Here's the latest in my continuing saga of getting my SER-001 to
work. I provide this information to help anyone else seeking to
solve the same problem I am.
I decided to try the "countersink" trick in hopes that perhaps
that would solve the problem of the PCB coming disconnected from
the socket. Piecing together information provided by Laurent,
Richard Davis, and David Humphreys, I figured out what I thought
was the proper technique.
So I went to a hardware store and purchased an "Adjustable
Countersink Bit". The store had about 4 different bits
identified on the package as being of different sizes, which I
assumed to refer to the diameter of the bit at the widest point.
Since I understood that the size wouldn't matter (probably
because the smallest bit is still larger than the small
screwhole on the PCB), I bought the "adjustable" variety which
cost about $9. All the bits were labelled "82 degrees".
Then I opened up my Newton, unscrewed and then carefully
re-seated the SER-001. I then took the countersink bit and
manually inserted it into the screwhole. Applying a moderate
amount of pressure, I turned the bit by hand. I could see the
material around the screwhole being scraped away, and saw the
residue on the bit. After a few turns, I decided to give it a
try and replace the screw. I noticed that it did make closer
contact with the PCB. I repeated with the second screwhole and
reassembled the Newton. The case "bulge" around the SER-001 I
used to see before countersinking was almost completely gone,
which I took to be a good sign.
My first experiment was to connect a modem to the serial
connector and make an NIE connection. This succeeded -- the
connection went up perfectly and I had no problems. I tried
again with the Newton keyboard, typed a few letters, saw the
letters appear in the Notepad, and declared a victory.
My second experiment was on my office computer this morning. I
tried connecting to NCU with a PC-to-Newton serial cable
(provided by Apple with one of the Newtons I've bought over the
years) connected to the SER-001 jack -- no success connecting
the Newt to NCU. I then plugged the same PC serial cable into
the serial adapter dongle, plugged the dongle into the
Interconnect port, and successfully connected to NCU.
I see 2 theories about why this is failing. Maybe there's
something wrong with the serial port on the PC or with the
PC-to-Newton cable, or maybe between last night and this morning
the SER-001 PCB connection to its socket came loose again. The
fact that NCU connects fine when using the "dongle" leads me to
doubt that the PC or cable are the cause of the failure. I'm
suspecting the PCB came loose again.
My next steps are to retry the modem experiment and see if it
succeeds. If it fails, I'll conclude that the countersink trick
probably didn't help improve the reliability of the connection
between the PCB and the motherboard socket. If it succeeds, I'll
look more closely at the serial cable and the PC's serial port.
If anyone has any more suggestions or comments I'd welcome them.
I hope this information may be useful to others now or in the
future (thanks to Victor's great searchable list archive)
struggling with the same problem. The dongle-free Newt feels
soooooo close!
-Jeremy
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Thu Nov 01 2001 - 10:01:39 EST