Thinkpads Forum

I'm trying to add an SXGA+ screen to an X61s. Everything works except the inverter.

The original one I assumed had blown because I tested the new screen without properly grounding the inverter board. I bought another one from eBay and properly installed it before testing: it too doesn't work. Perhaps it wasn't working when I received it, but perhaps my new screen is the culprit.

Is this possible - can the new screen or the way I've installed it be responsible for breaking the inverter board?
Thanks in advance,
Tom

You need a modified BIOS for SXGA+ to work in a standard X61S, as well as a modified LCD cable.

Yes I know about the cable and the bios. As I tried to explain in my message, the problem is the inverter.

All standard X60/X61 and s-models (all XGA) use a different inverter from the tablets!
Inverter card (Foxconn) 39T5699 or (YEC) 42T0152

All tablets (XGA and SXGA+) use:
Inverter card (Foxconn) 41W1468 or (YEC) 41W1469

Different part numbers are due to different shape, not different CCFL output voltage/currents. It should work anyway.

I would suspect blown fuse. Check fuses near the LCD connector if they are OK or not.

Raceboy wrote:Different part numbers are due to different shape, not different CCFL output voltage/currents. It should work anyway.

I would suspect blown fuse. Check fuses near the LCD connector if they are OK or not.

Agreed.

My personal experience was that I was able to replace the LCD without replacing the inverter.

If I remember correctly, it might be that the connector for the backlight on the SXGA+ screen was not keyed the same way as the standard XGA LCD to prevent inserting the cable into the inverter board the wrong way. I think that I found that it was possible to plug it in the wrong way.

Have you checked to see if the orientation of the cable was correct when you plugged in the SXGA+ screen?

The backlight plugs for the XGA and SXGA+ screens are identical, as are the sockets on the inverters, I think it's unlikely that I connected them the wrong way.

What happened was that the cable arrived, I tried it out and got a stripy and tiled image. Then I installed the bios, without unplugging anything, and tried again only to get a completely black screen. After a few miserable moments I saw a faint image on the lcd and assumed that the inverter had blown because it wasn't properly grounded.

Then I restarted with the screen backlight plugged in to the running X60T - this time the screen worked, just a bit stripy which I assumed was because the cable needed to be organised and shielded better.

Now with a new inverter I have the same problem, my worry was that somewhere there is some bad wiring which means that every inverter I try will just break immediately.


... when you suggest a blown fuse, Raceboy, do you mean on the motherboard itself? Can this be fixed easily?

Yes, on the motherboard itself.

You can test the fuse with the multimeter (should show no resistance) and if it is blown you can solder another one on top of that (piggybacking). You can of course solder a blob on top of it but that is not adviseable, use a hair from the wire for testing purposes and change it to a fuse afterwards.

But check the fuses with the multimeter instead (they are marked as F6, F7 etc, numbers are probably different).

The problem is indeed a fuse, F2, right by the the LCD connection. Very small it is too.