[Backdated post moved hither: no editing. Orig date 2006-03-23. I’d forgotten its details and how long the post is. That let me laugh, I think—though the end now seems a bit mic-drop.]
Note that other Palm models require different, though I’m sure equally torturous, antics. Note too that all this is in flagrant violation of a long-expired warranty.
- Use google to figure out which battery you need (Sony 169-2492 / 169-4399, $20), since neither Palm’s site nor CNet’s tech specs page says anything useful. Wait for delivery.
- Open package to find battery. No packing slip, no instructions, no warranty.
- Examine back of Palm. Dig out hex keys and stare. Realize you lack proper tool.
- Call local hardware store and amuse clerk by asking whether they have a T6 Torx, “you know, the little key for those tiny screws.” Well, damned if I was going to walk there for nothing.
- Walk, buy, pick up hot chocolate as anticipatory mini-reward, return home.
- Remember that the net knows most things and run “replace palm tungsten battery” through google, with this result. It’s for replacing a cracked screen, but that’s all right.
- Leave little flakes of nail polish as you struggle to open the case without breaking the high-impact plastic. Feel thankful that your fingernails rarely break (which is why you chew them idly when you haven’t painted them).
- Realize your fingernails will break anyway if you keep this up. Find jewelry-sized screwdriver and begin using it as lever.
- Keep levering.
- Pop bottom half of case onto floor. Manage not to step on it despite sudden absence of resistence. That’s some mighty high-impact plastic.
- Consult screen-removal instructions, then separate motherboard-and-battery from top half of case. Narrowly avoid severing flimsy ribbon that connects motherboard to screen.
- Try to unplug little battery connector from motherboard with board in hand and case-half braced against bed. Try a lot. More.
- Realize that ribbon can be disconnected; do so. Fiddle with battery connector some more.
- Give up and find cosmetic tweezers. Tug on wires (not recommended). Pop battery connector out almost immediately.
- Remember the
hotlukewarm chocolate and drink half. - Consult instructions, then misinterpret them and try to pop motherboard from its plastic fitting.
- Nearly break something popping it back in without touching the circuits with your increasingly clammy hands.
- Push experimentally at battery connector wires. Realize that battery hides beneath flimsy aluminum sheet.
- Waste twenty minutes prying at sheet, which has bent sides to keep it in place laterally, a clip at its top with a bit of the underlying plastic protruding through the middle (think of a coat-loop on a hook), and a clip at its bottom.
- Consult net one last time. Find this comment-thread full of complaints about how expensive it is to send stuff back to Palm, Inc. (For the Tungsten C: $169 plus parts + labor.)
- Realize that there’s nothing to lose and apply brute force to the sheet. (Breaking it isn’t much worse than reassembling it with a nearly-dead battery.) Bend it tenderly to see how the clippy bit works. Bend it with annoyance and vigor. Use screwdriver to lever clippy bit up. Realize further that the sheet is fucking glued to the battery.
- Find the tweezers and bend the clippy bit quite out of shape (without gripping the motherboard too tightly or scraping little circuit things or whatever).
- Free the battery from its cruel clippy prison. (Bonus: narrowly avoid snapping off clip entirely.)
- Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel the aluminum sheet off.
- Set the motherboard and old battery on the nearest non-lint surface (an article on castles in Glamorganshire) and bend the sheet flat again. Sort of. Reassure your roommate that everything’s fine after you yell “Fuck!” loudly without meaning to.
- Eye the parts and orient the new battery correctly. Use the tweezers to brute-force the battery connector into the motherboard’s socket.
- Expose sticky bit on new battery and pat aluminum sheet into place. Swear some more because it’s still concave. Brace the motherboard as best you can and flatten the bloody recalcitrant sheet.
- Snap everything back together. Well, at least assembly’s easy on the manufacturing end. Tighten the screws carefully.
- HotSync the poor little device. Hold your breath when it displays a memory error. Reset it and HotSync again.
- Offer remaining cold chocolate to bf when he shows up a few minutes later. Stare forbiddingly when he asks why you didn’t wait: you have a slight edge on DIY experience.
Time elapsed from step #6 to end: 1h45. Yuck.