120GB Rio Karma - Riovolution

gomtuu

2009-02-11, 17:50 #1

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Subject: 120GB Rio Karma

Here it is, folks!

See these threads for backstory:
http://www.riovolution.org/thread/850
http://www.riovolution.org/thread/1030

My Toshiba MK1214GAH arrived today. I plugged it in, and it worked!

All I have to do now is replace the battery, maybe shave a little off the back of the case, and close it back up.

The annoying part now is the battery. As you can see in this photo, I thought I was very clever splicing the old battery's wires to the new battery's wires (with a little solder to hold them together). However, while I was testing different hard drives, I had to keep moving the battery around and the red wire eventually broke right at the solder point on the daughterboard. And in any case, the spliced-together wires were too long and didn't fit in the case. So now I have to get serious about soldering the wires to the daughterboard.

More pics when I have them.

Thanks to M0tah, Peter, and John30_06 for making this possible!

This post was edited 2 times, last on 2009-02-12, 05:34 by gomtuu.

John30_06 2009-02-12, 05:17 #2

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Major props. That kicks ass severely.

faichiu 2009-02-12, 08:51 #3

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can the hard disk + battery fit perfectly without modification to the case?

M0tah 2009-02-12, 12:43 #4

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Very nice work! I've added it to the list of successful modifications.

Quote by gomtuu:
However, while I was testing different hard drives, I had to keep moving the battery around and the red wire eventually broke right at the solder point on the daughterboard.

This actually happened to me as well. It wasn't very hard to resolder the wire though.

gomtuu

2009-02-12, 13:48 #5

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Quote by faichiu:
can the hard disk + battery fit perfectly without modification to the case?

I'm not 100% sure yet. I don't think the adapter adds any thickness to the case (just the thickness of the ZIF cable itself, which is <1mm), so it's just the battery and the 8mm drive. Since the original drive was 7mm, there's not a big difference in the overall thickness.

My case is unmodified right now. I've tried fitting the case together with the 60GB drive (also 8mm) in it, but I haven't tried it with the 120GB drive yet. When I tried with the 60GB drive, it did fit, but it was tight. I think I had to press kinda hard to get the screw holes near the thumb wheel to meet. So I might shave off a bit of the rectangular ridge on the back of the case.

Quote by M0tah:
It wasn't very hard to resolder the wire though.

Lucky you! I'm not very good at soldering, so I still don't have it working. If you look at the photo above, you'll notice that I had the battery wire wrapped around a staple that I soldered into the red wire's hole. That was temporary, of course. I've since removed the staple, and I made holes in the solder to put the wires through, but it still doesn't work. I guess it's still not making contact for some reason.

I'm a little worried about soldering the daughterboard too much (because I keep trying over and over) and ruining it...

John30_06 2009-02-12, 18:21 #6

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Quote by gomtuu:
Quote by faichiu:
can the hard disk + battery fit perfectly without modification to the case?

I'm not 100% sure yet. I don't think the adapter adds any thickness to the case (just the thickness of the ZIF cable itself, which is <1mm), so it's just the battery and the 8mm drive. Since the original drive was 7mm, there's not a big difference in the overall thickness.

My case is unmodified right now. I've tried fitting the case together with the 60GB drive (also 8mm) in it, but I haven't tried it with the 120GB drive yet. When I tried with the 60GB drive, it did fit, but it was tight. I think I had to press kinda hard to get the screw holes near the thumb wheel to meet. So I might shave off a bit of the rectangular ridge on the back of the case.

It will be a tight fit, as there seems to be about 1mm of extra space, and also those little rubber bumpers on the back can go away. I hope the chrome support bar doesn't get in your way.

Quote by gomtuu:
Lucky you! I'm not very good at soldering, so I still don't have it working. If you look at the photo above, you'll notice that I had the battery wire wrapped around a staple that I soldered into the red wire's hole. That was temporary, of course. I've since removed the staple, and I made holes in the solder to put the wires through, but it still doesn't work. I guess it's still not making contact for some reason.

I'm a little worried about soldering the daughterboard too much (because I keep trying over and over) and ruining it...

Try a little dab of flux and a touch of new solder.

gomtuu

2009-02-12, 20:01 #7

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Quote by John30_06:
It will be a tight fit, as there seems to be about 1mm of extra space, and also those little rubber bumpers on the back can go away. I hope the chrome support bar doesn't get in your way.

The squarish rubber pads aren't in the way at all, and the support bar doesn't seem to be either. And the two long rubber strips inside the rectangular ridge are pretty soft, so they're not resisting too much. I prefer to keep them in as shock absorbers.

The main problem seemed to be the rectangular ridge and the ridge along the curvy hole. I Dremeled those down by maybe 0.5mm. The case went together pretty easily after that.

Now, after I Dremeled the case, I was reassembling it and realized that I'd forgotten something: The corner piece that covers the thumb wheel has a tab with a hole in it, and this hole lines up with the screw holes I'd been trying to squeeze together (the ones that the really long screw goes through). Which means those screw holes didn't have to come together all the way, which means maybe I didn't have to Dremel the case after all... Oh, well. As it is, things seem nice and snug but not too tight, so I'm not upset about it.

Quote by John30_06:
Try a little dab of flux and a touch of new solder.

I ended up just melting the solder that was there and spreading it around a bit. That did the trick. Not sure why it wasn't making contact before.

Here's the money shot!

I have a few more photos from the assembly that I can post if anyone's interested.

By the way, final weight is 180g, or about 20g heavier than the original Karma. Could be partly due to the higher-capacity battery.

This post was edited on 2009-02-12, 20:08 by gomtuu.

RubenNYC 2009-02-12, 22:04 #8

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This has the makings of a legendary device. Great job, gomtuu!

M0tah 2009-02-13, 00:03 #9

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Quote by gomtuu:
By the way, final weight is 180g, or about 20g heavier than the original Karma. Could be partly due to the higher-capacity battery.

Or the extra platter in the HDD

ukre 2009-02-15, 22:48 #10

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Impressive...good job!

Pity that 120GB is likely as big as you're gonna ever get in a Karma (assuming that bigger drives ever came out in PATA, anyway) - I'm pretty sure we didn't put LBA48 support in the software

gomtuu

2009-02-16, 05:16 #11

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Yeah, 120GB is pretty close to the limit. There are 128GB SSDs apparently, which means somebody might outdo me by 8GB.

Does anybody happen to know if SSD sizes are typically measured in gibibytes? The fact that flash memory always comes in sizes that are powers of 2 (8GB, 16GB, 32GB, etc.) makes me think 128GB might mean 128 gibibytes, which would really be 17.4 billion bytes bigger than mine... Don't know for sure, though.

Anyway, progress update: Yesterday I started loading music onto my Karma. The first few times I tried, Rio Music Manager transferred a hundred or so files and then stopped. Twice, it showed "unspecified error"s in the transfer details. My Karma wasn't plugged in to AC power at this point, so I plugged it in. The rest of the transfer (5000+ tracks) finished after that.

Then, I unplugged it and listened to music for about a half hour. About 5-10 minutes in, it rebooted once.

I'm thinking my battery connection is still flaky and the Karma's not getting clean power. Seems like something I should fix, 'cause that can't be good for it long-term. (Not to mention the fact that it's annoying.) Is there a way I can test this theory by, for example, using a voltmeter on some of the battery daughterboard's pins?

faichiu 2009-02-17, 13:37 #12

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Would it be the way to splicing wires get unclean voltage?

[Image: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3105/3167248065_1c59000a7b.jpg?v=0]

gomtuu

2009-02-17, 19:15 #13

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Quote by faichiu:
Would it be the way to splicing wires get unclean voltage?

That picture's not accurate anymore. The original red wire ended up breaking right at the solder point on the daughterboard, so I soldered the new battery's wires directly to the daughterboard.

My crappy soldering job is my leading suspect, I'm just wondering if there's a way to test that without having to run the Karma on bad power. Also, it'd be nice to be able to check my work somehow after I attempt a re-solder.

faichiu 2009-02-18, 06:23 #14

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My crappy soldering job is my leading suspect, I'm just wondering if there's a way to test that without having to run the Karma on bad power. Also, it'd be nice to be able to check my work somehow after I attempt a re-solder.

the key for soldering is to use soldering paste and small tip. otherwise, it will be a mess.

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.…?productId=2049…

with soldering paste, mine soldered just like the original.

John30_06 2009-02-18, 13:05 #15

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Keep in mind that fat-piping 5000 tracks into a player is going to heat up the platters, and maybe battery also. That can cause erratic behavior.
Also, someone mentioned the software has a limit factor of 10,000 tracks, something I've never come close to with my 60 gig players, but which you theoretically could easily do with compressed tracks.