Had a Soyo Topaz LC in with some picture issues 2 days ago. The picture would start blacking out from the bottom up. Lately, it wouldn't work at all.
Found one bad cap, replaced, working good. Gave it back. Owner called me today to tell me that the same issues have started again, so it's now here for me to take another look at.
The picture issue had actually nothing to do with the bad cap - it's the Tcon. Flexing the sides of the panel stops the issues - more cold joints caused by RoHs solder and too high operating temps... I figured it's the Tcon since it's the thinnest board, also sometimes it shows artifacts over the picture, little lines and dots flickering, and that's the only board that can cause it.
Unplugged the Tcon, removed it, and touched up the soldering on the vregs, CPU and RAM. The LVDS cable going from the logic board to the Tcon looked like it'd been tampered with before. Not good. Plugged in again and i got a stable picture but with colored snow over it like dithering - dirty LVDS cable. Cleaned it... and all i get is bars. 3 bad wires.
Now if you have any idea where i could get a 30-pin, 31mm wide, 1mm pitch, 24cm long AWM 20624 type ribbon cable, let me know. Oh, and they decided to hot glue it to the connector on the logic board side. Fortunately my hot air station made short work of that.
Found one bad cap, replaced, working good. Gave it back. Owner called me today to tell me that the same issues have started again, so it's now here for me to take another look at.
The picture issue had actually nothing to do with the bad cap - it's the Tcon. Flexing the sides of the panel stops the issues - more cold joints caused by RoHs solder and too high operating temps... I figured it's the Tcon since it's the thinnest board, also sometimes it shows artifacts over the picture, little lines and dots flickering, and that's the only board that can cause it.
Unplugged the Tcon, removed it, and touched up the soldering on the vregs, CPU and RAM. The LVDS cable going from the logic board to the Tcon looked like it'd been tampered with before. Not good. Plugged in again and i got a stable picture but with colored snow over it like dithering - dirty LVDS cable. Cleaned it... and all i get is bars. 3 bad wires.
Now if you have any idea where i could get a 30-pin, 31mm wide, 1mm pitch, 24cm long AWM 20624 type ribbon cable, let me know. Oh, and they decided to hot glue it to the connector on the logic board side. Fortunately my hot air station made short work of that.
Heck, the Tcon is going to cost me more than that... I'm taking it home tomorrow.
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