Erratic touch-screen behavior on Palm IIIxe

[giuseb]

Hello,

input into my Palm IIIxe through the screen has been quite erratic, lately. In particular, there is more and more often a mismatch between the point touched by the tip of the stylus and the "clicked" screen position.
If I go through the "Welcome" routine to recalibrate the touch-screen, things seem to work decently for a little while, but very soon a seemingly random offset appears again.
Even graffiti recognition tends to fail, I suppose because part of what I try to write actually falls outside of the graffiti area.

Has anybody experienced this before, and is there a solution?
Thanks a lot,
Giuseppe

[DrMud]

The older Palm III models had a problem with the cable that connects the digitizer to the motherboard. This cable problem often made the input difficult and often caused a complete loss of connection.
You may be experiencing this problem. Sometimes tapping the right hand bottom corner of the Palm on a table top will give relief. If this is your issue you might want to try re-seating the ribbon cable. Take out the stylus. Be careful to keep track of the small screws. Remove the Four screws from the back. Pry the back off. There are no clips or restraints, simply two plastic shells pushed together. The ribbon cable should be obvious and on the left. It is held on some times with one long clip on others units two small, easily lost and hard to put back clips. I would first simply push the cable firmly to the motherboard and try to tap the screen to see if it is now working.
DrMud
Non è difficile!

[giuseb]

Grazie DottorFango! :D

I opened up the case and found that there wasn't anything obviously wrong with the ribbon connector.
I decided not to pull it out of the socket, but nevertheless pushed and fiddled a bit with it, just in case. I also took the opportunity to dust my Palm's insides...

Well, 24 hours and a few hundred stylus strokes later, the digitizer seems to have resumed normal operation.

One can't help wondering how often do electronic appliances get fixed this way by specialized (and expensive) technical staff :eek:

Ciao and thanks again,
Giuseppe

p.s. I am so glad I did not follow Palm cust srv's advice to hard-reset my unit

[DrMud]

YOu may discover that a gentle push on the cable is necessary every so often. Don't be surprised.
Caio!
Doc

[little-man]

if you still need help, a little app called digifix restores the previous digitizer calibration on every power on and hotsync.