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IBM Simon repair

N

Nekopan

New Member
Joined
Dec 4, 2016
Messages
8
Hi folks,

I took a bit of a brash decision to jump on an IBM Simon I saw listed recently. It's been a bit of a dream to own one, so I wasn't going to wait long as the price was the lowest I've ever seen for one that has the original box.
Seller described it as "functions flawlessly", however upon reception this isn't the case. I guess I can't be too surprised, they simply found it at an estate sale and were reselling it.

I'd like to, of course, get this guy back up and running. This is the current condition:
- Battery charges
- - There is a second battery that is sealed, I have not tried using it
- System will turn on using the power switch on the side, but only the screen backlight comes on
- Neither of the status LEDs light up
- When powering off, the screen displays a single line of pixels vertically and fades out
- Physically in impeccable condition

The original manual is not included, and manuals I can find online are all missing the troubleshooting pages (page 73). Not sure that would help all that much but maybe it had details for a reset procedure.
I have tried performing the "button-based" procedure for adjusting the screen contrast to no avail.

I did do a quick check by removing the four visible screws on the back. It starts to come apart after disengaging the clips but resists coming apart completely. For fear of damaging it further I didn't pry any more than a light effort and just put it back together.

This is such a niche item that information online is, as far as I can find, all but nonexistent. I'm hoping someone here would have some experience to help me troubleshoot this further and hopefully have it running again.

Many thanks!
 
So prior warning, having never touched much seen someone operate a Simon I'm working in the dark here and am basing off of laptops from the era rather than a phone.

Battery charges
Click to expand...
If that's a Ni-MH or a Ni-CD (lithium battery tech had not matured yet) I doubt there's much if any life left in either of them. Without knowing how the charge I can't say if it's just trying to charge and doing nothing or it's actually giving you a residual charge but I doubt there's smarts in a battery that old.

-System will turn on using the power switch on the side, but only the screen backlight comes on
Click to expand...
Good. So that at least means the Power Management circuit is alive.

- Neither of the status LEDs light up
Click to expand...
Without knowing what the status LED's do I can't help explain that one.

- When powering off, the screen displays a single line of pixels vertically and fades out
Click to expand...
What tells us is that the LCD's controller is getting power and when it drops out it fires off a garbage line, which tells us that at the very least that one line of the screen works.
It does not tell us if the display is receiving any video information from the rest of the phone or if it's something like (and I'm basing this from other LCD devices from the same era) a capacitor in the contrast circuit has gone open and it's always stuck with the contrast stuck all the way down.

Physically in impeccable condition
Click to expand...
My curiosity has me here. Was this coated in the rubber material IBM liked to apply to their laptops of the same era?

All I can say is that the lights are coming on but nobody's home. Whatever the Simon does to "boot" isn't getting far enough along in the Power-on Self Test (That thing is such a weird combination of technologies and DOS I don't even know if it's appropriate to call it a POST) to initialize the screen. Could it be capacitors? No idea. It seems other folks with Simons have working units. (with zero maintenance in the recent past?) I really think it might be a good idea to try and locate anyone else with a working Simon and ask them what they see or what the phone does when they power it on. We need a baseline.
 
The battery seems to hold a somewhat respectable charge. I'll put a multimeter to it for some fun to see what it's putting out.

One LED is for the system power and one is for the "phone" power. From some reading online, it seems that to handle its awful battery life a bit better you can independently turn off the cellular components from it. One LED signifies this status.

I opened it as best I could and saw only tantalum caps in there. I know they can fault too, especially from this era, but at least they'll be more resilient.

No, the plastic is textured but hard finished. It's lovely. The whole device feels very well made. Weighted right, nothing creaky or fragile.

So, here's a wrench in the mix. I figured I'd contact the original seller anyway, figured they'd just block me or blame it on whatever but they did actually want to work with me and had some details to include. Keep in mind this is technically hearsay so take it with a grain of salt, I suppose.

Seller states that it was running fine, booting and launching apps as expected prior to being put in the box and shipped. So, could be mechanical, maybe it was exposed to a lot of vibration, or coincidental hardware fault. However, they did mention something else that caught my eye. When they first booted it up, it came on immediately after the battery was installed. This is a bit odd, because the manual does not say this is the case, that the system has to be switched on after a battery is installed. They also had some details about the boot process that I think would be hard to fake, so I'm inclined to take it at face value as some interesting behavior.

I do know there's an internal battery that maintains some volatile memory. The system charges that off the battery. As I can't find any reset procedure, I'm going to leave it with the battery disconnected for 12 hours or so, see if getting it fully drained will kick it back into life. Worth noting that when it was shipped it had a battery installed.

I am hoping another Simon owner can chime in here. Surely at least one other person has worked on one of these. If I can figure out how to disassemble it without breaking anything I can start checking parts out.
 
Well, we can end the thread here, but I’ll put down as much information as I can given that there’s effectively nothing else around.

I left the phone with no battery connected for several days, and today decided to charge the battery for an extended amount of time. Left it on the charger for at least 8 hours.

After installing the battery, system booted successfully. Works as expected!

So, if you happen across a Simon with this behavior, give this procedure a try.
 
Seems so! I'd love to figure out why exactly that is, but I'm sure it has something to do with the battery chemistry, voltages and some level of protection for the system.

I'm concerned for the future, when the batteries fully give up the ghost. Perhaps I will look into creating a 3D printed replacement that can take a modern pack + have a built in 12v jack and power regulator so it can be used "wired".
 
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