Back in the day… who knew?!? Who knew that one day, the technological devices of the era would have issues with their displays.
LCD displays were a welcome advancement over the LED displays of the day when it came to long battery life and smaller, thinner devices. Among those devices are “pocket computers” that were able to put the power of a BASIC computer into the palm of your hand. However, over the years, the trusty LCD display has suffered from manufacturing issues. Due to their design, a liquid crystal material sandwiched between two special glass plates, some LCD displays have started to leak, or “rot”, causing the displays to slowly turn a permanent black color.
For the most part, the device is rendered useless when this happens as there are no alternatives to an external display of any kind. But thanks to a few resourceful people, we are now seeing an emergence of replacement displays, designed to work like the original, and made with better quality parts and assembly.
One of these people has created replacement displays for the Radio Shack PC-1 and PC-3, along with the Sharp brand counterparts. I own a PC-3 and a Sharp PC-1250A. Both of these are the same device, but with different branding… and both suffer from the LCD screen rot.
Weird, too. as they were fine only a couple years ago when I meticulously put them in dry storage. I guess that just goes to show that even good conditions may not save the original devices. But when I saw The Half-Baked Maker selling replacement LCD displays for only $20, I knew it was a no-brainer to get two of them, one for each of my pocket computers.
I just ordered the displays and now I await their delivery. Sometime after I receive them, I will attempt to replace one of the displays in my devices to see how successful I can be with it. I will update this post when I do so.
