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 Back of the Newt. Before you attempt to open your Newt, perform a FULL backup, then create a second backup. Remove everything from the case, pen, front door, battery pack/cage and set them asside. Here we see the back of my UMP2000 just prior to opening. Astute observers will notice that the screwed are already removed. The IRDA and ports are on the left and the battery compartment is on the right. |
 Back Removed Here we see the back is removed. This is the most horrifying aspect of opening up a Newt. The awful cracks and crunches it makes and that one clingy tab that just won't let go...I hate this part! We can see the SER-001 board in the upper left corner and the ROM board in the middle-right-bottom. The pointer is pointing to the crystal we are going to remove. |
 Crystal proximity Here we see the crystal in proximity to the neighboring components. What's important to note here is that there is not a lot of room. The tip of my soldering iron is not much smaller than that of my PDA Panache pen! |
 Lower solder pad Here is a closeup of the "lower" solder pad for the crystal. This is a good place to start because it seems relativly clear of neighboring critical components. |
 Upper solder pad Here we are pointing to the "upper" solder pad for the crystal. It's important to note that this is a Surface Mount component. This means that extreme care needs to be taken because this is a mulit layered PC board. Too much heat will destroy not only the surface traces, but the traces sandwiched inside the board. |
 Crystal removed and replacement crystal The crystal has been removed. A technique that I use when un-soldering components is to apply the iron to the joint and then add some additional solder. This will help accellerate the melting of the solder that is already there. Then using a soft pry tool (I use a wooden dowel sharpened to a flat chisel point) gently pry up on the end you are unsoldering. Once you have one end unsoldered, it's just the same thing on the other side, except easier! |
 Crystal comparison The two crystals are side by side (use the prior image for additional comparison). As we can see here, the replacement crystal is considerably larger. We'll have to find room. We also notice that there are leads underneath the old crystal. This will be handy when it comes time to put it back in with a switch. It gives us something to solder to. |
 Where it goes I touched up the pads with fresh solder and to make the pads smooth for the replacement crystal. I've noticed that sometimes when solder gets old, it takes considerably more heat to melt it and it tends not to want to flow smoothly. This is why I like to add a clean layer of solder to the surface. You can also do this with the crystal leads to ehance solder adhesion and flow. This is called "tinning" but I didn't feel it was necessary here. |
 The perfect spot The best place for the crystal is lying right on top of that big IC on the right. I don't think it will be a problem. Here the electrical tape is performing double duty; It's providing insulation against electrical shorts and shock absorbtion to help prevent the metal can of the crystal from vibrating against the ceramic IC. |
 Closeup of the replacement crystal installed So, how are my solder joints? The trickiest part here is bending the leads in such a way to allow the crystal to lie against the electrical tape without excerting any stress on the leads. Don't want the crystal to act as a springboard. |
 Yay! It worked! OK, it powered up and all the packages loaded. (power up the Newt before you close it up. This way, if there's a problem, you don't have to open it back up) so after loading the implant package from PixSolutions into the Newt and running it, we see that I am indeed running quite a bit faster (unfortunately, I don't know exactly how much faster because I didn't check the speed before doing the speed upgrade) The speed displayed is close enough to 219mHz to satisfy me! Here is a hint on closing up your Newt. The screws used on the Newt are thread-cutting screws. This means that if you don't put the screws in the exact same threads they came out of, they will "cut" new threads. The Newt is plastic. The plastic most likely will not hold once the second threads are cut and will most likely strip out. The way to solve this is to place the screw into the hole and turn the screw counter-clockwise (as if you were unscrewing the screw). You can feel the screw "hop" as it skips over the original thread. Once you feel this, screw it back in. It will go back in on the same threads it came out on. |
That's it! Easy isn't it? Honestly, it took me less than half an hour to do this. If you're reading this, then you must have skills to want to attempt this. And if so, it shouldn't take much longer than it did me. The two tricky parts wer cracking the case open and then removing the crystal (it took a lot of persuation to get that bugger off of the board). So, if you've got a Weller, or an Unger soldering station, or even just a Grounded Radio Shack pencil iron, then you probably have the skills needed to perform this. (really though, the iron needs to be at least, either a grounded electric soldering iron, or one of those butane irons...I love those, I've got two!) |