Well, I re-painted my 'spare' MP120 and both the Newton and I survived
to tell the tale. However, my recommendation to anyone who wants to
pursue this is: DON'T. Unless you really really REALLY desperately want
to and are prepared to deal with the loss of a Newt. Definitely don't
do it to your primary Newton that you couldn't live without!
It would also help to have significantly better soldering and painting
skills than me. :)
Getting the back off the case was easy enough, but getting the board(s)
out of the case was an adventure and a half. It is not just an
unscrew-and-remove job. To completely separate the board from the case
on a 120, there are 10 solder connections you need to de-solder and
disconnect. I am not very adept with a soldering iron and left a wake
of melty circuit board destruction everywhere I touched.
When I finally got the case apart, I applied a coat of white spray paint
to all the exterior surfaces. White may not have been the best
choice -- it "took" some of the old black paint somehow, giving an
overall light blue cast to the whole thing. I left it alone for a day,
and did a second coat, which made it a little whiter, but it still has a
very light powder blue tint to it. Not entirely bad looking, but not
quite what I had in mind.
At this point, I was starting to freak out about what I had done to this
poor unsuspecting PDA, and decided to cut my losses and reassemble the
thing. Much poking and soldering later, I hit the power button, and
absolutely nothing happened.
I was fully expecting to have killed the Newt whilst fumbling around
inside, so this was not a big surprise. I spent some more time re-doing
all of the solder connections a little more carefully, until finally, I
hit the power button and *bling* it actually powered up. I couldn't
believe it had survived all the horrible things I had done to its
internals.
But the problems didn't end there. Although dry, the paint was still
"sticky" and it picked up ink from the newspaper it had been resting on,
which proceeded to smudge all over the place and everywhere I touched.
I had to spend some time scraping excess paint from the area around the
on/off slider, and the card eject slider, so that they would move
again. But they'll never again move as easily as they used to. Same
goes for the lid release latch, battery cover, etc. The case does not
close as solidly as it used to in one corner. Additionally, I have
already managed to scratch the paint in a couple of places.
But, for what it's worth, I do now have an off-white MP120. Definitely
a one-of-a-kind, even if it does look a little shoddy. I took some
pictures along the way... I can put them online if anyone's
interested...
Again, I do NOT recommend anyone try this at home unless you are REALLY
GOOD with paint and solder, unlike me. :)
Steven
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