Okay, just to recap:
1) I was a moron and spilled a full vodka tonic on my MP2100
2) The MP2100 initially worked fine (after wiping it off), but
approximately 3 hours later, the screen had solid horizontal lines (when
looking at it in a portrait orientation, vertical lines if you use your
Newt landscape) running through the LCD display. After almost 2 weeks
with the battery out and unplugged from the AC adapter, it still didn't
work properly.
3) I tried taking the thing apart, but couldn't get the LCD away from the
carrier bracket, so I put it back together.
Now believe it or not, I was able to fix this! I decided to share what I
did with the list in case a similar situation happens to someone in the
future.
First, I went to eBay and got one of Mr2ndHand's MP2100's for around $150
+ shipping. (My wife didn't want to be out-geeked by me and said that
she'd use the screwed-up one even if we couldn't get it fixed.) So with a
backup/replacement Newt on the way, I decided to roll up my sleeves, pull
out all my mini screwdrivers and associated tools, and see if i couldn't
get this thing to work.
Next, I did full backup to my Mac. After this was complete I removed all
power for about 2 days to ensure all the capacitors were fully
discharged. I set up shop at my kitchen table and got to work. My wife
(an electrical engineer - handy to have around in situations like this)
sat down to help, too. Always good to have a second set of hands, eyes,
and brain cells when attempting something like this.
After about an hour of gentle disassembly, I finally got to the unit back
to where I had gotten to before, and was determined to get the LCD
display away from the carrier bracket so I could clean the residue from
the PCB (printed circuit board) behind the LCD. After about half an hour
of no luck (and not wanting to break the LCD display in an effort to pry
it away from the bracket), my wife noticed two recessed areas in the
carrier bracket, that looked to be a different kind of plastic than the
bracket itself. A pair of tweezers and some gentle pulling resulted in
peeling back some sort of thin-film plastic covering a bunch of
connectors on the PCB that attaches to the LCD! Eureka!
With about two dozen q-tips and some rubbing alcohol, we cleaned up the
residue of my spilled drink, which was in between all the connectors. We
couldn't get to all of the PCB (some if it was still blocked by the
bracket), so we loaded up a q-tip and "squeezed" some alcohol down along
the row of connectors. We wait about 15 minutes (hoping this would be
long enough to let it dry) and plugged the power back in.... and it still
had the lines. So we shrugged our shoulders, and reassembled it in hopes
to try again some other time when it wasn't 1am on a work night.
The next day my wife says that she'll just use it as-is, since everything
worked OK, it just didn't look right. I say OK, so we put the (dead)
battery pack in and plug it into the AC overnight. Imagine our surprise
the next morning when we powered it on and the lines were gone!
So the end of the story is, we now have 2 working MP2100's, my wife no
longer whines about me having more gadgets than her, and my Newt stays
out of bars unless I carry it in my jacket pocket. And when I'm not
wearing a jacket with big enough pockets? I take my Palm Vx instead. =)
--- Michael A. LaMorteIn matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
T H I N K D I F F E R E N T
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