Thinkpads Forum

IBM manual says its part number 05K9336.

12.1 LCD.

the brightness controls for this thing are crazy. it goes WAY too bright.
it seems like the previous owner left it too bright - there appears to be some sort of damage to the LCD because of the brightness/heat.

i've been trying to find a replacement LCD for it.

i have a ThinkPad 560 (133mhz) and 560E (166mmx) with nice screens. does anyone know if that would work in the faster 380XD? (233 mmx)

I know the 560 LCD won't work but the 560E one might if it uses the same LCD as the 560X and Z.

Does it not respond to the slide control on the right of the screen at all? Or does that control simply not turn it down enough? I have a 380XD and am just curious.

schen wrote:Does it not respond to the slide control on the right of the screen at all? Or does that control simply not turn it down enough? I have a 380XD and am just curious.

the slider does work, but it is "too extreme"

instead of going from "dark" to " bright", it does this (its kinda hard to explain):

the lowest setting makes it so dark, its almost as like the lights are off. they aren't. however, everything looks like a photo negative.

on the highest setting, its so bright, the screen is a SOLID white.

it goes from one extreme to the next. the slightest push in either direction will cause a brightness change greater than the overall range of most laptops i've used.

with the slider in the middle, the screen image is "ok." ... however, the sides of the LCD look a little washed out. like someone thought it would be a good idea to leave the screen on MAX WHITE BRIGHTNESS, and "burn" the LCD.

i've used THREE 380XD systems, and they were ALL like this. crazy brightness controls with burned up displays.


there are other issues with the three i've used as well. like, when the battery is in, there is a high pitched "whine" that comes from it. i have paper shoved in between the metal so it doesnt make contact. the battery wont hold a charge, so its no big deal.

since the 380XD is an "all in one" (stereo speakers, Floppy drive, and CD rom are all built in), plus it runs at 233 MHz MMX w/ 96 Megs ram when some other laptops i've had are 166mhz and lower, i dont want to just give up on it.

I haven't taken apart my 380XD to look, but I'm assuming that the slider control is a POT (potentiometer) of some sort (maybe AK470 can help out with this). Is it possible that the problem has more to do with the control than the screen itself? It sounds to me like the LCD has the ability to cover it's full spectrum, but is being sent an "out of bounds" signals for the control or the inverter. Just a thought. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my XD doesn't do the same thing!

What is the machine type number (xxxx-xxx; example: 9456-u3a) on the bottom of the ThinkPad 380XD? It sounds like your screen isprobably a passive matrix display. When you have one of those, you're only supposed to adjust the slider until you get the image you're most comfortable with.

That had occurred to me as well, but don't those screens have 2 sliders?

just one slider

schen wrote:That had occurred to me as well, but don't those screens have 2 sliders?

Nope. They still had one slider despite being passive matrix. Brightness was fixed and the slider controlled contrast.

AlphaKilo470 wrote:

schen wrote:That had occurred to me as well, but don't those screens have 2 sliders?

Nope. They still had one slider despite being passive matrix. Brightness was fixed and the slider controlled contrast.

In that case, it sounds like it's a passive screen and the control is just the contrast control. Have you check to see which version the machine is?