I put it back together, but it would not start after that - and I resigned myself to its death. I was too attached to it to give it a proper burial, and slid it into its leather case and stowed it in my desk drawer - just until I could get up the nerve to put it down for good.

For many years I was in a funk - never quite happy with the M100 or later the Casio I got for cheap to revisit the 'big screen' days of my youth - I finally eschewed PDAs. Nevertheless time heals all wounds, and so I found myself revisiting the idea of writing my own applications to capture ideas on the fly on a portable device - so I dug out the old PDAs, including the old Casio that I had for a short time. The Casio was not suitable for what I intended, the M100 ran fine - but the Palm Pilot was still dead - so I thought, "what the heck? I can't make it any more dead than it already is..."

A thunderstorm descended at the same time that I began the operation. I took the case completely apart, and noticed flakes of corrosion as sheets of rain began falling outside. I cleaned it carefully with canned air, a clean toothbrush, and a pencil with an eraser. After all the corrosion was removed and conductive material shined to remove all traces, I carefully reconnected its parts and closed the case over its brain for the final time. Lightening lit up the room.

I placed new AAA batteries in the compartment and sealed it up. The moment was at hand! I hit the power button - and it came alive. It was alive - resurrected from the dead! It forced me to go through its setup program - which I did with dread; would it barf and fly off the handle? Could I trust it with my data?

So, as the story goes, I acquired a used Palm IIIe for free from a friend whom said he "never knew why it stopped working." When I put in batteries and turned it on it only showed a filled screen with every pixel on/black, as well it made a very quiet whining sound, similar to my Tungsten|E actually. It also had a rattling sound, which meant something was loose inside the hand-held.

So, I diligently took it apart, quite easily actually, with only 4 screws and a wide flat head to pry it open. Once open I carefully examined it and discovered that the insides appeared in perfect condition except for one thing. What I believe is the culprit of the problem is the small object on the main-board I highlighted in my pictures that appears to have it's top edge partially chipped apart. I discovered these small chips were what was rattling around on the inside. AHA! There is also an identical part like this about 3/4 inch nearer the battery slots and it's not damaged as far as I can tell.

I think these are voltage transformer's of some type, based on my rudimentary knowledge of electronics parts, and if the broken one is not properly changing the power level it's supposed to then that may be why the Palm doesn't work right. I think that the problem is only with the screen functioning properly, and I believe that it is working fine otherwise since it makes a proper "tap" sound when I tap the screen indicating that the digitizer works, I think...

I have highlighted the areas of interest with a red box.

So I coded up a tiny utility that you can put on a memory card as /Palm/start.prc; when you insert the card, it'll trigger a HotSync.

So, if the Palm has a memory card interface and a dead screen *and* you can't initiate a HoySync any other way, this little program might come in handy.

I call it Seance. ( :-> ) It's free, under the GPL, and available here: http://ingles.homeunix.org/software/seance/

The poor thing was soaking. It had been marinading in hair lacquer for a fortnight. The noxious liquid has seeped behind the digitiser and, when I dismantled it, I discovered that the circuit boards were covered in a thick fur of green and white corrosion. Palm T3? Rest In Peace.

Her iPod Mini was similarly soaked and damaged. As with the Palm, I tried to turn it on before dismantling it. Remarkably, it fired up briefly before shutting down with a hard disk fault. Further investigation revealed that the hard disk was fine - but that the hard disk controller was irrevocably broken. iPod Mini? Also RIP.

I tried everything. Reset, charging, waiting and periodacally checking if it works. On 89 day of my warranty I went to Circuit City trying to get my money back (I wanted to buy something else this time). They asked me some questions about what and how it happend, so I told them. After calling Palm and doing something, they gave me a brand new Z22. RIP my old Palm.