM onto it. So, if you are concerned about a dying battery and do not want to start setting up your Zaurus from scratch all over again, or have current data on internal memory that you do not want to lose, make sure you make frequent backups.
The sl5500 manual says to let the Zaurus charge a full 24 hours before using it, to ensure that the small backup battery also fully charges. If the charging light does not stay on that long or, if I recall correctly, at least 6-8 hours, then check the manual for your particular Zaurus. The battery may not be able to hold a full charge, or something else may be wrong with the battery or power supply.