Hot vinegary mess....

[solidpro]

1 x 240X
1 x 535
3 x 230cs

All vinegar screens!!! All looking for a new life.... already managed to strip down the 240x, replace the screen and reinstall w98.... it was full of that white corrosive stuff - I don't know where it comes from (doesn't seem to be a battery source)...

[Franchute13]

Hello SolidPro.

Nice machines.

If you have time, can you do a step by step with photos of how to recover one of these screens?

[solidpro]

With the 230cs, I previously stripped down 3 of these machines and all of them have two big issues:

1) Vinegar Screens, unusual LCD and hard to replace
2) Bad caps on a tiny daughterboard leak and contaminate surrounding ICs

The plan with these three is to use them to *try* and make a couple of good working machines. That will involve more recapping and certainly trying to recover vinegar screens. I have managed to strip one LCD down and they're pretty simple design which comes apart. I think there is only 1 layer too. I'll take a bunch of photos when I attempt to tackle these this weekend!

Best Wishes

[solidpro]

So after another few hours on these machines my best advice for anyone buying one - don't pay much!

They suffer from parasitic main battery corrosion, the caps on a tiny little daughterboard (maybe DC-DC?) corrode and rot everything on the board and the Sharp LCDs suffer from dead caps, dead CCFLs and from vinegar syndrome.

This is how that daughterboard tends to look after pulling out two of the easiest caps:



If you're lucky enough to get all the caps off without ruining the board and you're lucky enough that the ICs on the board have not been irreversibly damaged, then this connector, which holds it onto the motherboard dries out and needs to be deflowed along with that biggest square IC in the middle of the board (2 of the 4 sides tend to be loose)



This is it under microscope after being reflowed:



The LCDs either flicker for a few seconds or don't light up at all. I recapped one of the sharp screens (about 15 small surface mounted caps) and it made no difference. I suspect the CCFL tubes have failed so I have ordered some new ones of them to see if that helps. that's before even dealing with the vinegarisation of the polarising filter...

[astral]

hmm you've had very bad luck with the screens and the caps. vinegar syndrome just happens more in japan, but the screens being dead after recaps and such. and so many dead ccfl tubes. ive run into several dim or yellowed ones but finding one dead is pretty uncommon. happens but i swear 1/3 of yours end up dead, or a dead inverter board. is it mostly the japanese machines? maybe the environment that makes the polarizers go bad also causes the caps to leak and deteriorate worse. mayeb the ccfl too? hmm.

[RealBlackStuff]

English weather is not exactly healthy for such machines either.
It is getting sunnier, hotter and wetter by the day!
A shame really for your nice Thinkpad collection to suffer because of that.

[solidpro]

I think I'm suffering more because I'm now purposely going after the machines that are all japanese, all manufactured when bad caps were being fitted and all being manufacturered when manufacturers were using a bad formula for attaching polarising film. I'm actually purposely seeking them out because these are the only machines left that I don't have!

[astral]

pva flim was used for a very long time, think they phased it out in the 2010s? have fun in a few years when the t60p flexviews start getting it.

[solidpro]

I think for vinegar syndrome to occur it has to be a unique age range (see early/mid 90s) and it has to have lived it's life in Japan.

My sister has been to Japan about 10 times and I asked her if it ever got humid there. She said that between about June and September, guaranteed it very extremely hot and humid for a solid 3 months. Unbearably so that she would never visit again during those months. I honestly think it's this annual event that causes the screens on J-thinkpads to pretty-uniformly suffer.

I don't think later machines, fixed machines or even machines from that era that are sat in my dry, mild loft will suffer. Maybe I'll be proved wrong.

[astral]

that film will go bad one way or the other. It will happen, just will take a long long time. Humidity and Heat accelerate it. and newer machines will be effected. The Japanese stuff from the early 2000s is starting, like your s30. Others Will too, it’s inevitable. Good storage will prevent it for a while though.

[axur-delmeria]

I think for vinegar syndrome to occur it has to be a unique age range (see early/mid 90s) and it has to have lived it's life in Japan.

Untrue. I've seen it in early-00s LCD monitors (old Sony 15" we had). Then again, I live in a tropical country.

[theterminator93]

Speaking of vinegar syndrome, the original LCD on my 770 looks like that. I had never seen it before but it looks an awful lot like someone used some kind of solvent to try and clean it.

[astral]

Yeah that’s probably the polarizar failure…

[solidpro]

Then again, I live in a tropical country.

Maybe certain other electronics were still using that formula, but I think the key is tropical/humid/hot climate for years and years...

looks an awful lot like someone used some kind of solvent to try and clean it

Yeah I thought that when I first started dealing with them. I've got 6 x 770s and I've never seen any evidence of it happening to them. Of course I could be wrong and in another 20 years every single LCD I have has gone the same way... I guess I'll see.

It really does look like someone has scrubbed them with solvent but it's just the adhesive reacting with whatever. Many LCDs have 2 layers - one on the top surface and one sandwiched inbetween two layers of glass, so it can be hard to figure out without taking it apart.

[astral]

it isn't limited to specific models. any LCD with that film (which was just about all of them) will get the issue eventually. you can probably prevent the problem for a few more decades if the laptops are stored well. cool and dry. basement is perfect for this, storing them open will also help with this but that isnt really possible when your name is solidpro and you have 100 thinkpads .the only laptop lcd screens i know of that aren't affected are the ones that look like a calculator screen when off. so some really early ones from the 80s and active matrix monochrome and grayscale screens. havent ever seen one of those get it. not sure when they stopped using pva film but i heard somewhere that they did, but not too long ago.

[RealBlackStuff]

Just saw these Polarization Sheets at Amazon (A5 and A4):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Polarization-P ... B0793PD7K5
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Polarization-P ... 06XWXRB75/
May be worth a try...

[solidpro]

Thanks - I'll give them a whirl!