old Palm Vx lose backlight ability?

[pigpen32]

Anyone know if old Palm Vx's lose thier backlight ability? I just pulled out my Palm Vx from being in storage for the past year and a half and recharged and re-synced it. And now when I hold down the power button I don't get even a glimmer. Screen LCD gets inverted so I know the backlight press is acknowledged but just no light. I tested by walking into a pitch black room at night as well.

I remember reading that over time, the older palms will lose thier backlight ability because based on some flourescent technology. That true? I used many hacks on the palm so I'm thinking maybe I used some backlight dimmer hack that I forgot about? I thought there was some way to adjust the brightness but I can't remember.

As a sidepoint, these old palm's were sure nice. I love how the Palm Vx (as well as the later m500 series) looks and with its revolutionary 8mb at the time, I was able to put some nice apps on the program. Still very usuable. I dropped this numerous times and it still runs like a champ. I bought the palm blue metal hard case so it looks pretty snazzy. Only downside is that it syncs with serial insteal of USB so restoring 8mbs of apps with backbuddy from a hard reset took a couple hours!

[pigpen32]

Found the answer to my own question.

First the dimmer button was actually the contrast button which is located on the top left. I remember always forgetting about that button.

Secondly it looks like I had a dead backlight. I found a great thread about this on the pdastreet.com/palmblvd forums:
http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=728

Apparently Palm Vx with certain serial numbers get afflicted with a dying backlight chip that in turns will drain your battery quickly as if the backlight function is still turned on. I've been wondering why my battery has been draining fast. The thread above outlines how to repair this yourself by taking out the backlight chip which stops the battery drain. SInce the backlight function was pretty weak to begin with, most live without it. Alternatively (for the less adventurous) there are also links to individuals and repair companies who can fix this and other related problems for a reasonable fee.

Even though I mainly used my clie th-55 I still have a fondness for this Palm Vx despite it being almost 5 years old. Looks like battery life as well on the old palms are around 2-3 years so a replacement might be a good as well. The repair prices are pretty cheap so it might be worth it to fix it. Anyway, hope this helps anyone else. Good info on those boards btw on other older palms as well.

[zackepceo]

Even with a good backlight chip, the EL lamp that power the backlight only lasts about 5 to 10 years.