S950 backlight replacement (Pics & Instructions)

never_haveenuff_time wrote:im so angry, cause, cause i nedidn't test it as i was going on along with a kettle lead

anyway. Ive only jsut found about this thread. I got really pissed when I found out there was something gluey stuff sticking the foil down, i ended up destroying the end bit of the foil with tweezers. it wouldn't budge. So in the end I put the new foil over the top of the failing foil.

screwed it all back together which took about 5 hours cause the case is made really bad (well it is, isn't it)

now i got this ^^^ all the buttons light up, nothing works and ive just wasted 6 hours and im annoyed now.

Well, putting the new foil over the old one isn't a bad thing to do and apparently works, so don't worry about that.

From the description and the pic my guess is something else got damaged in the process. 5 hours to reassemble the frame? Could you have damaged something on the IC board while fumbling around with it? Did you make sure the rubber spacers on the LCD are aligned with the contacts on the IC board?

If you are lucky maybe there is just a connector loose somewhere.

hi, thanks for the reply, well it's all in bits still at the moment (thinking twice about the new on top of old but hey if it works - it works!) anyway it's ALL ok now.

basically checked over everything like you said, the rubber thingy which is under the display glass? it's actually sandwiching something quite special, not sure what it is but it not being pressed down hard enough - some circuit wasn't touching or something. but yeah - it's fixed it whatever that thing is.

and I can actually READ the display now

Cool. That rubber is a kind of conductive rubber, passing the signal from the IC board to the actual LCD. So it needs to be well-aligned.

Does anyone have the pics that were on the 1st page ? Either they've expired or are just not popping up on my computer but I'd like to see them because I got another S950 yesterday and the backlight is shot .

Also, does anyone know if these foils would work ?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... %26otn%3D1

I emailed the person who's selling it if it'd work w/ a S950 and this is the response I got : "If output of your inverter is 50VAC-220VAC, 50Hz-3000Hz, it works for this EL panel. Lower voltage, frequency and current. Lowe brightness. That's it." .

Fixed the pics on the initial post, imageshack broke some of them, that's what you get for free.

I never played around with the OEM foils, but if you check the size you will see that this one is slightly to small to make an S950 backlight (S950 display is something around 16 cm).

_Stilo_ wrote:Fixed the pics on the initial post, imageshack broke some of them, that's what you get for free.

I never played around with the OEM foils, but if you check the size you will see that this one is slightly to small to make an S950 backlight (S950 display is something around 16 cm).

Good lookin' out ! Already ordered my foil so it should be here any day . I think I'm gonna try putting the new one over the old one as I'm not extremely technically proficient . Wish me luck .

Yes, try that, it should work fine and not much risk involved.

I slid the new backlight in over the old one (with the light side up), soldered the new connections on (right on top of the old ones), put it back together and when I turn my S950 back on all that happens is the disk drive light stays on and the screen stays blank (no backlight, no nothin') .

Does anyone have any idea what I did wrong or what could be wrong ? It's gonna suck if this thing is shot just from trying to replace the backlight .

pull that old one out would be the only answer i can think of unless theres a bad solder job done

boxcutter butta wrote:pull that old one out would be the only answer i can think of unless theres a bad solder job done

I had my pops solder it and he's been a welder for 40 years so I don't think he fcked it up . But what he didn't do was sever the connections to the old foil, should I do that ?

I took it back apart and now it starts up fine but the backlight still isn't on .

So here's a close-up, it doesn't look that clean . Anyone see anything wrong that I can fix ?



I'm gonna go in tomorrow and unsolder it and sever the connectors to the old foil but that's all I can think of right now .

Went and had dinner, tried to turn it on again after and it went back to just being blank w/ the disk light staying on . Picked it up and moved it around, set it down and it turned on again . . . . weird sh!t .

I already put it back together and stuck it in the rack . Better to have a S950 w/ no backlight then one that doesn't function at all .

I would definitely try to make sure there are no connections anymore to the old foil! Otherwise you have the inverter connected to two loads and I wouldn't be surprised that this doesn't work correctly.

W. Steele wrote:Went and had dinner, tried to turn it on again after and it went back to just being blank w/ the disk light staying on . Picked it up and moved it around, set it down and it turned on again . . . . weird sh!t .

I already put it back together and stuck it in the rack . Better to have a S950 w/ no backlight then one that doesn't function at all .

is the screen lighting up? if not you might just need a bulb.