New to the fold; my story.

Hola!

So I've recently received an older Macbook Pro (core duo) for free from a student who swore up and down that the thing was dead and would no longer boot. After resetting the SMC, purging the system memory, forcing it into sleep mode and then pulling it out of sleep, the thing is booting and working just fine with the exception of one tiny problem. The back-light in the LCD is not working!

I've ordered a replacement inverter board in the hope that will fix the problem. Right now it's driving a external monitor which will do in the mean time but would really like to get the LCD working. Has anyone else had a similar issue and resolved it? If so how?

I know it's not much of a question but i was wondering if anyone can answer it, or if anyone has had a similar experience since it's out of warranty, also I wanted to share my story with other computer geeks whom would understand how stoked I am to have gotten a Macbook pro for free!

This is my first mac. Always wanted one but didn't have the money to really afford one.

 

I don't know how to solve your problem but that's awesome how you got it!!

 

Lol, shows how much that old user knew. Would be funny if all you had to do was press the power button to turn it on.

Anyways, I don't think there's any way other than replacing the screen. My friend had a Panasonic Toughbook who's screen's backlight just died randomly, and she called and was asked to send it in. Replaced it with no charge and free, however seeing as how you are out of warranty, you will either have to buy a new screen and install it or pry open your current screen and try to fix it. I mean even if you break something, it's OK because you would've ended up buying a new screen anyways.

You could also open up the lower 1/2 of the laptop and check the connections from the screen and hinge to the motherboard. If it's built anything like a Dell, then the screen is connected to the motherboard by a tiny connector that looks fragile as hell, so maybe a wire or 2 is broken in there?

 

Yea, with a lot of mac notebooks (if not all?), when something goes wrong with the screen, they just replace the whole top half of the laptop.
I had a couple of dead pixels a couple of years in, and they replaced the whole top half, instead of just the LCD panel.

Im guessing that you can actually see the LCD screen, and the backlight is just dead. Or are you seeing nothing at all on the screen, and assuming the backlight is the problem?

 

Yeah i can see the screen and everything on the screen is working as it should, it's just not back-lit. which would lead me to believe there is a problem with the inverter board or the wires which connect to and from the inverter board. I haven't opened it up quite yet though, as I'm waiting for the parts. I don't believe the LCD itself is bad however as the screen still works.

 

Have you checked to see if it's out of warranty? The user may had purchased the service plan and for got all about it. I believe you can check on line with the SN. If your this lucky you will come out smelling like a rose.

If the converter board was out I would think it would not power up an external monitor.

 

It's out of warranty. An inverter sends power from the motherboard to the backlight on the LCD..

The external monitor connection would not be affected by a bad inverter on the laptop's LCD.


It is one of three things,
#1. Bad connection to the logic board (free to close to free fix)
#2. the backlight in the LCD is broken (fairly expensive to replace whole screen, do not want.)
#3. The inverter board has gone bad. ($11 fix)

 

agreed.

don't bother replacing the LCD if it comes to that. it will end up being just as expensive as selling the laptop as it is and buying a new one.

 

So i received the inverter board from china today. Installed it in all of about 5 minutes and indeed that was the problem.

typing on my free ($11 part) macbook pro now.

 

congrats, its always nice to see a repair work so well.

 

Damn, that's a good deal.

 

excellent work

 

Now sell it for a huge profit!

 

haha.. that is an option i suppose. But this thing is much lighter than my 17'' gateway and much more powerful then my netbook so it fills a good hole in between the two.

plus if i sold it, i'd just use the money to buy food or another computer anyway. haha

 

WOW! I wish I could find a deal like that. Although, I don't think I could have done what you did to get it together...

Super deal!