Ask The Admin

Ok Kiddies,
This is part 2 of of the illuminating subject of dealing with the 8125 Wizard and it's battery madness. If you've read Part 1 of this series, you'll remember that the battery in this device can indeed be resurrected from the dead, and with a little ingenuity, and some careful handiwork, this problem can be dealt with using some basic household items. This is however the more technical solution. This works for people who arent afraid to strip a wire, and who can tell the difference between red and black. As always make sure you do a backup before you start!

The tools:
- an Xacto knife, or a regular knife will do
- an old, regular usb cable (that you can part with, its gonna get cut)
- your dead, seemingly useless 8125 Wizard battery
- a cigarette lighter, or matches will do

**Step 1- Grab your usb cable and your knife and cut off the square end, (Note that im not responnsible for you damaging a cable you needed, these instructions call for an OLD cable that you presumably dont need for anything, anymore besides this project)
**Step 2- Grab the knife or Xacto and CAREFULLY, GENTLY strip away about 2 inches of the thick outer lining from the end of the wire you just cut (Again please note, im not responnsible for you damaging a wire that you NEED, use a wire u definitely DON'T NEED aside from this task)
**Step 3- You've now exposed the inner wirings of a usb cable, You can determine which wires are which from their inner sheathing color. Usually power wires are either black and red, or black and white. In any case seperate the positive and negative cables from the other cables around them.
**Step 4- CAREFULLY grab your cigarette lighter or matches, and gently heat 2 inches of the end of the exposed positive and negative wires, one by one - taking care not to ignite the plastic sheathing, but rather just melting it a little. (again i'm not responsible for any fires you can cause by doing this)
**Step 5- Grab the knife and gently, carefully slide the melted portion of sheathing (about 2 inches) off of the delicate, tiny inner wires as illustrated in the picture above. if you screw up and cut off the tiny inner wires, you have to start over from Step 2.
**Step 6- If you've managed to strip off the tiny, delicate inner sheathings, you can now perform the jump-start.
**Step 7- put the 8125 on to charge from another cable (remember you should have another cable that you actually use to charge your phone, either a wall charger or a working, un-cut usb cable) and leave it there.
**Step 8- Remove the battery from the 8125
**Step 9- This is the part where you have to BE SURE YOU'VE CORRECTLY DETERMINED WHICH WIRE IS POSITIVE AND WHICH IS NEGATIVE. I can't stress this enough. In the case of black and red wires, black is ground (negative) and red is juice (positive). In the case of black and white wires, again, black is ground (negative) and white is juice (positive)
**Step 10- The 8125 battery will always have an indication of which terminal is positive (+) and which terminal is negative (-). Gently touch the positive wire to the positive terminal, and the negative wire to the negative terminal. If you feel the battery heating up noticeably, STOP you've got the wires wrong. Start step 9 over after switching the wires.
**Step 11- Hold it there for about 5 minutes, put the battery back in your phone, and start it up - YOUR BACK IN BUSINESS!

If these steps dont work, check to make sure you've got the right inner wires. Anybody having trouble with this can leave a post here with a picture of your inner wires, and we'll be able to tell you which are power. you can also email the pic to info at mistercomputerhead dot com and we'll be sure to determine which wires are your power wires, and their polarities.

Done deal. i hope this helps all the hapless people who are about to buy into this phone on account if it getting as cheap as it is. The fact of the matter is $50-$100 for a touch screen phone with WM5, WIFI and GPRS really is a great deal, and it makes a very intelligent phone more readily available to the masses, and thats who I'm looking to help out here on ASK THE ADMIN.
Stay tuned next time as Commodore finds the next big idea to discuss and hopefully shed some light on, because Commodore 64s were put on this earth to help people, and thats what we will do.

Peace
Commodore 64 (the one you played Bruce Lee on)