Just wanted to share my experiences of late & thank the members of this forum for sharing theirs too. It's been a great help repairing some kerbside sets recently.
So, with household waste sites being closed for the forseeable I've noticed on my shopping and excercise trips a spike in the number of TV's being left kerbside & (disinfectant spray in hand, obviously!) I've been taking advantage and grabbing some free entertainment while on lockdown.
First set was a c.2005 Bush branded 32" LCD a few weeks ago, this had a failed bootstrap cap but sadly being out in the rain appears to have damaged the panel (have stripped and dried/cleaned with IPA but there's a delaminating plastic coating on the reverse of the actual LCD which is visible on darker scenes so that's likely a spares set.)
Second one is IIRC a 36" Hitachi branded one which has a royally failed CCFL driver board. So far replaced 2 FETs, an 11v Zener & a fuse, all tubes now light briefly but still goes into protection or something similar... (it was the same initially before the shorted FETs and Zener repair, except only the bottom half lit then). Unsure if that one is going to be repaired, there's a tiny 1:1 isolating/coupling transformer that's gone open too now but it's dared to challenge me so I'll likely try again soon!
Next on the roadside was a Cello 48" Vestel jobbie from 2015, that turned out to be panelled though so it's been stripped for spares.
Yesterday I found another lovely Vestel, Toshiba branded 40" that had the full house of corrupt firmware to begin with, then (following the excellent advice from other threads on here) after reflashing (haven't done the cap delete yet, will see if it holds up first!) it powered up but no backlight. Spent this afternoon bridging all the sloppy push connectors in that to be greeted with a backlight that worked "after a fashion" but had around 12 dead or flickery LED's on all but the bottom strip. Cello to the rescue then, and I've bodged it up by cutting down the larger strips to the appropriate number of LEDs & stuck them in with double-sided tape, soldered to points where i removed solder mask. Having recently heard a few horror stories about Vestel/Toshiba panels being easy to break when reassembling I was super careful putting the thing together & it's now in the front room having been run for a while earlier and looking very nice.
Tomorrow's project will be a little smaller, a 2005 LG think it's about 22" more aimed as a monitor i think but with a tuner and scart/HDMI ports too, not done anything other than disinfect and sit it in the porch to dry, I'm fearful that the panel may be FUBAR'd on that due to rain too though. We'll see!
Anyway I'll sign off now as it's a long old post, but just thought I'd share my "lockdown treasures" with you lol
So, with household waste sites being closed for the forseeable I've noticed on my shopping and excercise trips a spike in the number of TV's being left kerbside & (disinfectant spray in hand, obviously!) I've been taking advantage and grabbing some free entertainment while on lockdown.
First set was a c.2005 Bush branded 32" LCD a few weeks ago, this had a failed bootstrap cap but sadly being out in the rain appears to have damaged the panel (have stripped and dried/cleaned with IPA but there's a delaminating plastic coating on the reverse of the actual LCD which is visible on darker scenes so that's likely a spares set.)
Second one is IIRC a 36" Hitachi branded one which has a royally failed CCFL driver board. So far replaced 2 FETs, an 11v Zener & a fuse, all tubes now light briefly but still goes into protection or something similar... (it was the same initially before the shorted FETs and Zener repair, except only the bottom half lit then). Unsure if that one is going to be repaired, there's a tiny 1:1 isolating/coupling transformer that's gone open too now but it's dared to challenge me so I'll likely try again soon!
Next on the roadside was a Cello 48" Vestel jobbie from 2015, that turned out to be panelled though so it's been stripped for spares.
Yesterday I found another lovely Vestel, Toshiba branded 40" that had the full house of corrupt firmware to begin with, then (following the excellent advice from other threads on here) after reflashing (haven't done the cap delete yet, will see if it holds up first!) it powered up but no backlight. Spent this afternoon bridging all the sloppy push connectors in that to be greeted with a backlight that worked "after a fashion" but had around 12 dead or flickery LED's on all but the bottom strip. Cello to the rescue then, and I've bodged it up by cutting down the larger strips to the appropriate number of LEDs & stuck them in with double-sided tape, soldered to points where i removed solder mask. Having recently heard a few horror stories about Vestel/Toshiba panels being easy to break when reassembling I was super careful putting the thing together & it's now in the front room having been run for a while earlier and looking very nice.
Tomorrow's project will be a little smaller, a 2005 LG think it's about 22" more aimed as a monitor i think but with a tuner and scart/HDMI ports too, not done anything other than disinfect and sit it in the porch to dry, I'm fearful that the panel may be FUBAR'd on that due to rain too though. We'll see!
Anyway I'll sign off now as it's a long old post, but just thought I'd share my "lockdown treasures" with you lol
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