What is a Laptop Screen Inverter?
The small piece of circuit board, which is usually located underneath
the plastic shell of your laptop’s screen casing, is probably the cause
of one of the most common problems related to screen failure and, more
specifically, dimness, or darkness to the screen itself.
The main purpose of the inverter is basically to give power to the
backlight. The way it works is simple, it takes power from the laptop
itself by a small inverter lead that runs from the motherboard of the
laptop, sometimes it is a direct lead on it’s own, other times this
lead can be connected into the inverter through the LCD cable (the lead
that runs from the motherboard to the back of the screen itself),
giving the screen its visual display.
At one end of the inverter, usually the left end, the lead that gives
it power is plugged into a small white socket and from the other end,
usually the right side, the backlight lead from the screen is plugged
into another white socket. The backlight is a very small, thin, long,
very delicate light bulb that runs along the very bottom or sometimes
the side of the screen.
The problems related to the inverter is dimness or darkness to the
screen in most cases or flickering of the backlight. Sometimes it can
stop the screen form working at all but not usually. A common fault
with laptop screens is a dark or dim screen, generally it is assumed
that it is the backlight that is at fault, sometimes this may be
correct, however more often or not it is simply the inverter not
working, or not giving the backlight the power it needs. The inverter
is usually cheaper to replace than the backlight, as the backlight is
very fragile and can be easily broken. On some occasions a repair of
the inverter is possible, although usually labour charges on fixing the
inverter can sometimes lead up to being more expensive than simply
replacing it.
When it comes to purchasing an inverter most companies will require the
part number which is usually printed on a bar code on the outside of
the inverter but sometimes you may need to look carefully to find it.
If your lucky then you may get away with just stating what your laptop
make and model is, for example ‘I have an IBM Thinkpad T22 and I need
an inverter’, we try our hardest to locate the inverter with just these
details, however sometimes you will need to provide the part number;
here is an example of a part number from the inverter for an IBM
Thinkpad T22, (10L1402). This inverter is also compatible with the IBM
T21, and T20 all three laptops as a whole are basically the same apart
from the processor.
