My first EVER flat battery and the symptoms that came with it (C224e)

**EarthKmTech** · 04-01-2020

First ever flat battery on any km device today.

Customer complaint was:

Machine keeps throwing errors, asking to recover data and then asking to be restarted. Does the same thing on each recovery / restart

Customer followed the on screen prompts and did so, the 3 errors being displayed one after the other after each restart were: D363, D320 & D31A

I come to site and say, holy shit, never seen this before - I'll start with a FW reload.

With the new firmware loaded the error code was D390, recover data, restart does the same thing.

Noticed clock was back to 2007.

You also cannot enter service mode - on the first attempt "access denied due to unauthorized access, this authentication is invalid now"

pulled the back cover and noticed the battery leaking, pullled out volt meter and sure enough, zero volts.

We are not allowed to do component level repairs so a new mfp was installed, the usual stuff done, machine type select, load firmware, recover data and away it went. (with some minor config done once working)

Hope this helps someone - it it happened to me it will happen to someone else. Machine 4.5 years old.

battery.pdf

**allan** · 04-01-2020

Good find.
Keep the board replace the battery and sell it. Worth a penny or two.

**tsbservice** · 04-01-2020

Great post, keep enlightenment.

**emujo2** · 04-01-2020

I have an alarm clock powered by the same battery. It has lasted 9-10 years..And BTW. The C364e has got to be at least 10 yrs old. E

**blackcat4866** · 04-01-2020

Back in my Mita days it became very common after 7 to 10 years to see a blinking PM indicator (The PM indicator is just on or off, never blinking). If you put your meter on the backup battery then shut off the power it should gradually sag from 5.0vdc (logic level voltage to charge the battery) to 3.3vdc. On the worst machines it would instantaneously drop from 5.0 to 0.2vdc. Every model was different, so I never really tried to exactly match the battery type. I'd just find any 3.3vdc lithium ion battery with leads attached, solder it to the board, then find a place to hide it or zip tie it to the board. Early analog machines didn't have clocks or any digital settings. Lamp, high voltage, and heater settings were done by VR, so only the PM counters were lost.

On the Panasonic faxes the replacement boards either came without a battery, or it was insulated with mylar. I can't remember what the exact symptoms were but I did quite a bit of head scratching, figuring that out.

=^..^=

**EarthKmTech** · 04-02-2020

Originally Posted by emujo2

I have an alarm clock powered by the same battery. It has lasted 9-10 years..And BTW. The C364e has got to be at least 10 yrs old. E

Machine was sold new in November 2015 so absolutely NOT 10 years of age. We have a hard limit of 7 years before forced contract discontinuation. Though mistakes happen some times, like in January when I went to machine 9 years under contract that flew under the radar because it needed 3 service calls in that time. BH423.

**CompyTech** · 04-02-2020

Had the same thing happen not too long ago. The data corrupted ended up losing all settings and counters, only thing stayed was the consumable life counters.

**emujo2** · 04-02-2020

Originally Posted by EarthKmTech

Machine was sold new in November 2015 so absolutely NOT 10 years of age. We have a hard limit of 7 years before forced contract discontinuation. Though mistakes happen some times, like in January when I went to machine 9 years under contract that flew under the radar because it needed 3 service calls in that time. BH423.

You are correct..C364e was released early 2013..8 years old..Just seems like 10 years..similar to marriage...lol

**blackcat4866** · 04-02-2020

I can't can't remember the model ... maybe a Mita DC313Z ... the customer had it on a 20A timer to come on and off for the business day, leaving the backup battery to work from 1700 to 0800 the next day, 15 hours every day. I ended up replacing that battery, and warning them that the power supply would not tolerate the shock of getting flipped off by the timer.

The only reason I knew about the timer was that I ran a little late on the call. While running the last few test pages the timer flipped off in the middle of my operations. It was kind-of a shock to have the machine die on me in the middle of a copy. =^..^=