The other day, I went to turn on my Palm Tungstern T3, and it was dead, and I mean D-E-A-D. No combination of charging, resets, etc. would bring it back to life. I posted a message at www.1src.com (an excellent PalmOS forum) and found some suggestions and links. Fortunately, opening the T3 and re-seating the battery connector did the trick, so a replacement battery was unnecessary, but if I did have to replace the battery, it would have been an easy task. Read on for some links and information about disassembling and resurrecting a dead Palm Tungsten T3…

I did a Google Search on Palm T3 Disassemble or Palm T3 Disassembly and got a number of good hits. I found the following links to be very useful:

http://www.pspilot.de/ppptun3/ppptun3.html
http://www.pidcock.co.uk/pda/tungsten-repair.html
http://www.gethightech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=GHT&Category_Code=_tungsten_takeapart

If your battery is completely unusable, go to http://www.PDAParts.com , where they have a huge selection of PDA replacement parts.

A couple notes:

1. You only need a simple, small Philips screwdriver to disassemble the T3. No need for a Torx driver (which is required for the T5….)

2. Have patience and be careful. The parts are small, and you don’t want to break anything. The good news, though, is that once opened up, there is a logic about how things are connected, and it’s very simple to locate the proper connections.

If nothing else,  it’s kinda cool seeing the insides of a T3, and how it works!