Thinkpads Forum

I replaced the CCFL a couple of years ago and it brightened up the screen really nice. At the time, the inverter had some buzzing, but the replacement one had some buzzing too, so I returned the new one. Some pressure and some sticky tape kept the buzz away.

Things have been perfectly fine till about a half hour ago. The screen would go completely blank, and the "on" and "Plugged in" light would go orangey/green/pale, which is much different than the actual orange of 'battery charging'.

Restarting would fix the problem, as would putting the T60 into standby.

On further testing, putting the brightness at the lowest setting and the problem would stay away.

And on putting it on max brightness....yup after 2 min, blank screen. No backlight, orangy/green/pale indicator lights. lower brightness to min, standby 10 seconds, bring back from standby, walk down 1 brightness setting, blank screen, repeat, down to one up from min setting at the moment for it to stay on at any length of time.

So that's a faulty inverter right?

I've got a 'server' t60. Also 14" form factor, but just a xga, not sxga screen. Can I use that inverter in this one?

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Tested with a known good inverter and same issues. So the inverter is not the problem. So the problem is either before the inverter or after the inverter.

So onto installing another ccfl. Did it once already, and replacements only last a year or so according to one source. Surprisingly not hard to do, just tedious.

PITA that it only lasted this long, but for a year, the screen was wonderfully bright, so I'll deal with it I guess and be more mindful of standby when not in use.

ATM it sits running, and I just remote in when I need something from it. I'm missing some horsepower and ergonomics and waiting for the ccfl to come in from china.

Weirdo. My first bet would really be the inverter. Fortunately these systems are cheap nowadays, so hopefully there's no issue that would hurt your wallet (much).

I love my T60s (I am typing this on my daily driver right now, and I still collect them for spares) but they are pretty inefficient (power wise) by today's standards (20-40W running all the time!). Plus that seems like a waste of a good backlight/display and keyboard to me.

So why not instead purchase some sort of Single Board Computer to use as a (headless) server? I have a little Cubietruck at home running Debian with 16TB of storage attached. It runs several services including file/contact/calendar sync, an XMPP messaging server, etc... and all for only about $20 per year in electricity!

wujstefan wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 28, 2019 1:36 am

Weirdo. My first bet would really be the inverter. Fortunately these systems are cheap nowadays, so hopefully there's no issue that would hurt your wallet (much).

Updated issue here:

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=129283