My poor catleap :(

[bavman]

My backlighting died on my catleap today. Or something....


Is this fixable? Sometimes if i tap on my desk while I'm typing it'll momentarily come on (the left side thats darker) for a fraction of a second.....any ideas?

[IvanIvanovich]

Test with different cable, different gpu? It's totally white or can you see image faintly?

[bavman]

No the image is completely fine. It displays everything normally...but the backlighting seems to have died on the left side

[IvanIvanovich]

Oh, different issue then. I saw the white screen... so just probably some led going out. Simple enough repair maybe, depending on how accessible things are inside. But I would replace all the led if you do so it has the same. You don't want to end up with mix of warm and cool 'white' led.

[bavman]

I'll try opening it and looking. I didn't know you can replace individual leds in the monitor

[IvanIvanovich]

led backlight, they are usually just a strip of led. Some have the 'x-mas lights' effect where it burn out and the rest don't work. They really shouldn't chain them that way but... they do.

[bavman]

Lysol you were right. Took me about 30 minutes to take it apart. There are 2 strips of led lights at the bottom each with a plug for power. One of the plugs is completely deattached from the led PCB. I have no idea how it happened but the pins are extremely thin, like a fraction of a mm. I have no idea how I'm going to solder them back together....my soldering iron is way to big for that. I need to find a super fine one or someone to do it for me

[IvanIvanovich]

Maybe some soldering tweezers? If you don't want to chance it I would look for a tv repair. They should be familiar with it by now.

[bavman]

The thought of paying someone close to $100 to fix something I can do my self bothers me. Anyways, I went to radio shack and picked up this little guy:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=4314833

It came with a bunch of really small tips, but soldering that connector back on there was a huge pita.



Thanks for the help lysol!

[esoomenona]

So it's working fine now?

[bavman]

Yup

It had gotten even worse than that picture in the OP. I'm guessing when I had taken the picture not all power was lost to the left side

[esoomenona]

Yay! Good work, guys.

[chewyfruitloop]

you sometimes find that heat + vibration over time can work stuff out of the socket, especially if it wasn't in there properly to start with
glad this only cost you time to fix