What to do with a 690 with a dead screen

I have a Jornada 690 with a dead screen (cracked). Is it possible to replace it? I've seen a screen on e-bay, and partially disassembled the J690 case. I removed the screws, and was able to get the perimeter loose, but something really is holding toward the center of the unit. Has anyone SUCCESSFULLY disassembled and reassembled a 690?

My current HPC is a 720 which is running fine, so this is not time critical.

Presently the 690 serves as an external battery charger and spare stylus holder!

Best regards,

Mike

I've pulled apart the 720 a fair few times. As the case is the same, the process should be more or less identical.

You need to carefully (if you want to put them back) remove the stickers on the left and right of the screen (Hewlett Packard & 690 ones). Be careful with them as they are plastic mounted on foil, with the glue on the foil. The platic has a habit of coming away from the foil.

C-Amie (or anyone who can help me),

Can you please help me ? I disassembled my Jornada 720 (just curious to know how it looks inside), but after putting everything back together, I only get random orange lines on screen. It was working fine before opening up, and it still makes that sound when you tap on screen. I can even synchronize, but the screen wont work anymore. I have taken the flat cable out an in again many times , trying to see if maybe i inserted it a little loose, but no luck...



Do you have any idea what I did wrong??


Thankyou very much.

You have a sort somewhere on the video controller. Chances are that you have fried it or you have pulled the cable loose from the controller PCB inside the screen housing.
With a dismantled 720 I can get the screen to become orange and chaotic by shorting the circuitry with a bit of metal.
The 720's construction is of a very compact and delicate nature, in pulling it apart - something of a violent prcedure at the best of times if you weren't especially careful in what you were doing you could have just put that bit much tension onto one of the bus leads, jogged, jolted or impacted one of the controller boards or even discharged into it if you weren't earthed.

Best advice I can offer is open it up, remove the front and back case plates from the screen and check the wiring in there. Get an anti-static brush and ensure there is no debris on the PCB internally, that the earth has been secured properly (very important as that can cause display anomylies) and that you have out all the bus leads in the correct way around.

Is the video controller located inside the screen or on the Jornada main PCB?
Cause I have a spare Display and a spare flat cable, but even after exchanging then, the problem is the same.




PS
(Can someone please delete the posts above ? I accidentaly hit enter)

Wow 4. Thats a new record I believe. My advice for the future, NEVER open up an extremely compact device such as this unless if you have to. These are not laptops, where at least there is a few cm of space, here you have mm. I mean, I broke one of my screens on an old compaq hpc by opening the screen to wide and cutting the wire, that wire is the most delicate part of the machine and you really have to be careful about touching it.

These may be strong machines on the outside (believe me, I tripped on the ac power wire and flung mine 5 feet across my room (2x) and no broken anything, even a rattling plastic noise is nonexistent...unlike my old compaq ) but they are just a single delicate chip on the inside)

-Ugh I now have a policy of only charging in the dock which I will now always keep on my desk, this thing is just to great to lose. By the way, mewiedman, if you have a 720, the 690 will be more useful as a charger but as a stylus holder...I don't know cuz I like my new stylus pen too much! Yeah I use the dock as a stylus holder.

The backlight and LCD control chip is in the screen case, the Video adapter is on the main pcb.

In the device the video bus comes from the motherboard, up into the right hand screen well. There it loops around the hinge beam three or four times before going up to the backlight / lcd controller.
The tension you get on the screen when removing it or indeed attempting to push back the LCD is partly the screen bus cable tensing.

The problem sounds like it is very much on the mobo, unless you've not restored the earth / rom chip correctly - which it sounds like you have. Sounds to me like you've probably impacted / over tensioned part of the mainboard.
That could be anything from dislocating the physical clasp container to damaging one of the Video RAM chips.
A few shots of compressed air should dislodge any debry that could be shorting it... however in all liklelyhood she's toast.

Anyone got a microscope?

Spare battery charger heh? Sounds like a good plan to me.

If you look hard enough, you can almost always find a silver lining, even in the darkest cloud!

i have a jornada 680 (exactly same innards as the 690), and i've succesfully dismanteled it several times (about a dozen). but i've never opened the screen it though. I think you should buy a screen that i've seen in ebay, that comes with the inside (touchscreen, cable) and outside elements (upper case) so you only have to do the following:

1) in the outside of the jornada
a) remove the 5 small screws
b) remove the 2 large ones

2) in the place where the main battery ought to be (remove it)
c) remove the 2 right screws (the ones that are NOT together

3) in the inside of the jornada
d) remove the CF (big), video (medium) & battery/spkr (small) ribbon cables (do not try to pull completely out the brown plastic pieces holding the ribbons, if you do so they'll BREAK!!, just lift them gently from the edges, the 2 big ones with a flat screwdriver and the spkr on with your fingernails). by the way, the cf ribbon just takes a little more effort to pull out, but be patient, DO NOT force it, just pull it gently
e) remove 3 screwlike pieces (don't know their exact name), one is behind the pcmcia releasing button, one is holding the video cable and the other is beneath the modem (if 690), in the middle (if 690e). they are gold hexagonal screwlike pieces, you'll need a clamp-like tool to unscrew them

4) back in the outside shell
f) finally, remove the 2 screws that are together in the main battery place (the ones i told you previously not to remove), those ones are the ones that hold the screen hinge together with the lower shell part (the one with the keybd)
g) change screen, and follow the inverse procedure for reassembling it

if you have any questions, contact me by private message, i could even mail you some pics of my own jornada opened up. excuse me for my lousy english, but it's not my mother tongue

Edited by matrixcore 2004-12-18 1:19 AM

I am curious if you got it working or have whats going on... I may be interested in the ROM to replace the one in 680E.

Grr, I hate it when manufactures stick obscure screws under stickers. Just not right.

mewiedman, take a look at this page: http://www.tefs.de/jornada/teile.html
In German, but contains some very high-res pics of a 680, similar to the 690, in full dissasmble.

Edited by Brain_Recall 2005-02-10 8:22 PM

A bit of an aside here, chaps

The lid case of my newly acquired 710 is coming away at the left hand side, starting from the hinge and ending just past the top corner. It seems to me that just tightening the screw won't do too much to this separation at the top, and I can see worryingly large amounts of screen components in the gap when I open the device

I haven't got jiggy with the screwdriver yet (I'll probably kill it), but was wondering if you folks might have any suggestions apart from attacking it with a paintbrush full of araldite

Thanks!

Barney

I strongly recommend you take it apart and look what's going on inside, as soon as possible. And until then, either do not open the lid, or do so carefully. Try to hold the left hinge together if you want to angle the screen.

The left hinge is where all the pressure goes to. The screen is held in the closed position by a strong spring inside the left hinge. Every time you open the screen up, you should feel a bit of tension, that's when the hinge's rotation is compressing the spring.

The set of screws on the base that hold this hinge is reasonably strong; two screws that go thru the plastic above the battery, then thru the hinge and into metal caps inside the long round plastic case (where the notification light/button is)

However, the set of screws that hold the lid side of that hinge is not ideal. After you peel the "hp" logo, you should see a screw on the left and a pin hole on the right. The screw on the left goes thru the plastic, then thru the hinge into a metal cap in the outside half of the lid, which is good. However, the second screw bolts the hinge from the other direction onto the inside lid, where the pin hole is. But there's no metal cap, and it does not connect to the outside lid at all. Why they didn't make the second screw like the first one is beyond me.

What happens is that the pressure goes thru the inside lid plastic, right under that hp logo. This bit of plastic can crack. DO NOT overtighten the two screws. The visible one, when overtightened, can shatter the plastic between the hinge and itself. The one that goes into pin hole can strip that hole or crack it open, since it's not a metal cap.

The lid itself should be tightly held together by small clips molded along the edge. However, if the plastic around those screws is cracked, the pressure of rotating the hinge starts seperating the lid, as a screw is bolt on each side. If your lid won't snap together at all, chances are the clips have already been broken off by that pressure.

There's no fixing those clips, as they are too small. So the only course is to tape it or glue it together. However, that won't help if you don't fix the plastic around those screws in the first place, as the pressure will simply seperate the lid again.

To fix the plastic around the screws, I'd recommend instant bond whatever is still there, and then reinforce the area with hot glue. Don't be too generous with the hot glue tho, as the area is tight, and too much extra stuffing would prevent the two halves from coming together at all.

Yes it's scary stuff, but I hope you can manage it. Good luck!

*gulp* I had no idea it was so serious!!

From what you've described, although I haven't peeled back the HP sticker, it sounds liek that plastic is cracked. Upon closer observation last night, a clip at the side has broken, I think, so it looks like I'll have fun this weekend!

Many thanks for the advice - if you're ever over in the UK, I'll buy you a beer!

Barney