Hello,
I've acquired a 65" Panasonic TC-P65ST50 for free from someone while purchasing another TV for repair from them. I've repaired ~10 LCD TVs over the years with decent success, and I enjoy doing it. However this is my first attempt at a plasma, and I'm treading carefully.
The TV when I got it would power up, however the left ~5 inches of the display was entirely black, basically like a letterbox image would appear. I disassembled, looked up some info, and determined that it was likely either dirty/loose connectors between the panel and the C buffer boards (I think is the name of them?). Cleaning these and reseating the ribbon cables had no effect in resolving the problem.
During this process, I always unplugged the TV and hit the power button several times to drain power before doing any ribbon connections on/off. On one occasion, I must not have fully drained power or waited sufficiently and when connecting the ribbon immediately adjacent to the power area, saw the very smallest of electrical sparks on the buffer board when attaching the panel ribbon. After that point, approximately the left 10" of the display are now all black
.
I purchased a replacement buffer board on eBay, swapped it, connected it all up, and the symptoms are exactly identical. no difference when swapping boards in any way. As such, I returned the replacement board.
When the ribbon cables in that area are unplugged, that section of the panel is just snowy white static (if my memory serves me, it's been a month or so). When plugged in, it is solid black, no noise/colors/lines in the black area at all. Is this an issue with the main input board generating signal for the buffer boards? Have I damaged some sort of IC in the ribbon connector cables?
Would it be worth continuing to troubleshoot this set; can it still be repaired? Or is the panel damaged and time to just part it out to ebay and dispose of the unusable bits? As mentioned, I'm in this project to the tune of $0 so far, so if it's time to pull the plug, I still come out ahead parting out the TV.
I appreciate the help. I have access to a multimeter and an LED backlight driver/tester tool that is useful when troubleshooting LED tvs, which I have done various times. Please note that in the attached pictures, the TV is standing upside down on the bed where I was working on it.
I've acquired a 65" Panasonic TC-P65ST50 for free from someone while purchasing another TV for repair from them. I've repaired ~10 LCD TVs over the years with decent success, and I enjoy doing it. However this is my first attempt at a plasma, and I'm treading carefully.
The TV when I got it would power up, however the left ~5 inches of the display was entirely black, basically like a letterbox image would appear. I disassembled, looked up some info, and determined that it was likely either dirty/loose connectors between the panel and the C buffer boards (I think is the name of them?). Cleaning these and reseating the ribbon cables had no effect in resolving the problem.
During this process, I always unplugged the TV and hit the power button several times to drain power before doing any ribbon connections on/off. On one occasion, I must not have fully drained power or waited sufficiently and when connecting the ribbon immediately adjacent to the power area, saw the very smallest of electrical sparks on the buffer board when attaching the panel ribbon. After that point, approximately the left 10" of the display are now all black
. I purchased a replacement buffer board on eBay, swapped it, connected it all up, and the symptoms are exactly identical. no difference when swapping boards in any way. As such, I returned the replacement board.
When the ribbon cables in that area are unplugged, that section of the panel is just snowy white static (if my memory serves me, it's been a month or so). When plugged in, it is solid black, no noise/colors/lines in the black area at all. Is this an issue with the main input board generating signal for the buffer boards? Have I damaged some sort of IC in the ribbon connector cables?
Would it be worth continuing to troubleshoot this set; can it still be repaired? Or is the panel damaged and time to just part it out to ebay and dispose of the unusable bits? As mentioned, I'm in this project to the tune of $0 so far, so if it's time to pull the plug, I still come out ahead parting out the TV.
I appreciate the help. I have access to a multimeter and an LED backlight driver/tester tool that is useful when troubleshooting LED tvs, which I have done various times. Please note that in the attached pictures, the TV is standing upside down on the bed where I was working on it.
Attached Files
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