Sunday, May 28, 2006
Today I dissected an old Pda. The Sony CLie PEG TJ35. It's about 2-3 years old, and after a long illness, it finally died. Not that I was complaining much though, I have a rw1950 and a rx3510. The Pda was one of the first to use the Palm 5.1 ver OS, which allowed media-playback such as mp3s and mp4s. and has a MS slot. No camera/bluetooth or WiFi though, they didn't have it in 2003 on Pdas then.
So I'll be doing some techno-autopsy now.
The Clie PEG-TJ35
The easiest to remove, the battery cover, you can see it's still protected by the copper shield.
The rear-panel removed, you can see the speaker on the (bottom-left) and the MS card-reader on the top right.
The chassis removed.
The copper shield removed, together with the processor board.
The iMX-1 Motorola Dragonball processor! Specs indicate it's a ARM9 processor (not a StrongARM yet though). Top speed rated at 200Mhz. But basically the usual LCD controller, with dual UART ports, PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) SSI, I2C, Bootstrap, MMC/SD/ MS controller/ SP1 and SP2 interrupts. Watchdog and RTC system I/Os. The only difference is the Multimedia accelerator and Video Port. It's got a DMAC (Direct Memory Access Controller) as well.
Not sure what the bottom chip does though, 29Z0005PBT? Can't find any datasheet on that either. Probably an interface chip.
The bottom of the I/O processor board, you can see a proprietory SONY chip on the bottom, probably for the MS controller, and a 32mb SDRAM chip.
The memory chip v54C3256164VBUT7. It's a 256Mbit (16M x 16) SDRAM, LVTTL, ultra low power, 7ns chip.
The bottom chip is the touchscreen driver CXD3523AGG - Maybe a timing generator for the LCD display since the i.MX already has an LCD controller.
OMG, lousy workmanship, double-sided tape?! Well, the product WAS made in China! No wonder when dropped lousy pdas spoil. As do other made-in-china electronics.
The MS card-reader.
Aluminium chassis, on the bottom are the SMD tactile buttons and Sony-scroll-wheel.
More double-sided tape on the rear-panel.
A lithium-Ion battery with no brand, (another cheap china product?) That's probably why the batteries die so fast.
The chassis removed, it is heavy. Modern-day PDAs don't have a heavy chassis like this. Most use polymers now.
The final result of the dissection. The PDA is officially dead now though, the battery is dead as well. 0.74v from a 3.6v Li-ION battery after a full-charge? I think the screen-I/O is damaged as well, as well as the back-light controller.
Oh well, that was fun anyway.
4:37 AM
