Garmin eTrex Vista Cx
Today my old trusted Garmin eTrex Vista Cx GPS had a near death experience. I put some batteries that turned out to be really old. The GPS booted for a second, then the screen went fuzzy, the Garmin gave out a prolonged sad “Beeee-e-e-e-ep…” and died. So, I put in a pair of fresh batteries, turned it back on and… nothing happened. After a lot of testing with different batteries, shaking, knocking on the box, and even begging it to please wake up, I suspected my trusty electronic friend finally gave up the ghost.
With nothing to lose, I decided to open it up and see if I can do something. Maybe the microswitch has gone bad – that would be easy to replace. Testing the switch showed this was not the problem, nor there was anything wrong with the contacts that connect the batteries to the PCB. In a last attempt to fix it I tried shorting the pill battery that is soldered on the board for a few seconds. Kind of a hard reset. I did this, closed the box, put a pair of batteries in, and… it worked just fine.
So, in case something like this happened to you, and if you tried everything else, here is what you can do before rushing to the Garmin store…
Please, read all the instructions before starting to avoid unpleasant surprises. You will be taking the unit apart and if something goes wrong you can theoretically damage it beyond repair. And about the warranty afterwards – forget about it! If you try this, please know I’m not responsible for any damage. This said, if you do this carefully you won’t damage anything – I just don’t want to be blamed for broken GPSes.
1) Take off the rubber handle that wraps around the side of the GPS. For my GPS this was not a problem, since the glue had gone bad ages ago and the rubber band was falling out constantly anyway. If your GPS is not in such a bad shape, this may take some pulling, because the handle is glued. If you do it carefully, you should be able to detach it without causing any damage.
2) Under the rubber band/handle, there are two layers of scotch-tape like plastic. Find the edge and slowly take those off, as if you are taking off a scotch tape. Try not to stretch them too much. After you take them off, try to keep them from tangling, because you may want to reuse them to seal the unit again.
3) After taking the plastic tape, you will get access to the four notches holding the box together. Using a screwdriver, push the notches on one side in and gently pull up the cover a few milimeters. DO NOT try to pull the cover out completely at this stage yet! There’s a catch (actually two of them).
4) Very carefully open the other side of the box a bit – just a couple of milimeters. Look through the crack inside the box. You will likely see a small dot of glue that attaches the back cover to a piece of foil-like metal covering some of the components on the PCB. This blob of glue is holding the back cover to the foil and if you try to pull the cover out completely, you will likely damage the device. Sticking a thin and sharp screwdriver (or a pocket knife) through the crack, pry the glue blob off the back cover. This is not difficult to do. Don’t worry if you bend the foil cover a bit – small amount of bending at this stage is almost unavoidable, but won’t cause any problem.
5) At this stage the back cover will be almost free – there is just a ribbon cable connecting the memory card slot to the PCB. You don’t need to detach take this cable since you can open the unit on one side, but if for some reason you want to, the connector on the PCB side can be unfastened by pulling on the small plastic bracket with a small screwdriver. Again, you will likely be able to open the unit enough with the cable as it is, without detaching it.
6) There are a few things to test now. You can first test the Power-On microswitch, using an ohm-meter. The microswitch has four pins that are soldered to the board. The pins are connected by pairs. When the switch is not pressed, there will be zero Ohm between the pins of each pair, and infinity between the pairs. When you hold the switch down all four pins should be connected together. If this is not happening, the problem is likely the switch. You can replace it with suitable switch from an old cellphone (I happened to have exactly the same switch from a cellphone board, even though I did not need to replace it; what I mean is, it should not be hard to find a replacement).
7) Provided that the microswitch is not the problem, you can check if the contacts from the battery comparment are bent. If they are not touching the corresponding pads on the PCB, the unit will not work. To check this, straighten the contacts just a bit, so when the box closes they will touch the pads on the board more securely.
8) Even if this turns out to be the problem, now is a good time to do the hard reset I was telling you about. Find the pill battery on the board. It is soldered to it’s holder, so there is no way to take it out. However, what you can do is to short the terminals of the battery holder using a screwdriver. The terminals are located next to the battery, toward the lower part of the unit. (Sorry, I forgot to take pictures while my unit was open, and now that it is working, I don’t want to open it again.) Just short the terminals for a couple of seconds – this won’t damage the battery but will reset whatever internal memory there is.
9) Close the box, put fresh batteries, cross your fingers, knock on wood, and try powering up. If it works – congratulations. If it doesn’t – I’m truly sorry, but I don’t know what else to try. It worked fine for me, that’s all I can say.
If you try this, please let me know what happens.
