Thinkpad 360CSE bad screens?

[solidpro]

Hi

I have two Thinkpad 360CSE machines - both in excellent condition, except the LCD doesn't show anything. I can see power, but nothing ever shows on the screen.

If I connect up an external monitor, the rest of the machine appears to function perfectly fine.

Has anyone else come up with an alternative display for these machines, as it seems the original one has a high failure rate.

Thanks

Alex

[Bondi]

It may be a failed backlight bulb/inverter. To check if it's the case you can use a flashlight to see if there is any image/characters on the screen. You may need to find the right angle to see anything. If there is no image then it could be either bad cable or mobo.

[solidpro]

After comparing the two machines it seems both have flourescent tubes which are dead, I have one decent inverter and 2 decent LCD panels.

Finding the replacement complete DSTN screen is basically impossible. Has anyone ever successfully replaced the light bulbs with an LED equivilent?

It looks like the inverter takes whatever it may be from the laptop's PSU and changes it up to 1000v to power the bulbs. If I simply took the feed from the PSU and fed it to two very small slim LEDs in the back panel, would that work?

[solidpro]

I decided to order 3 different CCFL tubes from

https://www.lcdpart.com/products/ms3021 ... a36c&_ss=r

And I'll give them a go to see if any of them are suitable.

[Dustin82]

Solidpro,

I have repaired older laptops like this in the past. I usually scavenge LED strips from a modern machine. Then figure out the input voltage on the inverter and build a small circuit to adapt the voltage. Installing the led strip in stead of the tube is usually a trial and error thing. In color displays the color usually is a bit off for some reason, but hey, you can't be too picky with this old stuff. If you can refurbish the battery somehow, then your battery life will be insane after this mod.

[RealBlackStuff]

I've never seen a 360-type inverter, so can't be more specific.
For LED-backlight you should take the required voltage (usually between +5V and +19V) and ground from the inverter.
Once it's tested and going, you should then also remove the transformer that gives the 1000+V power.
Example here: https://theboardroom.info/trafo.html

[solidpro]

I got an assortment of CCFL tubes from lcdparts - came quite quickly. Postage from USA to UK was the same price as the tubes, so about £25 for tubes and £25 for postage.

Replaced the tubes in one of the 360CSE and it worked. Screen now works. The other 360CSE has a completely dead LCD so I'll stick it on ebay as working without the LCD.

I have also tried with LCDs but with the LCDs I used, the diodes were too far apart for a consistent white band along the where the tubes had been. Some sort of diffuser might have solved it at the expense of brightness but I ended up getting a completely new LCD panel and making it fit instead (and used the machine's VGA output to route a signal back in).

[trickstuff]

i dont know if i'm already too late, but you should check the caps on the defective screen. i just fixed the backlight of a 360Cs (recaped the inverter) but the screen didnt showed anything.
then i disasembled the screen further (was in kind of a metal cage with the backlight unit) and i found five small caps on the connector-board where the screen cable plugs in. one of them leaked all the gunk out of it, over a resistor and another smd cap and after removing the gunk, the screen already worked again!
i then replaced the caps aswell just to be safe. now i have a fully working 360Cs again.
if you want some pics or additional informations, i'm happy to share!
kind regards!