exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I managed to pick this up on eBay very cheaply:


Including postage I think all told it was under a fiver. The stylus is missing, however that's not the end of the world as it is simply a plastic stick with a switch in it, so it could be replicated with not too much trouble. For now I can use the one from my other touchpad.

The main issue is the drawing surface. This is my working tablet and you can see that it has a black plastic surface with a red boundary outside which the stylus doesn't function:


And you can see that this has been damaged on our restoration subject:


And zooming in to the surface below the damage we see this on the digitiser:


Having done some testing (Without the black and red sheet, which is just a hard wearing surface to draw on) the digitiser works, but the issue is the ding which is causing a false press at that location. What that does is hold the cursor there, and whilst movement is working, its restricted by that false press.

What I found is that using a bit of tape I could lift that area up and the digitiser would then work properly again with a full range of movement.

It doesn't appear to be anything electrical, just a thin mylar sheet, so my hope is I can lift and un-ding it and if not fit a replacement mylar sheet.

So I need to take a closer look at the digitiser to see whats what and how I need to move forwards.

As for the damaged shiny black layer, that might be able to be replaced by black mylar sheet too, and whilst it is foil backed, again there is no electical connection so it makes me wonder if it's just more FCC interference shenanigans since the digitiser works without it just fine.

I'm pretty sure this can be made to work fully again.

As for the silver label, that's another story...

So I'll need to tread carefully, the top mylar sheet is actually part of the circuit, it's carbon coated so whatever I do needs to preserve that.

It's going to be tricky.

:crossed1:

Good news, the digitiser is now working!!!

I set my hot air wand to 130C 20% flow and heated gently until the top mylar popped out slightly and then clamped with a sheet of thin brass.


I waited for it to cool down and whilst the gouge is still there, and always will be, the mylar has recovered enough that it no longer makes contact permanently:


So next up I need to have a look at the damage to the black top sheet, which is quite badly ripped. Might need to replace it but that at least doesn't seem electrically involved.