Adventures in Backlighting...

Given that I use my Newtons pretty much every working day (and since I got the E5830 working, as my principal email client), I keep something of a stock of the little green blighters, just in case something should happen to them. The current fleet consists of two MP2000Us (upgraded by my own fair hands with motherboards from JK Sales), two MP2100s, an MP130 and an MP120. The 130 and 120 don't really get used any more - the 130 because, well, it's just too *slow* for me, and the 120 because it runs NewtonOS 1.2, and having started with NewtonOS 2.0 on the 130 it just felt like a retrograde step to me.

For some reason, I really prefer the aesthetics of the MP2000 to the MP2100. I've no idea what it is; maybe it's that the "Newton Technologies" in the top left hand corner is a bit fussy, or that the screen printed Apple logo on the cut out disc that was supposed to have the Newton Technologies logo looks a bit "home brew" and unfinished... I dunno, but there's *something* about it. So it was a pain to have to retire my first MP2000 because the backlight just became too dim and useless, and it was even more of a pain to notice that the second MP2000's backlight was starting to go the same way :( Only one thing for it then; replace the backlights !

Luckily, Knowledge Navigator has been advertising backlights on eBait recently, so it was easy enough to get them. I played it conservatively, and bought one "white" backlight and one ordinary green backlight - on the basis that if I really didn't like the white one I could always swap it back for a green one.

Having swapped the motherboards, I thought it would be a doddle - Frank's web pages at www.pda-soft.de has pretty good instructions after all - but it proved to be a bit more of a pain than expected - for two reasons. First was my chronic fear of my horrendous soldering non-skills melting the backlight, the display, or everything else in range. This meant that first time round I didn't get good contact with the backlight wires, so had to take it apart and do it over again. The other was that there is a little metal tab at the top of the metal surround on the display top, which has to go in the opposite direction through the plastic to the digitizer cable. I hadn't noticed it, and first time around just could not get the case back together properly at all.

So, first time around it took about 4 hours to get the thing apart, swap the backlight, then get it back together again. Second time around was about 40 minutes ;)

And the result ? The white backlight is actually surprisingly nice to use. I thought I'd be too used to the green display to appreciate it, but it's actually easier for me to read in most lighting situations, and it gives the text a quite nice blueish tint to it. The backlight doesn't seem *quite* as bright as the backlights on the MP2100s, but I think that's just perception - the white might not need to be quite so bright to be perfectly readable, even in awkward lighting. The new backlight doesn't seem to be any harder on batteries, so all in all I'm pretty happy with it thus far. It's also allowed me to put the original MP2000U back into service as my daily use Newt, which I'm quite happy about as my second MP2000U's screen door clip doesn't work properly, so the door has a tendency to flail around a bit rather than actually cover the screen !

Didn't take any pictures on the way through, but if I do swap the other MP2000U's backlight over I'll take some pictures as I go and post them. Frank's pics are pretty good, but I don't think he mentions that darn metal tab, so I really need to get a pic of that...