PowerBook 1400 blank screen

[register]

Dear comrades, I liberated a nice PowerBook 1400c/166 with a VIEWpowr 1400/16, recently. The battery is dead. Without battery it will boot but the screen stays blank (gray pattern, some random stripes), no mouse arrow or whatsoever visible. The unit can be restarted or shut off properly using the power button and according shortcuts (return=off, s=sleep, r=restart) but the unit does not show any feedback on the screen. The behaviour does not change with the VIEWpowr card removed nor with extensions disabled. PRAM has been zapped, already. Any suggestions what I should try next to revitalise the PB?

 

[Elfen]

Any display on the Viewport on an external monitor?

And hat do you mean - without battery it ill boot up but the screen stays blank? Sounds like a loose connector so far. You will need to take apart the 1400 like before and keep going until you remove the CPU card. Then you need to look at the connectors above it which goes to the LCD Panel and see if any are loose and tighten them up. then reassemble the machine.

 

[tanuki65]

Try fiddling with the display controls (contrast, brigtness)

 

[register]

Thank you for your rapid response. Unfortunately I had no success, yet. Brightness and contrast are fine. On startup a simple black and white pattern appears (like on the known welcome screen but without any symbol or message) and with one or a few vertical stripes in solid black. Reseating of both display connectors caused no effect. I have no appropriate display connector at hand (several are buried in the basement but not to be excavated in near future). Currently I can not verify if the VIEWpowr produces a signal, but the presence of the card makes no difference to the behaviour of the PowerBook's screen, anyway.

As I am in a process of renovating some rooms this project will rest for a while, until I have access to the box with PowerBook related stuff, again

I will update this post as soon as I am ready to further diagnose and fix the unit.