OZ964 inverter hack
Good day folks. *LONG STORY AHEAD*
I've had an HP monitor lying around the shop for about an year now, gathering dust, because the chap who brought it in no longer came to pick it up. It's got a faulty inverter, or rather a botched inverter repair - I wrote a post about it here for you to read, with pictures. Thing is....I kinda like it and it would sit nicely on my desk at work now that I think about it...full HD, IPS and all
I was thinking of doing an LED conversion using these things....would end up being relatively expensive though, since it's like a LCD TV and it's got U-shaped lamps inside (check the pics I took to measure it), so I'd need 12 of those strips to attempt to replicate them....at 6 bucks a piece, times 6 sets (2 strips each), that would be 36 dollars....not TOO expensive, but we can do better
I dug through my parts bin and found a VIT79001.52 inverter (photo's pretty crap I know) and although I bashed the first guys for doing what they did to it, what I tried wasn't too far off either: I attempted to use this thing to fire the lamps...it worked to a degree, but because it's not designed for it, the protection kicked in and shut down my party, duuh
For one thing, it's got more outputs that the monitor's got lamps, so four of the transformers are "floating"...it obviously doesn't like that. Second, being that the inverter came out of a larger TV, I think it also doesn't play well with the smaller lamps...I tried bypassing the protection of that damn OZ694 IC nearly all friggin' day, but COULD NOT do it. I could not get it to stay on...I tried pin 4, pin 10, LED, no LED, resistors...nothing worked - it would still outsmart me somehow ! That leaves me with two options at the moment, neither of which will probably work:
A) Somehow indeed trick that IC to stay on, in case someone out there has done it somehow before on these boards which also have some additional comparators and stuff. Please share your method
B) "Convert" this inverter to a 6-lamp instead of an 8-lamp inverter by removing 4 of its transformers and associated circuitry. The idea behind this, which is probably flawed anyway, is that I can make it work "legit" by giving the IC what it wants, since I THINK it's triggering because of the 4 unconnected X-formers. I'm not sure where I'd even start with this, since the parameters it's tuned at would be all off.....unless of course some CCFL gurus out there got it all figured out and can provide some input as to how it operates and what would come close to what I want to achieve. What exactly IS causing it to stop ? That's the thing I'm trying to figure out....all with thousands of SMDs, a double-layer board with traces going everywhere, no scope and no schematic...awesome No wonder LED has taken over - all that nonsense just to light up a fluorescent bloody tube...>_>
Cheers guys. Thanks for any help.
I've had an HP monitor lying around the shop for about an year now, gathering dust, because the chap who brought it in no longer came to pick it up. It's got a faulty inverter, or rather a botched inverter repair - I wrote a post about it here for you to read, with pictures. Thing is....I kinda like it and it would sit nicely on my desk at work now that I think about it...full HD, IPS and all
I was thinking of doing an LED conversion using these things....would end up being relatively expensive though, since it's like a LCD TV and it's got U-shaped lamps inside (check the pics I took to measure it), so I'd need 12 of those strips to attempt to replicate them....at 6 bucks a piece, times 6 sets (2 strips each), that would be 36 dollars....not TOO expensive, but we can do better I dug through my parts bin and found a VIT79001.52 inverter (photo's pretty crap I know) and although I bashed the first guys for doing what they did to it, what I tried wasn't too far off either: I attempted to use this thing to fire the lamps...it worked to a degree, but because it's not designed for it, the protection kicked in and shut down my party, duuh
For one thing, it's got more outputs that the monitor's got lamps, so four of the transformers are "floating"...it obviously doesn't like that. Second, being that the inverter came out of a larger TV, I think it also doesn't play well with the smaller lamps...I tried bypassing the protection of that damn OZ694 IC nearly all friggin' day, but COULD NOT do it. I could not get it to stay on...I tried pin 4, pin 10, LED, no LED, resistors...nothing worked - it would still outsmart me somehow ! That leaves me with two options at the moment, neither of which will probably work:
A) Somehow indeed trick that IC to stay on, in case someone out there has done it somehow before on these boards which also have some additional comparators and stuff. Please share your method
B) "Convert" this inverter to a 6-lamp instead of an 8-lamp inverter by removing 4 of its transformers and associated circuitry. The idea behind this, which is probably flawed anyway, is that I can make it work "legit" by giving the IC what it wants, since I THINK it's triggering because of the 4 unconnected X-formers. I'm not sure where I'd even start with this, since the parameters it's tuned at would be all off.....unless of course some CCFL gurus out there got it all figured out and can provide some input as to how it operates and what would come close to what I want to achieve. What exactly IS causing it to stop ? That's the thing I'm trying to figure out....all with thousands of SMDs, a double-layer board with traces going everywhere, no scope and no schematic...awesome
No wonder LED has taken over - all that nonsense just to light up a fluorescent bloody tube...>_>Cheers guys. Thanks for any help.
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