Palm III dysfunctional

[jeffnewy]

OK, so ive inherited an old palm III from my sister, pulled it out of the box, didnt read any info and plugged in some new batteries.

The backlight lit up, and it makes a whining noise like a miniture jet taking off. The only other thing it will do is alter the pitch of the whine if i change the contrast dial at the back. even resetting does nothing.

Reading the literature didnt help, nor any of the other stuff she sent.
no exciting stuff at all like hotsyncing and spending hours stuffing around with outlook making them talk or anything. So im a bit disappointed.
Does anyone have any idea about how to make it think again?

[rbarkc]

In you post you didn't say if you had tried a soft or hard reset. That is what I would try first. See if that works. If it doen't post again with what you have tried and the results.

-Rick

[jeffnewy]

Yep, tried both hard and soft reset. got Nada.
Opened the back and it was good as i can see, but im no electronic engineer. Saw on some posts about the ribbon cable coming loose, but no joy in trying to reset it.

Any tips or tricks would be appreciated. Palm says send it in for repair or replacement, however the cost of that would be worth a new 500 series i guess.

[JohnKes]

I presume you took the batteries out when it seemed that nothing could be done with it. If you try putting in the batteries again, does it still malfunction? Sometimes a Palm doesn't restart properly after putting in new batteries.

If that doesn't work, I don't know what else to do except sell if for parts :(

[jeffnewy]

yes, unfortunately ive become obsessive about putting the batteries in every hour or so 'just to see', same result though.

Oh well, it was free. Will take it to bangkok and see if anyone there can figure it out, but I dont hold much hope for it.

Any other ideas are welcome though!

Jeff

[JohnKes]

If you want to get touristy, I can give you my uncle's number. He is a travel agent there.

[jeffnewy]

Cheers John,

Unfortunately ive been in thailand too long to think about being a tourist in Bangkok, sends a shiver down my spine. Its purely reserved for big drinking nights and business. Being only 3 hours away means ive seen enough of it for a while.
Touristy things is for the islands or Chiang Mai. But drop me a his name and number anyway, it never hurts to have some more contacts in the area.

Thanks for all your help!

Jeff:p

[JohnKes]

You can call:
Mr. S. Pravit
Breakaway Travel Intl Ltd
662-318-5038

Good for when you have friends or relatives visiting, if anything. I like how he arranges everything - just show up at the hotel lobby at 8:00 am, and the tour guide takes it from there.

[beams]

I have just got exactly the same problem with my palm. I left it in the cupboard for about 1 year and decided to use it again and it does the same thing - backlit with whirring noise.

Did this one ever get solved?

Tom

[jeffnewy]

Unfortunately it didnt. Gave it to the engineers at work, and they sent it off to bkk, but no joy. Ended up a doorstop I think.

Fortunately I picked up a good second hand Casseiopeia 125. Love the colour screen. Other option would have been an ASIS. Very nice new CE based PDA. size of a palm and huge computing power.

But anywayall the palm users dont want to hear about the opposition.
:)

Good luck with yours, only other option would be the service center, but this one wasnt worth the cost of sending to Singapore.

Cheers.

Jeff

[beams]

Thanks for the note - I have a theory that it is the battery backup capacitor.

If the capacitory has died and lost is resistance, then placing batteries in the machine would cause a large flow of current. Ive heard of backlights that cause a noise as they step up the voltalge. With lots of current this may become quite loud.

So Im going to replace the capacitor and see if that works - nothing to loose realy.

Tom

[JohnKes]

If the backup cap failed shorted, no power would reach the rest of the motherboard. This happens a lot in old Handspring Visors. If it failed open, the motherboard would lose power as soon as a battery was removed. This happens a lot in Palm m1xx. I don't think you will get any improvement by swapping out the cap.

The backlight uses a DC/DC converter to go from 3V to (I think) 80V. It typically makes a whistling noise.

Have you tried Hard Reset several times in a row? That would give it a good kick.

[beams]

Ive tried hard and soft resets numerous times, but nothing changes.

The whirring sound is very loud - nothing like I ever heard before and the backlight is on.

Pressing buttons, and doing the hard and soft resets will change the whirring sound slightly, but that is all.

Tom

[TREO]

Hi !
I just got an Palm III with the same problem ...
... the former owner said if i can repair it than the thing is mine :)
And realy it works now.
And thats what I made:
I opend it and tried to start it, and it worked.
Then I searched the error.
There is a thing witch presses down the memmory card or what ever it is, after removing this thing and after closing the palm it worked fine.

[csisfun]

Got an IIIxe with the same problem. No squeaky sounds or such. Tried the battery technique. Backlight works, other than that nothing else does. No amount of reset works.

Got a Pocket PC recently, out of $ for another Palm

So can anyone help me :( :( :( ?

[alter78]

I've got mine freezed, did a cold reset, with the power button pressed, then release and pressed down button, then up button.

And then the irregular screen appeared with vertical rectangles (like the TV). So I flashed the Palm OS again (4.1) and it worked again.

The other thing you can also check are the connectors.
Open your palm and check that the motherboard connectors are attached firmly. You will see 2 big connectors, one is for the display, the other one I don't know. And there is another small connector (4 pins) which is used with the digitizer. You will have to pull up the connector before taking them out.

Good luck!