T601 - Dim Screen advice

[Seriouslee]

Hi there,

I recently tried to replace the backlight on my T601 with an off-brand chinese LCD strip, since the picture was usable but somewhat dim. I'd heard that using LCD's you could get impressive brightness from these old screens and thought it was worth a shot. Instead, I think I've broken the display cable, since now the screen has no brightness at all. Testing the screen using another T60, I was left with a screen with an equally dim picture with wavy lines running through it, since the backlight section isn't as tightly adhered as it was previously. All I can say is "bugger" since up until now, all my modifications have gone flawlessly

What should I do now? my first choice would be to give up on this screen and buy a new screen altogether, since this was an SXGA and I'd rather have a UXGA. However all of the ebay sellers are out of stock (despite their listings saying otherwise). If there's no availability at the moment, should I buy a new display cable and inverter, and try to get a decent picture this way, with some effort to remove the wavyness?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[atagunov]

Hi, sorry to hear about the botched job..

What should I do now? my first choice would be to give up on this screen and buy a new screen altogether, since this was an SXGA and I'd rather have a UXGA. However all of the ebay sellers are out of stock (despite their listings saying otherwise). If there's no availability at the moment, should I buy a new display cable and inverter, and try to get a decent picture this way, with some effort to remove the wavyness?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I'm presuming this is a 15" 4:3 machine

You might want to look at this forum post viewtopic.php?f=5&p=844580#p844580 If end up purchasing the same please share how happy/unhappy you end up being.

Of course if you have ended up damaging you display cable you will need a new one - they are not sold together with display panels.
Here is one possible place to purchase the cable
It's listed there as a cable for R60 but there is a widespread belief it is compatible with 15" 4:3 T60 and so with your T601. After all 15" 4:3 display panels are fully interchangeable between R60 and T60 and the motherboards are similar. Again if you end up using it please share your experience.

Re the inverter. I understand you have heavily modified your inverter as part of LED mod attempt. If that is correct then sadly you will need a new one too. Inverters are not sold together with display panels either.

At this rate you could look for an otherwise dead complete 15" 4:3 T60 or R60 or R61 on ebay.. Ideally one with a working backlight. Sometimes you can find them cheaply.. That'd give you both a display cable and an inverter.

Otherwise there must be people looking to make a few $$ selling an inverter on ebay.. My guess is that the inverters are widely the same/interchangeable between a range of models but I can't give you a 100% guarantee or provide any further details. Personally I would think that if an inverter visually looks similar to yours e.g. if it looks about the same size and has got some connectors on it - for display cable and for the CCFL tube and if it is for a model approximately from the same era - then it's likely to work in your T601. Of course I'd only consider Thinkpad/Lenovo inverters
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In hindsight, why do you think your mod ended up in failure? Was it a bad LED strip? Was the LED strip okay but the job of opening/closing the panel ended up too difficult?

[m11k]

It might not be the display cable. Did you try to modify it somehow? If not, it's probably still good.

I don't know the first thing about doing an LED mod on the original panel. Are you powering the LED backlight from the existing inverter board? If so, you may have blown a fuse on the inverter. When I was testing LED-backlit displays on my T601, I blew the fuse on the backlight inverter board more than once. In my case, I soldered on another fuse (it's a tiny SMD fuse, so it's a pain to solder). You can probably also still find the inverters on eBay. I recall picking an extra one up at the time for a reasonable price. There are LCD cables available too. Try to compare the pictures to the one you have. It seems they go by a couple of different numbers, so its hard to have a consistent search for a single part number. The cables have a lot of different stickers and numbers on them, so I think people don't know which one is the actual part number.

[Seriouslee]

Hi everyone, I'll do an update because I've found the source of the problem and "fixed" it.
Unfortunately, I tried replacing the display cable, the inverter and even the screen itself and had no luck, which meant only one thing. Somehow, presumably taking out and putting back in the display cable, I must have damaged the plug on the motherboard meaning that whilst the screen was working, the backlight wasn't. I don't know exactly how I managed this. I bought a replacement motherboard on ebay (amazingly, one appeared right at the time I needed it), and now the display is working fine. I'm a little perplexed with how it was the backlight specifically that broke. Maybe I damaged the pins responsible for sending that power? I wonder if reflowing the board might rectify that damage?

I guess the only advice I can give after this experience is to be careful removing and replacing these cables, since it's not just the cables themselves that can break

Edit: I forgot to mention, I replaced the screen with a UXGA from that Aliexpress link and it's brilliant! only one or two dead pixels with a much crisper picture than I'm used to. Slightly dimmer than an LED owing to a CCFL backlight, but it seems to be either new, or new old stock since the backlight isn't yellow around the edges. I'm really happy with the price, since ebay listings for UXGA's are in the £200 range.

[RealBlackStuff]

You most likely only blew the backlight fuse F7, which is on the right of the LCD-connector on the motherboard.
It has the letter P on it, it's a 3A/32V/fast fuse, size 1206.
Just piggyback solder a new one on top of it.

[JBUK]

Hi everyone, I'll do an update because I've found the source of the problem and "fixed" it.
Unfortunately, I tried replacing the display cable, the inverter and even the screen itself and had no luck, which meant only one thing. Somehow, presumably taking out and putting back in the display cable, I must have damaged the plug on the motherboard meaning that whilst the screen was working, the backlight wasn't. I don't know exactly how I managed this. I bought a replacement motherboard on ebay (amazingly, one appeared right at the time I needed it), and now the display is working fine. I'm a little perplexed with how it was the backlight specifically that broke. Maybe I damaged the pins responsible for sending that power? I wonder if reflowing the board might rectify that damage?

You too have discovered the joys of Thinkpad ownership. They can be unpredictable. Glad the mobo fixed it.