Chosen Solution
Did I mess up the connection to the inverter? The screen looks great for about 2 seconds at start up, after waking from sleep (also for 2 seconds), and when I take the brightness from all the way down to anything up. But it never stays on for more than a couple seconds. I can still see images on the screen it’s just not illuminated. A magnet did drop out while I was re-installing the LCD and I can’t tell where it is supposed to go. Does it trigger a control to keep the backlight on? It is not one of the 4 magnets in the top corners of the LCD case. Thanks for any help you can give!
there are most likely 3 possible problems the inverter cable is scuffed or clamped the backlight tubes (CCFL) are defective the inverter is faulty i marked the magnet position on the picture, but it has nothing to do with the backlight problem. did you change the inverter too ?
check the position of the inverter cable
If the display lights for 2 seconds then the backlight lamp should be working. I would suspect a bad inverter board or a bad logic board. Any liquid spilled on the MB ?
When it dims do you see the screen display the dimming logo (the one that hows the brightness sun logo and the bars decreasing below it? The reason I ask is if the key on the keyboard that controls brightness is “stuck” then it would continuously dim the display. You could verify by disconnecting the built in keyboard and using an external keyboard. Just a thought…
It is a lamp problem.I repair a lot of A1181 with this problem. When lamp is bad, inverter protect itself and power off the LCD. Just need a lamp ccfl to replace it.
