600E with flickering screen

[swede600e]

HI

I'm new here. I live in Sweden and owns a 600E. It does it's work and I'm very satisfied with it. I bought it second hand many years ago.

It does have a problem with the LCD screen. It flickers on and off at a regular pace approx once per second. It can also turn completely black as it would if using an external monitor. When it's totally black, I have to press Fn/F7 twice to get the LCD screen working. It either turns on and stays on or the backlight flickers on off once every second. If I press my thumb against the plastic cover just beneath the screen on the lower right side (where the screen inverter is located), flickering stops and the backlight either stays on or turns off.

This problem is more pronounced if running the computer on battery power. Battery is fairly new and in good shape.

Does anyone have a clue whether it might be the inverter that has gone bad or if it's something else.

Regards

Lasse

[paul*robertson]

Hi,

Welcome to the forum. Apologies for not answering your specific question, but i noticed in your sig, are you running xp on that spec?

[virge]

Perhaps check the backlight solder points as described here?
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=68315

Otherwise, my guess would be inverter if its cycling on/off. Fortunately they are pretty cheap.

[swede600e]

Thanks Virge. I don't think it's a solder point that has come loose. The flickering is not random as one would expect. I'll buy a new inverter.

Paul, yes it does work to run XP on those specs although it's very slow at times. I'll upgrade memory to at least 256 Mb shortly. My XP is a stripped down version with a smaller footprint.

Regards

Lasse

[paul*robertson]

Thanks Virge. I don't think it's a solder point that has come loose. The flickering is not random as one would expect. I'll buy a new inverter.

Paul, yes it does work to run XP on those specs although it's very slow at times. I'll upgrade memory to at least 256 Mb shortly. My XP is a stripped down version with a smaller footprint.

Regards

Lasse

Upgrade the hard drive. I recently changed the original 12GB one in my 600x for a new 40GB one and the read times increased from 9mb/s to 32mb/s. Its made a huge difference to the operating speed. Its like having a new laptop.

[virge]

Thanks Virge. I don't think it's a solder point that has come loose. The flickering is not random as one would expect. I'll buy a new inverter.

Paul, yes it does work to run XP on those specs although it's very slow at times. I'll upgrade memory to at least 256 Mb shortly. My XP is a stripped down version with a smaller footprint.

Regards

Lasse

I have had XP on a similar 600E with 256MB memory. It was okay for reading word/office documents which was what I was using it for at the time. Moving up to a 600X with 512MB and a 5400RPM drive was a big performance boost!

A question re the flickering-- is the behaviour related to room temperature at all?

[swede600e]

A question re the flickering-- is the behaviour related to room temperature at all?

I don't think that room temperature is causing this flickering. It resemble a faulty capacitor that releases it's charge once every second. The screen runs more stabile when connected to mains power. It's difficult to stop the flickering once it started when using battery power. If it's flickering on battery power, it often stops when connecting to mains power and the screen runs stabile.

Thanks for the tip regarding harddrives. I haven't desided yet which one to buy. I reckon a 40 Gb seems like a great choice considering the increase in read time.

Regards

Lasse