5300ce LCD Hunt... Nothing is Working!

[Garrett B]

I've been trying to source a replacement panel for my 5300ce for around 6 months now. I've tried five (no joke) panels from China, and they all display horizontal lines like I have pictured. No discernable image ever appears. The panels themselves are a little questionable looking, but I find it super hard to believe that they're all defective in the same way. What is going on here? Laptop and cable itself are known good. Frustrating - I'm about ready to throw in the towel and sell off all my parts.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Where is the cable known good from and what LCD part number do the replacements have? I think I saw something similar when I attempted to use a 5300c cable with my 5300ce display.

 

[Garrett B]

I have tried both the 821-0083-02 / 632-0069-02 VGA cTFT cable and the 821-0085-02 / 632-070-02 SVGA cTFT cable. Part number on the LCD is LTM10C036, which should be correct for the 800x600 ce model.

I do have a working 640x480 active matrix panel from a 5300c, and it works with both my cables. The image is a weird size when using the ce cable, but I think that's normal.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Alright, interesting...
I could try my 5300c LCD with my 5300ce cable to check if the behavior is the same as yours. I don't know if I want to risk opening them up unnecessarily though.
I do have a spare known-good 5300ce display that just has a really, really dim backlight, but I don't want to sell it yet. I'd like to see at some point if it would work in a PowerBook 190cs. I suspect it won't due to VRAM limitations, but until someone conclusively rules it out, I want to keep my spare.
I'll let you know if I'm willing to sell it in the future. You can swap the backlight bulb from one of your suspected bad panels pretty easily to correct the dimness.

It's just really hard to tell what the cause of a failure like that is, cable or LCD panel.

Edit: https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/powerbook-190-underrated-classic.21281/
Found this. 190cs will work with the 5300ce display, so for now I'm definitely going to want to keep my spare, sorry if I got your hopes up.

 

[Garrett B]

Agreed - don't open up an otherwise working machine! Not worth the risk, and I don't think that would give us any more good information. I have verified that a working 5300c display will show a legible image with either the VGA or sVGA display cable.

Maybe if you aren't willing to sell the spare panel, you might consider a loan at some point so I can definitively say these Chinese panels are bad? Either way, thanks for the replies!

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Maybe if you aren't willing to sell the spare panel, you might consider a loan at some point so I can definitively say these Chinese panels are bad? Either way, thanks for the replies!

I’d be open to that as long as you’d pay for shipping both ways. I’ll get back to you.