motumatai

Just to update people who were so helpful:  The control unit was evaluated as 'dead on arrival' at the NZ Minelab repair facility, so I wasn't being dumb when it would not work for me.

Took two weeks to process and courier its way back to me. Mail is still very slow here, even with the country almost back running normally.

Now to spend some time getting my head around this very capable unit. Certainly a whole lot more to it than turning it on and doing a ground balance, as we used to do in the 90's.

46 minutes ago, 2Valen said:

Where did you purchase your new 800 at? There have been some places dealing fake units for some time now and that is why I am asking.

The upper left button hold for about 10 seconds to see if it will do a factory reset, also you stated that after an hour it showed it was fully charged. When I charged my new unit it took several hours, so you may want to try to charge it again and see what happens.

That is all I can think of as these units are very good and their support are next to none.

Theres only 2 franchised dealers in NZ and I purchased it off one of them, so I expect the warrenty claim will be a non issue.  Trouble is it always puts a sour taste in your mouth when you have been hanging out for something you have saved for, for a long time...and its a dud! 

Will try the recharge, but the book says it will work fine running off a powerbank when the internal battery is flat, so it should turn on whenever the battery is only even a bit charged.

Hi everyone! I'm new to this forum, and to ownership of a Minelab detector(the 800 turned up today in the post:). Woohoo....I think)

I have used Minelab equipemnt in the past, back in the mid 90's we ran a fleet of 60 odd minelab mine detectors in Cambodia. But those versions (the predecessor to the F3) were several iterations of complexity behind todays generation of detectors.

Anyways, I unboxed it, connected the magnetic charge cable up to a usb charger, and sure enough about an hour later the green flashing led stopped flashing and stayed on, indicating a fully charged battery.

Press to turn on. Nothing. Not a flicker. Pressed and held momentarily, pressed and held for 1 second, pressed and held for 5 seconds, NOTHING 

Is there a trick I am missing? Does this happen frequently? Or am I just the unlucky one to purchase a late-friday-afternoon-just-before-a-long-weekend assembled one thats a dud??

TIA