*Notes
2009_1128_laptop_fix
My brother's laptop pc, an IBM Thinkpad R31; it died a little while back.
Well it didn't exactly die, but the screen went so dim you could only just make out what was on the screen by shining a light at it, as good as blank and basically useless. Annoying, because it's a pretty good computer, and had a stack of files on it that, as a result, we couldn't access.
Interestingly I tried plugging in an external monitor and this wouldn't work either. I can only assume this is because an external monitor still gets its backlight power from the source computer.
So I googled around a bit and discovered these symptoms sounded very much like a 'Screen Inverter' failure - that skinny little pcb card I'm holding is this bit. Apparently its sole purpose in life is to take the DC power it gets from the pc mainboard and invert it to AC so it can power the backlit screen.
We bought a new (or more likely a rescued) part, and used some instructions I found on the web to fit it. This meant dismantling the screen frame which was a bit fiddly, removing the old pcb and plugging in the new one.
Job done, and as you can see, the screen is now up and running again, and this is me demonstrating where to fit the replacement part.
2009_1128_laptop_fix
My brother's laptop pc, an IBM Thinkpad R31; it died a little while back.
Well it didn't exactly die, but the screen went so dim you could only just make out what was on the screen by shining a light at it, as good as blank and basically useless. Annoying, because it's a pretty good computer, and had a stack of files on it that, as a result, we couldn't access.
Interestingly I tried plugging in an external monitor and this wouldn't work either. I can only assume this is because an external monitor still gets its backlight power from the source computer.
So I googled around a bit and discovered these symptoms sounded very much like a 'Screen Inverter' failure - that skinny little pcb card I'm holding is this bit. Apparently its sole purpose in life is to take the DC power it gets from the pc mainboard and invert it to AC so it can power the backlit screen.
We bought a new (or more likely a rescued) part, and used some instructions I found on the web to fit it. This meant dismantling the screen frame which was a bit fiddly, removing the old pcb and plugging in the new one.
Job done, and as you can see, the screen is now up and running again, and this is me demonstrating where to fit the replacement part.