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Fixing the Dreaded iBook Backlight?

Posted by Cliff on from the do-it-yourself-repairs dept.

Aliencow inquires: "I've recently bought an iBook, and it started having the very common backlight problem. Basically, there are two types of things that can cause the problem: either the screen hinges pinching the cables, which is pretty easy to fix if you're not scared of opening things up; or it could be the logic board, which is what happened in my case. I've heard of someone being able to fix it by doing a bypass operation on the board, soldering a wire before the break and soldering it directly on the backlight connector. Aside from that, however I haven't been able to find much about how to fix that particular problem. Have any of you iBook-owning Slashdot readers had to repair your iBook like this? Any hints? If my repair is successful I'll surely snap a bunch of pictures and make a website, as this is a problem that affects a lot of iBook owners."

5 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. iBook has a backlight? by Greedo · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    My G3/800 dual-USB doesn't have a backlight. Or it does, and I have no idea how to make it work.

    Can someone shed some light on this (no pun intended)?

    --
    Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
    1. Re:iBook has a backlight? by MikeXpop · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      The backlight the poster was referring to is the light in the screen that makes you able to see it (and lights up the nifty apple logo).

      Hold F1 until the little bar goes all the way down to see what it's like with the backlight off. To turn it back on, hold F2.

      --
      Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
    2. Re:iBook has a backlight? by RevAaron · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      What do you mean it doesn't have a backlight? Has it never worked? Do you not use the machine's built-in display, using external VGA or something?

      --

      Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
  2. Nevermind by Greedo · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I see what is meant by backlight now.

    I thought it referred to a backlite keyboard, or a way to make the plastic that surrounds the screen light up (kinda like those makeup mirrors).

    Now ... how about the power button? It glows on my G4 tower, but not on the iBook. That's by design, right?

    --
    Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
  3. Value of CX domain names increase? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Not many but geeks and nerds would even give a hoot about this, but nic.cx (the people who controls the Christmas Island domain space) have suspended goatse.cx.

    http://goatse.cx/ turns up, now, a blank page.

    While I have no idea, I imagine the peeps who control the cx domain are censoring the speech that travels through their domain space. Intellectually, this is worrisome, but Christmas Island is not the US and they aren't required to observe rights to free speech. (FWIW, neither do US domain name registrars have to respect the 1st Amendment.)

    On the other hand, the cx domain space now is no longer infamous (among the uber-geek set) for one pornographic image, and that increases the value of dictionary words, trademark names, and proper nouns in the cx domain space. From my point of view, if you can land-grab now, you should. (cx domain names go for about US $35 per annum, which is a bargain among country-based TLDs.)

    Yes, I do control a domain in the cx space, but I am just a registrant and have no connection to the registrar except as a client, and a poor one at that.