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I scored a laptop with a dead screen just in time for my laptop to fail. Although my laptop didn't fail entirely - just the backlight. I took it apart last night and repaired the backlight. The bundle of tiny tiny tiny wires which traverses the hinge to drive the screen had one broken wire. It took a lot of peeling to get to the wires. The bundle is wrapped in a metallic/cloth weave with glue backing on one side. Once open I was able to solder the wire. I used a piece of silicone wire sheath from a halogen down light (since it needs to be really flexible) rather than heat shrink to protect the joint.
The laptop I scored appeared to have a dead screen. It was given to me with a spare screen. After about 40 screws I separated the top and bottom plastic molded section from the cast aluminium inner frame and gave everything a clean and a bit of an eyeball. I then ran the system up to see what was going on. The screen was entirely dead. I left the screen in place and plugged in the spare screen. It fired up nicely but the plug didn't quite seat correctly. There were bent pins in the socket. Out with the maggie lamp and the pointy tweezers! I straightened the pins and plugged in the original screen. Voila! The screen fired up, but it looked like it was toast anyway. There was a red band across the bottom. I don't know how the replacement screen fired up without those pins - but the original does not... Perhaps the plug, cabling or controller is damaged as well.
Today I will be swapping out the original LCD panel and hopefully, although the plugs are the same, hopefully the mounting system is the same. If it is - I've got a working laptop.