Things you should know about the 368

[quotaholic]

Greetings everyone and thanks to Quotaholic for giving us this place to share our knowlege.

First, You will have to get ahold of these accessories to do any o/s installs
      POWERED usb hub
      usb keyboard / mouse
      usb flash drive 256mb+
      usb DVD/CDROM
      CF card with 2+gb for large linux distros or dual boot (minixp,xpem,tinyxp) / linux
      a charger, when I purchaced my 368 it came with no accessories. Just a tablet in a box. I kludged together a power supply out of an old radio
          shack charger and the correct plug from a universal cell charger. the power requirements are 10-12vdc at 1-3amps with the positive lead
          going to the center of the plug and the ground to the outside. So if you need a charger, anything that outputs in those ranges and has the
          proper plug should work. DO NOT USE LESS THAN 1 AMP! Bad things will happen, brown outs, crashes, etc...
      Patience

I will be posting pics, guides, and driverpacks as I am able. Contact me if you need any help.

Howard
           

[howie368]

A quick word about charging, power supplies, and battery life:

Charge your battery to full before you do anything else. I have noticed that, at boot time, the 368 tends to drain the battery very fast. If you have a semi bad battery or one that is half full you may suffer power failure during boot.

If your homemade charger doesn't put out enough amps and you run the 368 plugged in all the time you WILL kill the battery, the charging circut, or both. Always be careful when modding your hardware or fabricating non standard parts.

On battery life: These tablets are several years old and most of the Xybernaut branded 368's were used every day in retail stores and military bases so don't expect the battery to power your tablet very long. Out of the 5 i purchased 1 was bad and held no charge, 3 gave about 20 minutes, and the "good" battery gives about an hour.

[rectic]

Your battery issue may have to do with not having fully functioning batteries.

I've got a few "Atigo T/HB" (368 with outdoor displays) that don't drain on startup, but I also have 'newer' batteries (replaced).

I decided not to run the risk on a faulty power supply either. The units all use the same power supply (370/375/366 and the new units), so I picked one up online (pricier - $40, but I knew it was right).

[quotaholic]

I am using a dock for the DT368 as it has a bad charging circuit and wont power up unless its cradled to power. Up to today I was using it without an external battery being attached. I could not get the device to boot to an external drive. I could see it listed in the init or the splash screen but it never took as boot-able media.

Charged the battery from my DT366 overnight and attached it to the 368 and for the first time this morning it booted to the external cd-rom drive that was attached. Not sure the exact reasons but Howie368's advice helped me out. Thanks Howie!

PS - everyone should have one of these docks! Especially if you do any dev work on the webdt platform. Pretty sure xrivertechnologies still sells them. 

http://www.xriverstore.com/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=2

[mistico4]

Charged the battery from my DT366 overnight and attached it to the 368 and for the first time this morning it booted to the external cd-rom drive that was attached. Not sure the exact reasons but Howie368's advice helped me out. Thanks Howie!

Hello, was the charged battery that allowed to boot your 368 the external one?

I have an Atigo T that does not recognize the batteries (Windows XPe SP2). The internal battery seems to be completely dead, 0 volts checked with a meter. A known good external battery fully charged is not recognized and it does not boot either. Only works with AC power.

Also, would a IDE to USB cable adapter work to boot from any IDE CDROM drive or do I need a proper USB external optical drive?

Thank you all for your help sharing your knowledge.

[tt300zrcr]

i used powerd 4port  USB hub with a old taken apart exertnal IDE hd drive enclosrure. It goes from there to the USB drive i swapped the hd in it to a std ide cdrom in my scrap pile booted up fine doing it that way.

for the batteries its hit or miss on that being the batteries are so old

[howie368]

An old toshiba laptop dvd drive with a generic usb enclosure worked for me.

My 368 does not seem to draw power from a full external battery or charge one that is discharged. MicroXP and XPe do not see it in the power properties either.

When you plug yours in does the battery light flash or stay solid? I have one that will not charge any internal batt and the light stays solid all the time when plugged in. The batteries i tested it with were known good from working units that had the batt light flash when charging.

[mistico4]

Apologies for the late reply.

When I plug in the one that does not recognize any battery, no light turns on until I press the power button. Then the battery light stays on until I turn it off.

A second unit with good batteries (both internal and external): when I plug it in, the battery light flashes for a while, then stays solid, sometimes with the external battery just at 90% recharge (the internal battery does show 100%).

On both units, device manager lists 3 entries under Battery:

Microsoft AC Adapter
Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery
Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery

So I guess it's not a lack of drivers on the defective unit.

BTW, would anybody happen to know how much current a working T/DT368 draws during work, for example: screen on plus WiFi plus playing a video? Without any batteries or after the batterie are fully charged. The back panel says 3.5A but I think it includes the batteries being charged. I'd like to plug in a 12v battery to restore mobility to my defective unit.

[howie368]

It seems like you have a defective charging circuit. I do not know of a fix for this but I am working on a unit that has the same symptoms as yours and will gladly post a solution if I find one.

I haven't put an ammeter on these units but i can tell you that they use more than 2 amps when under a heavy load. I have a 12v 2amp charger i use to charge the batteries of shutdown units. When I have this plugged into a running unit and use the wifi to watch streaming video the battery still drains but at a reduced rate.

There are others on this forum who are looking into making replacement batteries for the dt360/366 they may be able to tell you more about what you would need to build your own.

[mistico4]

So it looks no amount of battery rebuilding will help. Does not matter really, I'm a 150% newbie regarding electronics and I need a plug and play solution.

I'm looking for the cheapest alternative too, no sense buying a US$150+ Universal External Laptop Battery and was eyeing the batteries sold at ebay for portable CCTV equipment. Just search for "12v CCTV battery" and several auctions appear, capacities range from 1200Mah up to 9800Mah, li-on or li-poly. Problems are: there's absolutely no information or specs, no C-rate is noted, some even look like just naked cells in plain blue plastic wrapper. I also read at Remote Controlled vehicles hobbyists' forums that the sellers overstate the capacity of these batteries by as much as 90% O_O

Still I was hoping that if these tablets draw about 1A, those batteries could be used. Guess I'll start to look at RC batteries: Ni-MH 12v 3800Mah, 15C or 20C, sell for $30.00 including charger. Just 90min or 120min would be enough. I really don't have too much time to play with them.

Anyways, good luck with your unit. Look forward to read about your experiences.