I'd left quite a thick and ugly blob on the rear of the hinges and that still peeled off the ABS reasonably easily with the epoxy I'd tried. I'll have another go with JB-Weld as that claims good adhesion with ABS, otherwise I wonder if a solvent like poly cement might be safer.

Getting the sticky off was a grim job but cleaned up well. Generic two-part epoxy didn't work; left it to set for a couple of days and seemed firm but after a partial reassembly and opening and closing the screen a few times white lines appeared and soon cracked again. Genuine JB-Weld now on order!

Thank you very much, my lower back's giving me some grief today but could have been worse!

I did at least finally get to say hello to this cat I've seen occasionally on the way home who's usually on the wrong side of a fence to pester.

I've long thought if I was going to be hit on the journey through Croydon it was going to be this hairy junction - youtu.be/CQxI08UZ1dk (thanks @cyclegaz.bsky.social) - though assumed it would be from the right, this fellow came from the left. Doubt reporting would be any use, my bike's OK at least!

No SSDs unfortunately, just a couple of mismatched alkaline cells as a bonus. I did get Pocket Spreadsheet, Concise Oxford Spelling Checker and Formulator with the Organiser II, though!

At least I know why all of the boxes, manuals and Organiser II were covered in a tarry black goo! Lighter fluid has cleaned them up, but I'll need sterner stuff to finish the Psion 3c. Took some careful persuasion to get it open without causing further damage, but otherwise seems to be working.

Would you say it's best to completely strip the rubberised coating off, then? It's worn back to bare plastic in a few places already, and it looks like what's underneath does at least have some texture so shouldn't look too bad. Usually I'm trying to preserve printed text so am a bit more gentle!

The Psion II was inside the Psion 3's box (along with the Psion 3's manual and the Psion 3 itself), so doesn't seem like a mistake. I'll definitely need to inspect @shaneir.bsky.social's feed for hinge repair inspiration, though!

Relying on the the battery pack to act as a voltage regulator is certainly a choice. :-( I replaced the small plastic gears in mine with the brass ones made by Jeff Birt, one of the other anti-backlash gears has cracked but it's holding on well enough to be able to print.

On a vaguely related tangent "trapezium" versus "trapezoid" is fun, apparently it was Englishman Charles Hutton to blame for the definitions originally getting reversed however we later switched back yet the US continue to operate backwards to everyone else. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapezo...

I think it might be because the phone is scanning at 90° to how the screen is refreshing. I get a similar effect with CRTs - with a phone held horizontally I get chunky horizontal bars, with the phone held vertically I get thin diagonal stripes.

That brought the missing columns back, and I didn't even need the additional padding inside the back of the screen so I removed those to allow the organiser to snap shut properly. Here are the two organisers side-by-side; I haven't touched the other one yet as its LCD faults are intermittent.

The flex can't be directly heated, but there is a thick track on the back of the LCD PCB. I put two spring clamps either side of the missing column to apply pressure, then held a 350°C soldering iron to the back of the PCB for a few seconds. Be very careful not to slip and melt the flex!

If it's just a bit more pressure that's needed, then additional rubber strips in the back of the cover can help provide some additional force. With all this in place I was still one column missing, but the pressure was bending the screen and the organiser no longer clicked shut. No good!

That's a big improvement already, but we're not quite there. Squeezing the LCD in just the right spot brought back the rest of the columns...

With the screen out, the strip can be very carefully slid under the ribbon between the PCB and the LCD. There are two strips of tape installed from the factory that I very carefully peeled off the PCB and cut (don't try to peel it off the fragile flex cable). The LCD can then be screwed back in.

If reheating the adhesive is not possible, a mechanical fix might be. Here I've taken some 2mm rubber sheet, put two layers of Kapton tape on each side and cut a strip 3mm wide and 105mm long.

The back of the screen enclosure is clipped on, so pop it off starting at the hinge. The LCD glass is taped to the front, so push carefully from inside. Re-heating the long column flex cable is not possible due it being folded over (missing rows can be fixed by carefully re-heating the short flex).