Ever-reliable charger won't boot

[gomimann]

 Old Reliable has its' first failure. My Xtrema's way over 3 years old and won't boot- 2 bars in the display. I have tried all the power and hard reboots others have used to get their's to boot in this forum's posts, and though my Xtrema updating app says I have a successful update, the charger remains unresponsive. The annoying event occurred when I charged up a half doz. 3 and 4 cell A123s, then switched to some 3 cell lipos. As I switched BAT types I ran the LCD back to  the opening screen and shut down the power supply, then powered up and got the 2 bars.

[tmenet]

Going by the symptoms you described it sounds like your update took but the two bars are caused by a defective LCD display module. This display module is a bit like your computer monitor. The processor may be booting up but you cannot do anything because you can't see the display working. My guess is that when you power the unit on you still hear the fan come on momentarily and then a beep. If you hear that then it is definitely a blown display module. Please send it back and we can repair it. If it has been under 3 years it is still under warranty. If not it should be under  $39 for the repair unless it is something else.

Al

[gomimann]

  Thanks for your reply.  Alas, no fan and no beeps- just the 2 bars, so it's probably something else.
  I've got a couple of quarter scale planes, with their higher wattage requirements batteries, nearing the point in building where you actually decide where these big packs go in the airframe and how readily they can be removed and charged in the field. Point is, I need to decide whether to get this "elderly" charger fixed or replace it with a newer, multi-port, integrated/"balance at the cycle's end"  charger. Prices for a given capability are little-higher ($2-300) than when I bought the Xtrema (with its slightly unwieldy balancing) so, given that I think "balancing" in general over-rated and only do it occasionally, the repair cost will be the deciding factor. If there's anything I can do to help you guess what that cost might be, I'll try it before I decide to send it in or not.

[tmenet]

If you hear no beep or fan but you can update the firmware with a sucessful confirmation then we are totally stumped. Generally the bootloader (the program that loads in the Xtrema code) survives everything since it is in a specially protected flash memory. Unless you are accidentally loading the balancer code into the xtema there is no explanation why it will not come up.

Please check our update videos and try again to make sure that something is not being loaded properly http://www.tmenet.com/support/updating-the-xtrema