UPDATE: I have changed this thread to take out the "color change" in the title since there are now programs to change the trackball color. But the disassembly/assembly How To still applies.

OK, seems the rage now is to change the color of the Pearl's white LED, so to change the color of the trackball.

Actually, as long as you follow my instructions below, in the picture tutorial, it's an easy process.

Bonus Tip: You can clean your trackball assembly while in there. There are other threads on taking apart the actual trackball assembly. But if you can get away wiping it or blowing some canned air here and there, I suggest doing that.

UPDATE: The below pics are copyrighted. Do not copy or post
on other sites without permission from me.





























THIS IS SIMPLY A PIC FROM A FEW DAYS AGO SHOWING THE 4 LEDS
LIGHTING UP ON AN INCOMING CALL. NOTE THE WHITE LED, BEFORE I COLORED IT!

very nice write up SF... very nice..

BTW, where did you get that theme ?

I have a quick que for you. What do you use to get the pictures to look so good? Digital SLR camera?

You need to edit your post and take out my pictures in the quote. Please. It is cluttering up the thread.

Mods, can one of you edit his post if he does not, so to take out the repeat of my pics in his post.

I must say, as a lurker on this site for awhile... this is one of those post that a mod should stick. Nice write up SF, very very nice.

Cool photos.

Not yet ready to do the mod. But this post would also be useful to clean the trackball rollers (when it gets dirty).

SF, you rock!
That is a sweet write up, and a great mod!!!
I'm going to try it this weekend!!
Thanks

Thanks for the nice words. It took me about three hours last night to take the pics, edit and insert comments and post. Watched History Channel, News, Jay Leno and Conan.

I wanted to get it posted before the weekend since I figured many people would want to try it as a weekend project.

By the way, I'll answer questions about the camera, theme, etc. as soon as Canonbomb edits his post to remove my pics from his quote, which is cluttering up this thread.

The pics are removed....spill the beans on that theme! lol

It's not good to tell lies.

They are still there.

And now I am leaving, so too bad.

I don't see them:

While we wait for the clutterbomb to clean up his mess, can you tell me how long it took for you to actually take out the trackball and put it back together ? wanted to get a feel for how long the entire process took ya.

Did I mention your write up ROCKS !!!!

Thanks

Well the first time it was about 1 hour, just to be careful and all. Snoop around, look at everything with a jeweler's loupe to see how things fit and to make sure I did not break something.

Now I can do it in about 5 minutes.

So plan an hour just to be safe. You mostly do not want to force or push anything. If you do, that means things are not lined up. Lined up everything comes apart and reassembles with ease.

Also, if you put little reference marks, that saves a lot of time. That chrome ring is confusing because there are about four notches that look like the one that should be right above the #2 key.

Those are exceptional pics and a nice write-up along with them.

Brilliant!! It took me about 5 minutes to execute the procedure thanks to your perfect instructions and pictures. I, for the first time in my life, am excited about having a blue ball.....In any case, the only advice i might give to first timers taking apart small parts is to do the following. Have all your instruments laid out ahead of time--the smaller the screwdriver and forceps the better. Lay down a clean white cloth to work on in case anything pops out on you, and if you are a cat owner like me I suggest you bar them from your work area till this is complete. Also, when working with small parts, especially with delicate prongs, NEVER NEVER apply force. If something is not coming in or out easily, stop and re-examine your alignments and positions and apply force gently. The marking of the placement pieces is essential and obviously comes from an experienced person, it saved me all worries about where things were supposed to be. I also chose the blue color, and its simply fabulous with the black and silver colors of the pearl, hats off to San Francisco for a terrific idea, perfect instructions and the best assembly pictures I've seen on a post ever. Thank you, and once I get my black piel frama case next week Im going to be in hog heaven. To hell with windows mobile crap, this bberry is the best thing thats happened to an old ppc and windows smartphone hacker in ages. Since I still consult for them I have to show up to work with my tmobile dash, which isnt half bad, but the 8100 is a sheer pleasure compared to all the work I need to do on the dash to get it to do the things it ought to do all by itself.

Cheers,
W.S. Churchill (better known as lowell)

No, actually it's a Canon SD400 5 megapixel camera, set with flash off and in macro mode. But I also edit all pics with Adobe, for size, saturation, sharpness, grain, balance, etc.

I don't set up any special lighting, although I can. But I do turn on two 200 watt and two 100 watt incandescent bulbs in the computer area. It ends up being bright, but not as bright as it should be for closeups.

how about your theme SF ?

Sry about cluttering up the thread. That wasnt my intention. I was gone all day and just got back to my comp now. Thanks John for taking care of the problem for me. Once again really sorry for the inconvenience.

I'll post it Saturday since the friggin rain will keep me off my bikes [both road and with motors].

Excellent tips. I am going to separate them into separate sentences so people can read them. WSC would not have written one long paragraph like that.

People... READ THESE!

I forgot to post my tools and materials used. It's a good idea to have a little tray to place the parts into. Can even be a cup or glass.

Those were excellent pix and instructions, SF. I took the liberty of posting in on Pinstack, hope you don't mind (I did give full credit!). I assume the other LED colors are red and green judging how it looks when all the lights are going off during calls. Isn't that the iPhone theme posted in Pinstack? I heard people were having some trouble with that (off topic I know).

Also if you take your 8100 apart and have the keys off you can color each LED light that lights up your keys to any color you wish. I chose blue since thats the color of my trackball light. It now give it the perfect finish look since all the LED's that light up while its dark now have that blueish hough to them.
Nice work SF for the idea...

I would have preferred that you asked first before posting on PinStack as I would NOT have given you permission. This was an effort for BBF members.

Please remove the post from PinStack. I am compelled to remove the pics from my server in any event. I will repost with copyright notices on the pics.

Sorry to be an ass, but PinStack is not deserving of my efforts. [I realize BBF members are also PinStack members, but this is directed at PinStack].

I will remove my pics from my server and rename them. The material should not be residing on PinStack.

That theme came from the BBF theme section, I think it is called "Quorum."

The wallpapers for the homescreen are ones I accumulated over time, from BBF members. If you like the ones displayed I can post them because I cannot refer you to where I got them as I cannot remember. I think they are called the "Vista" line of wallpapers, the other is from a set of BB logo wallpapers.

As you can see, I change the wallpaper from time to time. So let me know which one it is you like.

Can you post some pics on removing the keyboard [there may be some elsewhere, but some pics in a specific "color your keyboard lights" thread would be nice].

Query: are the blue keys difficult to see in the dark?

SanFrancisco- Great write up and excellent pictures (what?! close ups in an internet forum how-to actually IN focus?!!!)

I'm wondering about your thoughts on repeatability...The metal pieces I'm not so worried about, as you can probably (to some extent) fix small goofs or re-bend pieces that start getting loose.

The part I'm worried about are the little tabs on the chrome ring. How many times do you guesstimate being able to remove and insert that baby until they start getting loose...? I can't really tell, but it looks as though the "hooks" on the end of the "forks" might get worn down over repeated cleanings/colorings?

Again, great write-up. Thanks for the prep/photo/post time and effort!

Good question. I'm going to put my response in red since this is important.

The plastic chrome ring, IMHO, cannot withstand more than a couple accidental "bending in," then "bending back" into place. It is soft plastic and appears very easy to break. So depending on how severe one bends the tabs out of place, that will determine how long the plastic ring will last.

But, if one carefully removes and reinstalls that ring, making sure things are perfectly lined up, probably will last 10 to 20 times before it fatigues? If that happens, I suspect there are ways to make some type of pin and/or to use museum wax to hold it in place. [This because the chrome ring does not really require that much pressure to hold the trackball in the socket.]

The inner metal retaining ring is also fragile. But it will hold up indefinitely if properly lined up on reinstall. But the pin/tabs feel like the metal will fatigue or break if one had to bend them back in place too often.

Neither ring will survive one accidentally stepping on them and then attempting to bend the pins or tabs back into place. If the smashing does not break them off, bending them back into place will.

Of the two I'd say the plastic chrome colored retaining ring is the worse. It is super fragile and will become inoperable at some point, even if one is careful.

While on the subject, it is interesting that the entire trackball assembly and the retaining rings are held together with tabs and snapping parts. No screws whatsoever. Interesting concept.

Bottom line: I would not be removing the trackball all that often since that plastic retaining ring is a time bomb, IMHO. However, I have removed it about four times so far without incident or signs of wear. So you can use that as a factor in determining how long it might last.

it's called the quattro theme:

http://www.microdesigncenter.com/Quattro_Theme.zip

Enjoy! (it's a good one)

I knew it had some kind of name like that.

On reflection, why the hell would a BB theme be named "Quorum." I watch the political TV shows too much. Or was it "Rome" on HBO when the Senators said there were enough of them to form a quorum? I dunno.

Sorry It seems i do not have the time to sit down and document my taking out the keypad its the same steps as taking the BB apart which can be found someplace on this forum I am sure I believe over on the FACT section. the blue is not hard to see at all even in high light conditions. In the dark it looks totally amazing I think my 8100 has never looked so good as it does now. Of course the middle keys that have the half white/black are brighter than the ones on the outside but you can read each key clearly with out strain. I would recommend this MOD to anyone wanting to make there BB more personal. I was also thinking of coloring the email/service LED with blue and see what color t produces when i receive an email I'm thinking it will turn purple'ish but I'm not brave enough to try that one just yet.

Nice tutororial and mod, thanks!!!!!!!

I'll look into it and post a tutorial.

What did you use to color your trackball and keyboard LEDs?

Thanks for the updates and comments.

I used a fine tip sharpie in blue and dapped the color on let it dry and tested for color the LED's are super bright so they shine right through a heavy coat of ink

Just did this with a regular ol marker and it worked great. I went with a dark blue marker which shows up as a nice blue tint on the pearl. It only took me about 5 minutes and i just used a small screwdriver. I'd highly recommend doing this since its fairly simple but has great results. If you're feeling really adventurous, your could desolder the white and blue leds and switch them, resulting in the blue on all the time and the white when a call comes in. But i'm quite happy with just the marker. Thanks a lot SF!

Now to explain to my parents that i just modded my new phone...

Excellent write-up! I tried this... but since I couldn't locate my blue sharpie, I had to use the red one. And only afterwards did I realize that it turns out pink. So now I have a nice pink trackball... heh... oh well, off to buy denatured alchohol tomorrow and change that.

Great you did it so fast, but caution to other BBF Members:

Don't turn this into a competition nor look at the clock. Take your time doing the job or something will break. Fact is, there are 100 ways to screw things up, which I cannot go into.

There's no shame in taking as much time as you need. Besides, no one is gonna care or know how long it took you.

My one hour time estimate included pausing, looking over the pieces, seeing how everything fit together and worked, etc. If you go slow and exercise caution it may take you as little as 1/2 hour the first time, IMHO.

Besides, even though I know I could do the job in 5 minutes or less, I won't bother because I will always go slow and with caution. Maybe 20 minutes or more each time.

There was a PM inquiry about my bottle of denatured alcohol [DA].

Boy... talk about details. Want to know what kind of frozen dinner came in the pictured tray?

DA should not be a mystery.

And actually that is a bottle that had scented oil in it. Once empty I washed it and filled it with denatured alcohol.

The top contains a glass dropper. I use it to put a few drops of DA on to whatever, a tissue, Q-Tip, or paper towel. It's easier to use it in a small container, hence the bottle that you see in the pic.

In hardware stores DA is sold in 32 oz cans or bigger, it costs about $4, I think. It's usually in the paint department, with the other thinners. Better bet is to simply ask where it is or you could be spending 15 minutes looking for it.

Oh, didn't mean it like that at all. I guess I should have prefaced that with the fact that I'm a pretty computer savvy high schooler who fixes comps on the side, and am used to dealing with small parts. I also, stupidly, like to rush things. So yes, if you're considering doing this absolutely take your time and go at a pace comfortable for you.
Also, i found that the smaller the screwdriver, the better.