Chosen Solution
The Apple store has already tried swapping the inverter to no avail, so I’m probably in the market for a new LCD, BUT it’s an intermittent problem - increasingly often I’ll get no backlight on the LCD, though I can still see the desktop. When I run it through an external monitor, the LCD also comes back to life, so it’s obviously not a complete failure. Is it most likely the LCD panel?
It could be the LCD panel, but it’s also likely the inverter cable. They often behave that way when they have become weak or crimped. Contrary to popular belief, inverters themselves rarely go bad. In fact, in over a hundred cases of the “dead backlight” issue I’ve seen in the last year or so, I have NEVER run across of a case of the backlight being restored when an inverter was replaced – it’s always in my experience the screen, or the inverter cable. It’s possible there’s an exception somewhere out there, but I sure haven’t seen it yet.
I agree with rdklincorporated. Most of the times the inverter cable is the culprit. Blowing the electronic inverter board is hard since the power comes from a protected circuit on the logic board. It’s also hard to blow the backlight fluorescent bulb if the portable is not dropped or gets a big hit. The inverter cable is the fragile part of the display lightning system mostly because the cable has a very small gage and it must travel thru the display hinge where he’s often damaged by friction caused by the display movement going up and down or by a broken hinge.
