DATE: December 21, 2024 at 09:02AM
SOURCE: PSYCHOLOGY TODAY

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Reviving old tech with new tech: A $0.03 RISC-V microcontroller brings an Acer N30 PDA back to life

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The Acer N30 is a PDA released in 2004 that shipped with a 240 x 320 pixel resistive touchscreen display, a 266 MHz Samsung S3C2410 processor, and Windows Mobile 2003 software. It’s been out of production for nearly two decades, but could still be used as a mobile devices for taking notes, playing games, and other activities… if you can find one with a functional battery.

When one hardware hacker who goes by the first name Mark, recently purchased several units that came without a battery, they found that replacing the battery isn’t all that easy, because the battery controller was integrated in the battery itself. But after a fair amount of research and experimentation, Mark was able to emulate the battery controller and bring the Acer N30 back to life.

While you can power on the Acer N30 without a battery by connecting it to a power source, the PDA will quickly report a low battery warning and then enter standby (deep sleep) mode in an effort to prevent battery drain. That’s because Windows CE and Windows Mobile devices stored user data in RAM, which meant that it could be lost if the battery was ever fully discharged, so the devices are configured to take steps to prevent that from happening.

Other folks looking to replace a dead or dying batter on an old Acer N30 has managed to remove the controller board from an old battery and attach it to a compatible battery that doesn’t already have a controller. But that only works if you have access to an old battery made for the Acer N30.

Without access to an old battery, Mark figured out how the controller board worked and then configured a CH32V003 RISC-V microcontroller to fill the same functions. Rather than attach the chip to the battery, Mark attached it to the PDA motherboard. The end result is a mostly functional Acer N30 PDA with a new battery that supports charging and discharging – although the battery indicator is inaccurate and voltage “fluctuates somewhat under load.”

Possibly my favorite thing about this project is that the CH32V003 is ridiculously cheap – like you can buy 50 of them for $1.45, which means that the price for a single microcontroller comes to about 3 cents. You can also buy a 10-pack for about a dollar if you don’t need 50 and want to save… 50 cents.

While it’s unlikely that there are a lot of people looking to add new batteries to an old Acer N30, Mark has open sourced their CH32V003 firmware for anyone looking to use or modify it.

via Hackster.io

#acer #acerN30 #battery #CH32V003 #microcontroller #pda #windowsMobile