Interesting. So the punch control being all out of whack was the culprit then? I don't think you can set the punch control to more than 100% to begin with anyway. Definitely odd!

I wonder if you have a defective unit (in that it has the ability to apparently reset certain parameters way out of normal range...).

Anyways, like some others said, I would also keep an eye on those NiMH packs. I've had IB4200s (notorious for having a short life span but great performance) poop out rather suddenly (not as gradual of a performance degradation as you may think, or that I thought I'd experience).