In the July/August issue of The HP Palmtop Paper, Mark Scardina warned about possible long term effects of Back Pocket Stress (carrying your Palmtop in your back pocket). I had the following direct experience of Back Pocket Stress.
While leaving a bar in New York during the excitement of the Canuk's win over the Rangers in the 1994 Stanley Cup, I managed to slip on the sidewalk and landed on my right side. Weighing a svelte 254 pounds, the impact of my fall was quite considerable. Fortunately l was cushioned by my HP 100LX which I was carrying in my back pants pocket. I know I landed on it because the outline of the HP could be seen in the large multi-colored bruise, and the L shaped tear in my pants matches exactly the corner dimensions of the 100LX. The Alt key now clicks a bit when pressed, but the HP 100LX still works just fine, and I still carry it in my back pocket all the time!
A week or so later, I was trying to create a new sub-directory on my 5MB Flash-card when I got a Device I/O error message. After some poking about, I eventually looked at the Flashcard. It is concave on the under side, and has several visible wrinkles in the top metal cover. Most of the card seems ok, but I cant access several files. CHKDSK runs ok, but when I try to do a surface scan it locks up immediately.
I've since replaced the 5MB card as I need reliable access to my files but I'm wondering if there is any way to repair damaged PCMCIA cards. Do I flatten it with a rolling pin to get the memory chips lined up again, or is there a more subtle way to disable the parts of the card that don't work?
--Tony Paxton CompuServe ID: [71601,1150]
[The rolling pin sounds like an interesting experiment, but if you want to get some use out of the card it would probably be more fruitful to send the card back to the manufacturer for repairs. - Robert]