A bizarre 5555 charging question

  I have a question for the group, and I apologize if it's already been
covered -- mailing list archives are currently broken for the recent
past.
  I have a 5555 I acquired recently, and loaded with Familiar 0.8.1 and
Opie. I've been working with previous versions of these two systems
on my 3850 for years.
  The 5555 was working fine for the most part, but this last Sunday,
suddenly stopped being able to see incoming external power via the
serial port connector. It *does* see power via the sleeve connector.
The only precipitating event I can imagine is that it was plugged in to
AC power when its house circuit was switched off and back on at the
breaker. It's possible a transient damaged something, but I would
have thought the switching power supply would be fairly immune to
that.
  Since that time, I have tried the following remedies to get it to see
external power via the serial port connector:

* reboot from command line
* "soft" reset with hardware switch
* leave battery out and power disconnected for 1 hour
* leave battery out and power disconnected for 8 hours (overnight)
* "hard" reset by holding outer buttons and hw reset switch for 5
  seconds
* kill and restart apmd

  I've also noticed since then that the auto-logout is no longer
working. This may be related, since I assume some part of the serial
port connector is used for that function. The serial port works just
fine, so I know the connector itself isn't too badly damaged. I
haven't tested the USB port.
  What I haven't done yet is reinstall WinCE or reload Familiar from
scratch.
  Does anyone know if this situation could be caused by a software
error, probably in the kernel? Has anyone else ever seen a situation
like this? Obviously the charging hardware wasn't all damaged, or I
wouldn't be able to charge via the sleeve connector (via a Compaq
PCMCIA sleeve).
  If it's obviously a hardware problem, I'll call up HP and see if my
warranty can be useful (fortunately, I bought the palmtop refurbished
with a 1 year warranty). The purpose of this email is to determine
whether it could be software before I go through the hassle of dealing
with HP.
  I appreciate any insight anyone can offer. I've searched the mailing
list archives and wiki to no avail. I'll gladly do my own research if
someone can point me in the right direction, but I don't have time or
knowledge to grovel through kernel source right now. Thanks.

-- 
Ian Johnston	http://www.obairlann.net/~reaper/    reaper@obairlann.net
     PGP Fingerprint: 13 5D 8F 3E D6 30 94 B1  66 48 7A E7 0F 99 C9 B6
	                  Email for PGP key info