Dark Screen

[mh1]

Aauuugh! Help!!

I've had my 650 about 2 months off ebay. It arrived clean and functioned perfectly until this week. Suddenly I have no screen. I can tell the phone is still functioning based on the behavior of the LED light and keyboard lighting. However as i noted above, no screen.

I found tons of good troubleshooting advice on this forum and the web.

I have tried a soft reset, hard reset and zero-out reset all to no avail. A couple of times I got the Palm Logo & Palm One screens and once I got the 'erase all data' question on the hard-reset. I selected "y" (up) per the instructions. At that point the screen faded in and out gradually until it went dark again -- thats the first time I have seen it do that.

I also got the rainbow screen once.

The only other thing of note I can report is that during my 2 months of normal use, the screen would often power off after about 10 seconds despite my frequently re-setting it to 3 mins under Prefs. I would be trying to write a memo or something and the screen would power off on me. That was annoying but I was able to manage around it. Now.. since the screen doesnt light up at all I am desparate. Does this sound like a hardware problem with the screen or has the power-off feature taken over my phone or is it a total mystery?

Thanks in advance for any help. I will continue searching the boards here for a thread on this. Meanwhile any advice is greatly appreciated!


Best Regards
Matt

ps. I do have the software for the phone provided by the ebay seller.

[brandon]

you may have a loose cable connection. open the housing and see if the cables are seated properly. that's the only thing i can think of, since you've already performed the resets. it's possible you have a bad unit as well. it could be any one of a half-dozen things, really. let us know how you get on with it, at any rate. welcome to the forum!

[mh1]

Thanks for the response. I've made some progress in that I now at least have a screen image, although it is very unstable. The screen looks normal until i touch it or press a button on the keyboard. Then it goes crazy wth the image fading in and out, and is filled with horizontal lines which move rapidly until the screen fades out. It almost looks like a signal interference. I can tell the zero-out restart did work because everything looks reset back to default and my personal data and settings are gone.

Thanks for the tip about the cable connection. I'm looking around for a torx screwdriver small enough to fit the casing screws.

Regards,
Matt

[jfa02]

You need a T5 and if nothing else try radio shack!

[mh1]

Well .. no luck i'm afraid. I loaded up a fresh firmware update & tried checking out the cable connections. It is more difficult getting into the casing than I'm comfortable with.

I'm calling it. I'll be searching round for a replacement.. maybe a Blackjack this time around.

I do appreciate the replies & have a good week.

Matt

[mh1]

i may have spoken too soon here. it's working fine now. For how long i dont know.

With a little patience I was able to get into the casing. i didnt know about the7th screw at the antenna under the rubber plug. once i got that out it came right apart. i found the screen cable easy enough but everything 'looked' ok so i just pressed gently around both ends and put the phone back together. i ran a warm reset (phone off & reset buttons together) and still had a dead screen.

Now for the wierd part. I then I switched off the ring mute switch on top of the phone and the screen woke up. Based on what i've read, there is no connection between the two but that's really what happened. I dropped in a sim card and made a call successfully.

so hmmmmmmm.. i have a working Treo again so im happy. Yahoo!

thanx again all..

[LotusLord]

Glad it appears to be working now, and welcome to Treonauts!

[jfa02]

yes indeed glad its working. Better to be lucky than... Yeah the screw under the antenna plug is easy to overlook on the first time opening the case.

[forgot]

Honestly it sounds like a bad screen/digitizer. If it fades out again I would suggest a screen replacement.

[Pete Lorenz]

In any event, mh1, please keep us posted on the operational condition of your Treo......
I hope it continues with no problem, and was not a hardware issue....... ( ? )....
If for some reason the problem recurrs, I think that you'll find Treonauts will be as patient as you will allow in the quest to solve the problem, if possible.
Keep us posted!