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Repairing a plasma TV step by step (photos)

Check out step by step photos from my TV repair project.

Dan Ackerman
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Dan Ackerman
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This TV died in November, 2010, and has been collecting dust in a corner ever since.

Read the full story of this TV repair project here.

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Removing the back panel was the first step.
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Inside, you can see the four main boards. The power board on the bottom, processor board on the top, and Y and Z sustain boards on either side.
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Removing the support beam was critical, as both the Y-SUS and power boards were connected to it.
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Getting the support beam out of the way was a time-consuming process.
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Lots of screws. I ended up putting most of them back.
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The suspect Y-SUS board.
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My replacement board, ordered from eBay.
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One of the many ribbon cables and connections I had to carefully remove.
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More connections on the Y-SUS board.
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Yet another tiny cable to watch out for.
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With the new board inserted, I tilted the set back upright to test it.
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These screws have to go back in there. Now, if I only remembered which one was which...
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An HDMI input via a laptop worked, surprising no one more than me.
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Hmmm...not really sure where these extra screws were from...
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The only tool I used during the entire process.
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Putting the cover panel back on was one of the final steps.
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Reattaching the back panel of the TV.
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A final successful video test, via HDMI.
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Does anyone want a blown Y-SUS board from a five-year-old plasma?

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