Immediately following my success with the Mac yesterday, I got to work on
'fixing' my portable '286 box with LCD display (which I think is _barely_
classic).
The cable leading to the display had had three of its wires pulled out,
and I figured that this was the reason for the very weak and grungy
display.
I managed to solder little bits of wire into the holes and solder the
stray wires from the cable onto those, but then I realized that I couldn't
plug the thing in anymore as the holes (from the underside) had filled
with solder. :/
And I also realized that my solution was a bad one because the protruding
wires would short against the metal frame that holds the LCD panel in
place.
So I used the connector from the C64 keyboard instead.
Anyway, I got the cable rebuilt. I've tested it with the multimeter and
all the wires make contact and go to the right places.
But now I can't get any kind of display from the LCD panel. It doesn't
light up at all. It looks like it's totally dead.
I put a monochrome display adapter card in the machine, and it will boot
up with that and display fine on a monochrome monitor. So the machine is
_mostly_ OK.
I'm not sure the power supply is OK, though. It squeals now.
So basically, I've turned an ill-looking display into a dead display, and
for some reason a healthy power supply is now sounding sick.
Bleah!
Anyway, the machine has a special card in it for driving the LCD panel.
It is labeled "LCD & HGC CARD". What is "HGC"? It has an external 9-pin
port on it and I tried plugging the monochrome display into it, but the
picture was all distorted so I figured it was using a different frequency
or something. The cursor comes out about an inch wide, and none of the
craracters are recognizable, possibly just from overwritten numerous times
in the same scanline.
I don't know where I'll go from here. I'm just taking a breather
before continuing. I wanted to be rebuilding the TS1016 RAM pack by now
instead of still messing with this damn PC. <s>
Oh, and BTW, I electrocuted myself last night when I touched some exposed
wiring going to the LCD panel. It surprised me that there was that much
juice going through there. My thumb and forefinger are still tender. But
the display was still working at that point, and looking much sharper than
it had been. But the machine wouldn't close up properly because the
connector was too thick and that's why I went back in today, just to
reverse the cable so that the big fat Commodore connector was on the
inside instead of on the LCD panel end. (Which meant pulling the connector
apart and rebuilding it the other way, just so it would fit in.)
I haven't crossed any wires, I haven't plugged anything in backwards, and
I haven't dropped anything into the machine, so I don't know what I've
done wrong.
<s>
Doug Spence
ds_spenc_at_alcor.concordia.ca
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/
Received on Wed Sep 02 1998 - 14:00:05 BST