Freerunner won't boot: dies in uboot

[Al Johnson]

On Tuesday 30 June 2009, Chris Wright wrote:
> 2009/6/30 arne anka <openmoko at ginguppin.de>:
> > simply usb is still sufficient, only it takes longer.
> > plug in, let it alone for the night and boot up next day.
>
> It's been plugged in for about 100 hours at this point, and went for a
> stretch of about 50 hours without me touching it. No change in
> symptoms.
>
> USB is not providing sufficient power for the phone to boot. Maybe
> it's not detecting the presence of USB power, or not negotiating for
> 500mA current rather than the default 100mA, or something like that,
> but if leaving it plugged in overnight solved the problem, I wouldn't
> have posted in the first place; if USB power were sufficient for it to
> boot, I wouldn't have posted.

Leaving it plugged in doesn't work with mine either. I jump-start using the 
single cell LiIon battery from my mp3 player, and some skinny wire.

CAUTION: If you do this wrong you could damage your phone, your batteries and 
your health. LiIon batteries can make nice fires if you upset them. If you 
need to read the explanation below you probably shouldn't be trying this.

I insulate the moko battery's terminals with paper or tape, then use the 
battery to hold the wires against the phone's contacts and hook up to the mp3 
battery carefully. The moko battery has the polarity printed next to the 
terminals. Now:
* Boot the phone
* Attach the charger
* remove the batteries and wires, being careful not to short anything!
* remove the insulation from the moko battery if you taped it on
* Put the moko battery in the phone.
The phone should now show the battery as flat but charging. Give it a couple 
of hours and it should be fully charged.