I've fixed an Inspiron 5000 with a dead backlight tube. Getting at the 
tube might be tricky, but replacing it is fairly trivial. You can buy 
many different sizes and lengths of CCFL tubes from digi-key, and I'm 
sure they're available at eBay and similar places.

A dead inverter could be a more interesting problem. I suppose you could 
use any generic inverter and just wire it up to some supply on the 
laptop with some hacking, but to use the original connections and get 
brightness adjustment you'll need a more exact replacement.

Anand Dhuru wrote:
> I have a Dell Inspsron on which the display has gone *very* dim.
> 
> After some research on the web, I understand that the backlight bulb, or its 
> FL inverter should be the culprit.
> 
> If its the former, there are some folks who claim success bypassing the 
> inverter / bulb ompletely and using ultrabright white LEDs (around a dozen 
> seem adequate) as a source of backlight.
> 
> Any idea whether this is a good workable idea? And if its the inverter thats 
> gone bad, is there a generic circuit on the web that might help me repair 
> it? Or if it can be repaired at all?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Anand
> 


-- 
Hector Martin (hector@marcansoft.com)
Public Key: http://www.marcansoft.com/hector.asc

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