TP 240X Blurred LCD - Help, Anyone?

[Danny Manabat]

I recently acquired a battered 240X 2609-51A. The specs are:
1.) celeron 450mhz
2.) 128mb ram
3.) 12gb hdd
4.) no battery
5.) light side lcd latch is missing
6.) trackpoint keys not working, trackpoint OK
7.) keyboard working, spacebar a bit soft when pressed
8.) generic power adaptor 3.36

I researched on the power supply and I found that the generic
power adaptor has the same specs as the recommended one.

I have installed win98se and its booting up by itself.

There is a problem with the LCD. The screen is blurred in most
of the upper half of the screen. The letters are not readable.

Has anybody experience this, or anything similar? I would like
to start looking for the parts, but I would like to know which
one I need to replace.

All comments are welcome.

[joester]

I'm shooting from the hip, but based on my knowledge of how LCD's are constructed, it sounds like the layers of the LCD itself are separating. If you apply light pressure to the top of the screen, does it get better?
You might want to entertain removing the LCD and seeing if the back is loose. Could be as simple as that.
If it has a VGA output, try hooking it up to another monitor. If the blurry follows, it's motherboard related.

Lots of info on the LENOVO SITE for it. I looked at the first hundered or so items, but only saw a "defective pixel" link, not blurry image.

Joe

[Danny Manabat]

joester,

thanks for sharing your info. will do that.

i did try to hook it up to a monitor and the display was good.

got a question then, if i apply pressure and the display turns better -
it could mean that the layers are separating, right? so how to correct
the problem, or do i need to buy another LCD?

[teetee]

The LCD panel was assembled in a way that there are several clear plastic(or similar material) layers are placed on a sheet of silver/white reflective panel(which I believe is also plastic). On top of all the layers there will be the glass panel with electronic control terminals attached from two sides, which then form this thin LCD circuit accross the edge of the glass panel before they becomes the LCD signal cable connector. The whole thing was secured by a white plastic back board and metal frame on the four edges with tabs/tapes.

The blurriness could mean that the back reflective sheets are either out of alignment or something is between the layers that are not transparent. It could also be the LCD glass panel has had pressure pressed on certain area that caused irreversible damage to the glass panel. I think the only solution is to replace the whole LCD panel instead of trying to fix it.

I wonder if the previous owner actually tried to dissemble the LCD panel to replace something(ex. back light tube) and couldn't get the whole thing put back properly since to take the CCFL tube out on those sharp/hitachi LCD panels on 240* models the metal frame surrounding the LCD panel can be (and sometimes has to be) altered which affect the whole layer assembly.

[Danny Manabat]

thanks a lot for your reply teete. i sent you a pm.