Wednesday, July 20th, 2005, 7:24 am
Palm Digitizer Problems
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Does the following scenario sound familiar?
I have a T3 and whenever I have to re-digitize the pen (ie, reboot), it sometimes takes 30 to 40 cycles of ‘upper left’, ‘center’, ‘lower right’ before it stops.
(source: nttp://alt.comp.sys.palmtops.pilot — July 19th, 2005)
This situation often gets worse. I used to go through hundreds of such cycles at some stage. The number of necessary repetitions seemed to have gone up progressively and, at one point, I had my 8-year-old sister do it for me. I told her it was a game. I finally decided to ask the Palm community and got some suggestions. The problem turned out to have been far more wide-spread than I had anticipated.
Steve confessed about his bad experiences yesterday:
…I have had my Clié for 2 years now and never had to reset the digitizer. My two Palm T3 needed a reset at least 2-3 times each time I was powering it on. That drove me crazy and Palm didn’t acknowledged the problem while thousands of customers were complaining.
Finally, some possible solutions were offered by Aaron last night:
The mad digitizer syndrome is a mechanical defect just like a broken switch. There is software that will compensate (like DigiFix) but the only real solution is to repair the unit. Some have found that cleaning and reseating the internal cables solved the problem. If all else fails, and you’re handy the digitizer can be replaced for US$40.
So, it turns out that digitizers are easily replaceable, although soldering work is involved. Over the years, I gave up on the damaged unit and handed it over to my brother. Sadly, the issue never resolved itself. On the other hand, somebody has fewer reasons to be bitter:
I had a T2 fail on me last year with the same symptoms and Palm replaced it under warranty with a new T3! Others were not so fortunate.
Cited by: PalmAddict
July 20th, 2005 at 10:12 am
I have a T3 with a buggy digitizer.
Do what I do: if it reboots and the digitizer screen comes on, DO NOT TOUCH the screen. Instead. press one of the PIM buttons to bypass the digitizer (it works for me).
If you HAVE to digitize, use something called DigiE.It’s much less sensitive than the built-in digitizer.
March 26th, 2006 at 6:03 am
I had a digitizer problem with my Vx. It was so out that I couldn’t get to the digitizer to fix it. I started reading about all these things to do to fix it. I didn’t have the time and didn’t get to it. In the meantime, the battery of the Vx practically ran out. And when I turned it on, the calibration had changed due to the very low battery. I quickly went to the digitizer and calibrated. I then charged it up, and now it works fine. I lucked out. It’s worth a try before you start loading in other digizers or doing a hard reset.