Palm TX surgery

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I girded up and replaced the digitizer/screen assembly in my Palm TX handheld last night.  I used PDAParts.com, who tells you 400 times that this voids your warranty, and that all sales are final, and basically that if you screw this up we’re not doing shit…but they did make a video showing what to do:

Two things:

  • Though the video is reasonably accurate, the person in the video is clearly using a unit that’s been apart before.  This thing hardly glides into pieces on an initial disassembly.  I encountered considerably more friction during the clip separation step and the motherboard removal step than is evidenced by this video.  (Also note that the front must move downward a bit to clear the connection ports.)
  • I had to do a hard reset, before which the new digitizer was acting up.  Don’t decide you’ve got a bum replacement before you try it after a hard reset.  (Obviously, you should sync, or better yet use a good backup utility, before you go crackin’ the case in the first place.)

I use a PDA a bunch, and I don’t ever buy one with the expectation that I can use it any longer than three years or so.  However, I do take care of my stuff, and I ought to reliably get that.  With the TX, Palm clearly has a widespread and serious digitizer quality problem (as evidenced by the massive net chatter).  Though they seem cooperative about warranty repairs, they’re apparently putting the same crap hardware in them while they’re in.  (Mine was out of warranty by a month and a half; nice, eh?)

The screen assembly I bought said “Rev. 1” or something similar on the back.  I’ll hope.  I’ll also make this the last piece of Palm hardware I ever own.

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