Thinkpads Forum

Greetings, as the title might suggest the backlight in my AliExpress sourced broke. Without getting into the details positive led strip wire got cut, touching the snapped cable did work for a few times but before I actually got to securing the connection in any way the backlight just stopped working.
The screen arrived with a pre-modded inverter which upon closer inspection appears to be the "cheapybuck" described by xiphmont so it most likely is the culprit here. As a last resort solution I tried pulling out a ccfl tube from already smashed LCD but I broke it by accident
So, what should I do now? I don't have any professional equipment nor the environment required to solder things.
Should I try buying the kit that iccfl is still offering, try finding someone with a xiph kit or maybe going through with the ccfl mod?
Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

No clue how good the iccfl kit would be but that's probably your best bet. Seems basically impossible to source a xiphmont kit these days unfortunately. You could also probably source a complete CCFL assembly off of plazmo.com but if it's a similar price as the iccfl led kit you may as well just try that I'd say.

Can you repair the cut cable?
Is there maybe a fuse on that LED board?
Pictures of your 'dirty deed'?

Plunkyy wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 15, 2026 9:28 am

No clue how good the iccfl kit would be but that's probably your best bet. Seems basically impossible to source a xiphmont kit these days unfortunately. You could also probably source a complete CCFL assembly off of plazmo.com but if it's a similar price as the iccfl led kit you may as well just try that I'd say.

Yeah, i guess the iccfl kit would be the best choice here too.

RealBlackStuff wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 15, 2026 10:20 am

Can you repair the cut cable?
Is there maybe a fuse on that LED board?
Pictures of your 'dirty deed'?

I didn't mention it in the main post but i have taken the screen and its inverter to the computer repair shop where i got the connection fixed (it didn't do anything). Or so i thought since yesterday after i took out the led strip from the screen assembly i discovered that the positive wire snapped of the led strip too, not sure if it happened before or after my trip to the computer repair shop. Naturally after the discovery i tried to touch the metal on the strip with the metal on the wire and power the screen but once again nothing happened. I suppose i could take the lcd strip to that computer shop once again.

There's only one fuse that i can see on the inverter that i can see (green one with a letter N on it). The cheapybuck section doesn't have any. During my trip to the computer repair i was told by its owner that "voltage is flowing through the inverter" and that he won't attempt to do anything to it further. Not surprising since whoever made the inverter instead of desoldering the coil decided to cut it in half and solder the cheap led driver to the part with status indicator leds.

If by "dirty deed" You mean the tube not sure if pictures will help here since i snapped it cleanly in half