Replace foil or whole LCD??

OK, I have access to an mpc2k that has a lit screen but extremely faint if not almost non existent lettering. If anyone is familliar, is this remedied by replacing the foil from that German dude I have heard about? I am inclined to think that the backligting portion of it is fine but it is the actual lcd thats bad, which would suck, but if the foil is the culprit then there is a cheap fix.

I would appreciate any help at all. I guess even descriptions of how the LCD tends to fail would be helpful in the event no one knows about the foil.

Thanks a million!

do you have the constrast setting turned all the way down?

if there are vertical or horizontal that run across the display either way then your lcd needs to be replaced.


example of lines.

Awww shucks, I believe the screen definitely needs to be replaced cause back light is great, but lines then nothing on the screen shortly after. I was reading a thread, be it here, or perhaps elsewhere, and it is mentioned that the ribbon can be headed up and pressed down while cooling to add some life to a dying lcd, but only delaying the inevitable. Does anyone have that procedure that they could describe? it will be a stint before I can afford to buy the screen and i want to be able to use it for a while during the wait. I also happen to have a heat gun I purchased to do some reflow work on a ps3. I dont expect miracles but anthing will do

And thank you for your help thus far, way to make a newbie feel welcome!

yo i think you should listen to djobserv and check the contrast cause if it likes the screen is faded it can def be the contrast cause im not too sure but i think foils were used for the older models and rack samplers not too sure though but try holding shift and spinning the wheel forward and back and see what happens

Previously I hadn't spent enough time with it, now I own it. 175 wasn't too bad I thought, as the thing is maxed out with 8 outputs, 32 megs of ram and came with scsi cable and zip drive. It does have the lines appearing etc and its pretty dang bad, in fact, it is unusable in this state. That said, I am taking it apart today, going to start in the next few mins actually, so I am wondering whether I want to use a heat gun at the board side connection to cable or on the LCD side, although I don't even know if thats a viable option as I haven't looked at it yet... Theres like three forums where I was checking out mpc 2k screen info and I know it was mentioned on one of them about heating the ribbon cable and pressing down as it cools.

Anyone remember coming across that?

So I took it apart heated it up with a halogen lamp (couldnt find heat gun or hair dryer, just moved..) Pressed the side of the cable connecting board to lcd and at first got a billion times worse, from lined and unreadable to damn near blank. I played with it some more and got it a bit better than it was. I can tell somethign is selected but not what, can make out an occasional number or character, but on the whole still unreadable, I did happen to see that on tcp1 many of the leads had solder bridges, many of the pins would have been shorted out. So that may explain why there is a problem as well. I took some pics of it and I will add them to show.

... I didnt post this msg because I left for the weekend, but I broke down and bought a screen for 210. I hope its straight!