Opening Palm Screen [Zire 72 and now T|C]

Lego;
FYI:
The T|T & T|W (the original keyboard Tungsten and predecessor to the Treo 600) used the exact same screen. The T|T was 320*320 with a Graffiti silkscreen area and the T|W was 320*320 with no Graffiti area.

Legodude522,
Thank you for this great guide. This is the only place I've found where they give you tips on how to open the Zire72. Thanks to it I was able to fix a broken screen.

One Note:
I had to transfer the digitizer from the broken screen to the good screen (good lcd had defective digitizer). When I try to remove the digitizer this way:

The lcd glass popped out killing the bad screen for good.

I did not feel confortable removing the digitizer from the good lcd this way, so I ended up just peeling off the digitizer from the aluminum frame and placing it into the good lcd frame. There was enough residual glue to set the digitizer in place just fine.

After re-assembly (you are right the Zire 72 is a b**ch to disassemble/assemble), the Zire came back to life.

Thanks again.

Awesome Guide on Zire 72 internals. I have a question?

My absolute dream device would be a Palm UMPC/Origami
However, this is not possible without a bigger LCD. Is it possible
to hack a palm like the zire 72 with a bigger screen.

Why would this be great? Several reasons:

1) Great price point compared to current UMPCs
2) Touch Screen just like UMPC
3) Intergrated Camera
4) SD slot
5) Wifi capable
6) Mp3 player
7) Video player
8 - Over 20k in applications
9) Bluetooth
10) Beaming capability

This is just scratching the surface. All this with just
increasing screen size to about a 6 x 9 configuration.

So is it possible or has palm created products with dead
ends development and upgrade-wise.

Thank you in advance to anyone who responds.

First, Thank you for this very helpful thread. It has made opening my Zire 72s a little less stressful knowing what to expect.

Now is my problem and I am hoping some one here can help. I received a new digitizer from PDAparts and got setup to replace the old one. While I was starting to put it in I saw that the new digitizer was cracked. The crack was small near the bottom and I emailed PDAparts and explained. They responded quickly and confirmed that they would mail me a new one. Since the crack was small and I had already taken apart my Zire I had gone ahead and replaced the screen. I found once together that the digitizer wouldnt register a screen tap near the top left, thus I never got out of the digitizer set-up. I assumed that this was due to the crack and reassembled my Zire with the old digitizer (no problems) and waited for the new one.

New one arrived, I have installed it and I find the same problem, the upper left corner does not register the screen taps. Everywhere else registers fine. I am again stuck in the digitizer set-up!

I am now in a dilemma and am hoping that someone can help me out. Is this a problem that others have experienced? What is the cause and the solution? Since this has happened the same way with both digitizers I am pretty confident that it isn't the digitizer itself. Remember, I can put the original worn digitizer back in and all is well (except all the worn spots). I have wondered about the possibility of the connection of the digitizer to the back of the LCD. How possible is it that the connections are off a little causing the problem? I am not considering this seriously since the connector goes in snugly, just trying to come up with any explanation. Is the digitizer the right one since I have the 72s? I am assuming that it is since everywhere shows it is for Tungsten T, T2, E, E2, C, W, Zire 71 & 72, and I am assuming that the 72s internal is the same as the regular 72.

Any help/suggestions are welcome and appreciated! TIA!

I have noticed some funny and really annoying problems with the circuit board in the screen assembly. It seems to me that they go BAD sometimes and will just screw everything up and make perfectly good LCD and digitisers to just fail.

So, there is nothing I can do but use the original worn digitizer? Are there any other possibilities?

Does the original work at all? As in not having the same problems as the new ones?

First thank you to Legodude for IMing with me on this issue. Now, what the finish has brought. I messed around with the connections as Legodude suggested, but with no luck. I finally got fed up and reinstalled my old worn digitizer which still works fine, just worn out. For those that may not know the original digitizers are not solid glass. They are more a plastic and probably why they wear out fairly quickly. The replacements are glass and will most likely last longer before they scratch and wear out. I wish mine would have worked.

But I digress a little. My wife has a Z71 which also has a worn digitizer so I decided instead of wasting a perfectly good digitizer I would go ahead and try it in hers. It has been installed and works great! No problems. So the bottom line is for some reason the new digitizer wouldn't work in my Z72s. The indications I had were during the initial start-up where it would run the digitizer, any tap in the upper left corner and also down the left side were not recognized resulting in my being stuck in the digitizer startup. A reset would get me out of this but the digitizer still wouldn't work correctly. I guess I will have to live with it untill the scratches and wear are so bad that I will have to just buy a new Palm.

I am curious if anyone else has had this same problem and also how many have replaced their Z72 digitizer with no problems. I am guessing that I am just the \"lucky\" one with the weird problem.

Again, thanks Legodude for the help you did provide.

Hi!


I have a Tungsten T, and I did not use it for quite some time.
When I charge it today the screen wont display anything...

The screen lights up, and only display white the entire screen.
I dont think its entirely broken coz I can still here click sounds when I tap the screen. And I also tried recording audio and the playback is fine.

Do I need to replace the screen? or is there still something I can do to fix it?


Thanks.

I would not be so sure that pin cannot break loose. Mine seems to have done exactly that. I got it used on eBay a few months ago, and I noticed from the beginning that it seemed susceptible to losing the charging connection if I wiggled the power connector certain ways. I figured it was just a slightly loose fit, and decided to "live with it" since it was the exception rather than the rule. But this morning, as I tried to insert the power jack, all of a sudden there was no resistance, and no charging. When I looked into the opening, I could not see the pin, as I normally could (with good lighting). It felt, and appears, that the pin broke loose somehow.

Related story: I have another Z72 that I got earlier, and it seemed to have a similar looseness, but took a lot more effort to find an angle that would interrupt charging. I had tried using your guide to replace the battery, but could not seem to separate the side across from the stylus silo - it would flex the whole case back, which looked ready to break, and after that effort cracked the camera lens I put it aside, and went back to my Z71. Another result of that aborted effort was that the infrared, and voice mike stopped working. Finally I decided to go back on eBay, and get that 2nd Z72.

Well, the 2 issues converged today when I figured "What the hey", the non-charging Z72 ("#2" ) was a goner, and I might as weill see if it would come apart any more easily than #1. Practice does help It seems that there are 2 interlocking tabs on that side that just need a bit of sideways flexing of their meeting points to get them to pop loose - opened right up along that side after that discovery.

However, I then had a problem getting separation at the top. I wiggled/flexed/tugged till all of a sudden something gave, and it separatd. Turned out there is some kind of yellow cellophane-like ribbon up there that goes from the camera assembly to underneath one of the tabs holding the screen at the top of the other section. I could not quite figure out what purpose it served.

Well, I then applied that experience to #1, and this time got it open. Its yellow ribbon was also broken, probably from the earlier effort to separate the case sections from the top at first. I did get the system boards out of each Z, and swapped #1's into #2 (along with a new battery I got on eBay back when for #1), and it all went together pretty well, and now it charges fine (the charging connector is inside a tiny "black box" that is soldered to the system board, so I am guessing there is an internal connection in that box for the pin that goes into the end of the charge cable tip, and is a bit fragile?) ... but now the infrared does not work! big issue for my previous usage of the Z72 to connect via infrared with my Nokia 6236i as a "modem" to the Internet.

After looking a while at how that yellow ribbon was routed while I had both Z's open, and seeing that it actually seems to "cover" what I believe are the IR ports (2 small shiny black button-like protuberances on the top edge of the system board right above the camera - one for send, the other for receive?), and somehow "conditions" the IR beams, and now with it broken on both units, no more conditioning, and thus "beaming". Does that sound plausible? Am I deducing that correctly? If so, any ideas how to fix?

TIA,
Rokky

Fixable? You'd have to buy a new screen unfortunatly. $80 online here.

As for you rokky, I'm heading to bed now and will reread it when I got a chance

I must have been past ready for bed. I swapped the system board from Z72 #1 into the #2 unit, so the broken infrared issue moved with it; not an issue with that \"yellow ribbon\" - duh.

Given that, any ideas?

TIA
Rokky

so I will likely switch the system boards back again, if my charging tests go ok fhe next few days - I would rather have trickle charge with functioning infrared than fast charging without the IR. Live and learn

Guess after that I will put the #1 unit up for auction on eBay as a parts/as-is unit, unless anyone here is interested in it? No IR, camera lens is cracked (but still takes pictures), the microphone may not record (will have to test that again after the swap-back), and the case is one of the original blue ones with the blue coating all removed from the front section, and scratched up on the back. Everything else should be working, although the grafitti area's letters section is flakey - mixes up strokes - but I get around that by setting on the feature to write anywhere on screen, and the screen still looks excellent. MP3's still should play fine, too. I will include the battery that I replaced in the #2 unit, which seemed to hold a decent charge (YMMV - just figured I would use that new one while I had the unit open anyway), and the original Palm Software CD. $50?

Rokky

I disassembled my Zire 72 after it died due to battery issues. I've come to the conclusion that it was in that \"won't come on because battery is too dead but not dead enough to do a full reset\" state that some of you have mentioned. After disconnecting/reconnecting the battery, it seemed to work, then died once it was reassembled.

I've tried another battery with the same issue, and come to the conclusion with the voltmeter and the battery-charge-level icon that the battery is charging and fine - or at least good enough.

So, now it seems that the process of assembling it either shorts or opens something, causing it to hang. Once I had the camera going when it did that - the camera continued to display, but no buttons work and if you hit the reset it just turns off, never to turn on again until disassembly and battery disconnect/reconnect. If you turn it off before assembling, it will never come on.

Any ideas?

Well it should be fine, just have everything plugged in before you plug in the battery. Or else those thing might not \"activate\" such as the screen.