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General discussion

iBook G4 12" Display Replacement

Sep 27, 2007 1:06PM PDT

My nephew was kind enough to give me an out-of-warranty iBook G4 12" as a gift - he has long been a Mac fan and wants me to experience the love first hand. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished, and as he was powering it up to give me the fifty cent tour, the LCD died - just died. Backlight was fine, but all we saw for images was squiggly gry and black lines in the center of the panel.

"It's probably the cable." the guys at both the Apple Store Genius Bar *and* I-fixit told us, but of course, neither place sells the LCD cable as a replacement part, and as you undoubtedly know, iFixit's price for a replacement LCD is upward of $400, and Apple won't even sell you one - although they WILL replace it for you, for about $650 out of warranty.

I had resigned myself to letting it sit until I could save up the money to score a display on eBay, where they go for anywhere from $75 to $220 - much more reasonable, but still pricey when you consider that the rest of the machine could give up the ghost at any time.

So, my nephew and I were focusing our energies elsewhere, and were trying to breath new life into an old Dell C400 Pentium III laptop that I scored at a flea market for $20. When it became clear that the system board on that machine was toast, my mind lit up. "Hey!" I said to my nephew "isn't that a 12" LCD in that Dell C400?" He grinned broadly and said "Do you have a set of Torx wrneches?

Half an hour and some relatively delicate but mostly uncomplicated computer surgery later, the lovely, perfect 12" LCD from the $20 dead Dell was working like brandy-new in the until-recently dark iBook G4
12"!!! Turns out that not only is the screen compatible, THE DARNED CONNECTOR IS IDENTICAL!!!

I now have two spare LCDs for my refurbished iBook, as I went to the flea market and bought two more dead Dells for another $40.

Don't believe the hype, folks. Turns out that a screen is a screen is a screen, after all.

Cheers!
Dave G.

Discussion is locked

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Good to know
Sep 27, 2007 9:44PM PDT

Thanks for posting that information.

Who would have thunk it?

A neat piece of surgery you both did there.

I guess, when you stand back and think about it, there are only a limited supply of LCD manufacturers in the world and it is probably safe to assume that all the major machine makers pull from the same well.
What is surprising, is that the connectors are the same. We all know how proprietary each maker is when it comes to parts like this.

Maybe there is hope for an old iBook that is laying around the place.

P

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(NT) Great Post !!! Thanks for sharing this.
Sep 27, 2007 10:49PM PDT
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I tried this and the screen I bought fit and attached but
Dec 1, 2007 2:26AM PST

the screen was just barely bright enough for me to make out. Is there any way to make the screen brighter. I used the controls at the top of the keyboard, but they didn't make it bright enough.

Randy

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ibook g4 12" display - I tried this and sure enough the
Apr 7, 2008 10:56AM PDT

screen fit perfect. I am however having trouble with the brightness, I can barely make out the writting. Did you have to make any changes to your drivers or other software to get your screen to work?

Thank Yolu