My C600: An LCD on An Acid Trip

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Macinjosh's picture
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My C600: An LCD on An Acid Trip

Euphoria, like all good things, must come to an end.

Of course, the day after I posted the most glowing feedback ever for the seller of my Latitude C600, what happens? I wake the thing up and there's a color predominately smeared over the screen. After an explative, I start to gently press around the plastic casing, and it goes away.

It would seem that it's the flex cable that connects the LCD to the mainboard, EXCEPT I can cause it, repeatedly without touching anything... just by putting it in standby and then waking it up.

I've been inside of it already, and I reconnected the ribbon, blew some compressed air into the connectors gently, reseated it all, no dice same problem. It would suck badly to go to the trouble to replace the ribbon cable, and have it change absolutely nothing.

But whatever it is, it is intermittent, because it's gone for now. But it ranges from that mere colour smearing, to the screen going distorted at its worst.

So, Think Tank o' Fritters, any thoughts?

-- Macinjosh

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I contacted the seller, as it was advertised as being in, literally perfect working order. Dunno what will happen there; I really dont want to do the package switching dance... USPS was brutal enough to deal with just getting it here.

Since its all done and feedback is left, I fully expect to be repairing it myself when it gets to the point its totally shot and no longer intermittent.

Sigh.

-- MJ

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sounds like a bad flex cable

I've seen this with iBooks and PowerBooks. 90% of the time, it's just the flex cable that goes between the lcd and the logic board. A good way to track it down is hook up an external display. If the issue continues on an external display, you've got logic board problems. If not, it's most likely the flex cable, and in rare cases (1 in 30 cases here - lcd panel problems or an issue with the logic board at where the flex cable connects). I've only seen the issue with the logic board 3 times in over 3000 contacts with machines. (1 pismo, 2 iBook G4's)

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So, not to drag up my ancient post, but hey I appreciate all the advice.

Three days ago, the seller wrote back with "we back all our stuff up, return it and we'll repair it, or we can replace it with either a 900MHz one or a 1GHz as that's all we have left, your call. I write them back immediately, saying sure thats fantastic, can we do FedEx? Any special labelling you want done?"

Today I get back "hey, did you ship that back to us yet? Cuz yeah I didnt see any tracking number in your e-mail."

I know this might sound nuts, but my SpiderSense started tingling on "oh yeah, just send it back" and went nuts on "wheres the tracking number?" My questions went totally ignored. And what assurance have I that I'm getting back anything at all?

I'm thinking of either two paths:

a) how do you say, "OK yeah so did you bother to read my email?" politely?

b) It's in the top half of the laptop, probably one of the ribbon cables. I really want to say, "all right so send me the ribbon cables that connect to the LCD from the base upward and we will call it even."

Whatcha think?

-- Macinjosh

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