Please help - Garmin GPSmap 276C not powering up

Hi Helpful Forum Goers!

My problem requires a little bit of history about my GPS unit, what the
previous problems have been, and what the current issues are. Sorry for
the long descriptions, but I thought it would help in the long run.
Thanks for reading!

I have a Garmin GPSmap 276C. I used it a lot when I first got it, but
then ended up shelving it for a couple years due to lack of boating. In
that time the battery (as might be expected) was drained completely. So
completely in fact that last week when I pulled it out again and plugged
it into the AC wall adapter to charge it the unit would turn on and come
up what looked like a booting screen (graphic, Garmin GPS 276C,
copyright info, etc), but it would go no further and when I disconnected
the power adapter after having it plugged in for a least several hours
the unit immediately powered down. I wasn't especially shocked with the
idea that the battery may have suffered having been stored in the unit
for so long without being charge-cycled, but I had nothing to lose when
it came to this battery (after all it wasn't working in the state it was
in).

So after looking at some diagrams and reading some online discussions of
similar problems I took apart the battery pack amd rigged it up to
charge directly to the + and - terminals (bypassing the circuit board
attached to the battery (charge controller?)). I hooked it up to 9V at
500mA for ~8 hours at which point the unit seemed to be cured. It
powered up just fine, got past that initial screen, made some good
noises and did all the right things.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to play with it at the time so I powered it
down and left for the day. When I came home tonight I seem to be right
back where I started with one minor exception - there seems to be enough
charge in the battery that it is able to support the boot-like screen.
I've done some more searching and found some user reset, test, and
factory reset key combinations. After trying these with limited success
I decided to post here. When I tried the user reset (hold QUIT and then
push and hold POWER) it brought up the questions "Are you sure you wish
to delete all data?" with two options Yes/No, but at this point none of
the buttons would work. I couldn't move between the options or select
an option. Trying the test key combo (hold ENTER/MARK and then press
and hold POWER) I can get to the test page and test all the keys etc,
but can't do much else (I've attached a photo of what the test page
looks like...honestly I'm not sure what it should look like so if that
helps, awesome!). The factory reset key combo doesn't seem to work (btw
here is the website I got the info from
http://home.online.no/~sigurdhu/GPSmap-276C_commands.htm ).

Anyway...I think that about brings us up to date. I'm really sorry this
is so long, but thought it was silly to not have all the details up
front. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. The only thing I can
think to do at this point is try again to recharge the battery, but that
was a fairly limited fix and according to the test screen the battery
capacity and voltage seem ok so I'm not sure what that would achieve
anyway.

Thanks very much for you time and ideas!
Cheers,
Dave


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Dabbott