• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

MessagePad 130 No Sound

PotatoFi

Well-known member
A friend (well, @sclements anyway) sent me a MessagePad 130 to tinker with. This one had a battery leak, so I took it apart to clean it out. The battery that leaked didn't seem to touch any circuitry. On reassembly, everything seems to work great except for the speaker! I can't get it to make any sound. 

Any common issues to look out for there?

 

PotatoFi

Well-known member
Sadly I did not. I ended up sending it back to my friend. I think I found a reference on the internet saying that there was a surface-mount component that is likely to fail, and I deemed it too high-risk. I wish I had come back and written down my findings here, but at the time it was speculation only.

 

superjer2000

Well-known member
Well, it's working now.  I did two things...  first I went back and touched up the solder joints that connect back to the speaker and I also turned the sound on through the preferences...

I'm pretty sure the sound wasn't working before I changed the prefs as I didn't get the initial ding indicating my back up battery was dead and I did after I resoldered.  That being said, there is a chance that it could have been a software issue and I took the unit apart again for no reason.

I had the unit apart as I replaced the resistors mentioned on the 130 page on this site https://www.pda-soft.de/ and that fixed my back light (which hadn't worked since I got the newton ~17 years ago.  Those are tiny SMD Components!

 
Top