Page 1 of 1

?? Bad video card

Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 3:54 pm
by turbo8765
I have an old TP 600E. I had the problem where the lcd backlight turns off and you have to repeatedly press Fn F7 untill the backlight remains on. I replaced the inverter card, and the display worked fine, for about three days...

Now, whenever I turn the comp on, i get red, blue and green vertical lines, over a mostly black background.

What is most likely/could be causing this??

Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2004 5:56 pm
by Bruce Guttman
It sounds like it could be the card that controls the display, but most likely the mainboard. The small DC/DC card doesn't seem to have any logic.

One other thing on inverter cards. Some seem to have intermittents and are sensitive to how hard you torque them in with a screwdriver, so make sure you haven't warped the card when you installed it.

Hope this helps.

Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:51 pm
by Guest
Everything except for the display seems to be working fine. I hear the hard drive, the fan, the LED's illuminate, all in a seemingly normal pattern.

I'm going to try to connect to an external monitor. How can I accomplish this without a working lcd display to know what's going on??

Thanks

Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:20 pm
by MadeInJapan
Fn key and F7 at the same time.

Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2004 2:55 pm
by Bruce Guttman
Actually, if you just have a working monitor plugged into the VGA port, the computer should boot directly to that. It's almost as if the microcode during startup checks for a monitor in the VGA first before firing up the LCD. I've done this with other models frequently (never actually tried it with a 600, but would a 760 and a 770 be a substitute?).

- - - - - - -

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 3:52 pm
by guest
So,

I attached the thinkpad to an external monitor, the computer booted with the display on the ext monitor (lcd off) and everything worked fine. I didn't have to do anything. Sweet.

Looks as though the mother board and display card are fine. I then swaped the inverter card for the old one & reseated the cables, torqued the screws etc etc . No change etc for some flashing on and off...

So it looks like it's either the cables or the lcd panel itself. I'm going to try to post a pic of the lcd display with the dig camera....

any ideas untill then? how much for cables? can you buy just the lcd panel ? how much for that??

thanks