This symptom appears when more than 20 packages are installed either in the Newton MessagePad's internal memory, on an external PCMCIA storage card, or a combination of the two. The Newton MessagePad's Extra drawer can only handle a total of 30 icons. The Newton MessagePad 100 ships with 10 built-in icons.
On the original Newton MessagePad and the Newton MessagePad 110 all icons past the limit are not displayed and require a third-party utility to access them.
As additional packages over the limit are installed on the Newton MessagePad 100 their icons are displayed at the bottom of the Extras Drawer. As this happens, the icons in the top row of the Extras Drawer start moving off the screen.
Currently, the only work around for this symptom is to keep the total number of icons to 30 or fewer. This problem only affects the Newton MessagePad 100 devices with ROM version 1.3 (414059). This problem does not affect the original Newton MessagePad or the Newton MessagePad 110.