got a rio cali w/256mb internal memory and a 256 card in it. was putting a new batt in it this morn. and put the batt in backwards. + where the - should be, simple mistake. tried to turn it on, didn’t work, no shock, flipped it over and now when ever i turn it on it’s like it’s internal memory is fried. always goes to the start page with what language do i want to use. the songs on the external mem. are still there but all the internal stuff is gone and when i try to save something the the internal mem. it says the player is full. when i turn the player on it says there are no songs.
my question is would simply putting a batt in backwards fry this thing? i would hope not but i thinking maybe so. thanks for any help.
I think you may just have a lemon… Stuff like that is not all that uncommon in small electronics. I would find it hard to believe that putting the battery backwards would fry it. Are you still under warranty?
Not likely to damage anything permanently. This is a very obvious test case that they should have designed for. Silicon can be damaged by reverse biasing, but any decent design would be tolerant of a backwards battery.
You may need to reload the firmware. Go to their web site and see if they have a firmware download that you can get, probaby has bug fixes in it that are worth having anyway.