[Asus Transformer TF701] bruisah:
Slightly long post...

Skip to [Symptoms] if you want to get to the meat! ;)

[Background]

I had a TF701 a while back. After using the HDMI connection in a hotel (I blame this!), the battery was dead in the morning, and the tablet would not boot or charge from the dock. It *would*, however, boot when plugged directly into the charger.

Out of warranty, I eventually scrapped it (wish I hadn't!) and replaced it with a new one...

Move on a year - I bought a second hand TF701 off eBay - this had a broken screen but otherwise worked fine (bit of a bargain!). One replacement screen later, I had a fully functioning TF701 to play with (which I rooted and rommed)...

The other day, the display stopped working (I'd carried it on my bicycle pannier - well padded - but I suspected vibration had done something). Back home it started working again, but the display was a bit intermittent, so I guessed that the connector cable had become unseated, so I opened her up again to take a look.

Sure enough, the ribbon was slightly out, so I straightened it, secured it properly and closed up the tablet while it booted.

Just as I snapped the last clip into place, the tablet instantly powered off and wouldn't boot.

[Symptoms]

Tablet will not boot on battery (plugging into the dock makes no difference)

Pressing/holding the power button results in two flashes of the orange power LED then nothing

Plugging the charging cable into the tablet allows you to boot normally

Unplugging the charging cable results in instant power down

Once booted (on external power), the tablet functions normally, but claims that the battery is at 0%, claims it is charging, but the battery doesn't actually charge at all.

The symptoms above were exactly what my 'scrapped' tablet did, so I thought this was yet another dead TF701. The difference, this time, was that it was working fine right up to the point where the last case clip was snapped into place. In other words, I seriously doubted that this was an electrical failure.

[Resolution]

I'm not entirely clear on what resulted in fixing the problem, but here is what I did:

disconnected the display and digitizer ribbon connectors

reconnected the display ribbon only (i.e. not the digitizer) and tested (no change)

disconnected the battery connection

measured the voltages on each of the pins on the battery connector (roughly 4v on the live pins)

cried inside a little :)

carefully reconnected the battery connection (firmly!)

reconnected the display and digitizer connections

tried powering her on again (expecting nothing) - she fired into life!

I let her boot up while the display panel was not clipped in place - just resting on the tablet. The TF701 booted up normally, and the battery display showed that there was about 87% charge!

This time I shut it down, clipped the casing back together, and powered it all up again - she lives!

So far, the tablet seems to be working normally, docking/undocking is fine and the battery charges normally.

I suspect that the two flashes of the power LED is some sort of diagnostics signal (may be as simple as 'no battery detected').

Bottom line is that if anyone else out there finds their tablet with the same symptoms, open her up and try re-seating the display ribbon connectors and the battery connection. There is hope!

I'm now wishing I hadn't been so quick to dispose of the first one that died. Oh well.