Thinkpads Forum

Hey,

After replacing my inverter board recently I noticed that the bottom of my screen, over my bluetooth daughter card especially and by the LCDs over the inverter board, gets pretty warm. While I never noticed this before, I never felt for it; so just to make sure, is this somewhat normal? It isn't BURNING hot or anything, but it is pretty warm. Thank you.

Dan

Hello Dan,
That pretty normal and thats why inverters die - the transformer heats up, the insulation material slowly brittles, etc. It becomes much hotter in the midle compared to the outer, visible windings like any tranformer.

The bluetooth daughter card next to the left hinge? The daughter card shouldn't heat up - but maybe (just maybe) the CCFL is getting old. The ends of any CCFL will become warmer as they are used. If the inverter board didn't include a current limitation, the CCFL would melt when it becomes very old and at the end of it's life.

After replacing my inverter card I've fixed the primary issue of my screen dimming. However, I now get (and something I got before) a flickering every now and then and a slight buzz that I never noticed out of that left side of the display on startup that goes away. My bluetooth has been failing lately; reinstall of Windows fixes it but soon after the bluetooth dies again, saying the usb device malfunctioned. I had figured it was a driver issue with Windows7 or something, but perhaps is this a problem with the card? Or, as you said, may be the CCFL is dying. I've used this computer extensively (to the point of abuse) since I bought it almost 4 years ago so it wouldn't be a surprise.

The bluetooth daughter card shares the same cable as the inverter board and LCD - are you absolutely sure that the connector on the bluetooth board is properly connected and that the flat cable has not become damaged/torn at any point?
Unless the CCFL backlight initially shows a red hue at either of the sides of the display it still has some life left. This flickering - is it an artifact on the screen, or does the backlight actually turn off for a short amount of time?

Its both sort of - its like the power to the light isn't being regulated correctly. It happens mostly on battery power. It got hot enough earlier where the corners of the screen were turning black down there (more on the left but also on the right) so I'm going to take a look.