Is this PM3 broken?

[sgtgrumbles]

The LCD screen on my PM3 is very dim and slow to respond to input. I've tried several sets of batteries and updating the firmware but nothing seems to help. Adjusting the contrast seemingly does nothing. The unit is a few years old but has only been used maybe a dozen times. It's been like this since I first purchased it.

Anyway, I took the PM3 unit apart and took the following pictures. The first pic shows what looks to be a blown capacitor:



Here's a pic of what appears to be a battery. It looks pretty bad:



What do you think?

[Carl Watts]

The first pic is just the residual flux from resoldering the chip capacitor, this doesn't look factory as the board should be clean.

I have serviced numerious monitors but have not had a single one with the fault your describing so it could be serveral things that are wrong with it. You would need some test & measurement skills to faultfind the problem and I could only get you so far.

The second picture is the memory backup capacitor. These are all faulty on the early model 2003/2004 PM3's. It is not affecting the operation of the monitor as you describe what it does is backup the time and date whan you change batteries for up to 20 minutes. You will notice that you have no backup and have to reset the language and date & time whever you change the batteries.