PowerBook 160 Display Issues

[mjamesf]

Hello everyone. I just recently acquired a PowerBook 160 in very good condition, and when I bought it I was told the display had some issues on the internal display. I don't have the proper adapter to hook it up to an external display myself, but the seller had a picture where it was perfectly fine on an external display. I have the display adapter for the PowerBook, but it's not VGA or anything. The display has a tendency to fade in and out, and sometimes will become so faded I need to unplug it for a while. It has some odd vertical and horizontal lines, and even stranger is the display will flicker every so often, and more often than not, it fades out completely but yet the backlight and everything is still on. I'm thinking it may be the inverter board, and since it appeared to be working on the external monitor just fine, I don't think it's the video card, but I'm not sure. I took it apart and there are no leaking capacitors or anything and appears to be in good condition internally. So it puzzles me as to why it does this. Has anyone experienced this before on a PowerBook 160? Thanks!

Picture of just how bad the display can get:

 

[techknight]

the caps on the rear of the LCD display itself are leaking, and the leakage could be bad enough to start shorting out the DC-DC and other parts internal to the display, And the cable ribbon that goes between the board and the display can have breaks in it as well. 

 

[mjamesf]

This laptop was pre-owned and received very little use according to the seller. It was used for presentations for a small sales company back in the day. I haven't taken apart the display assembly,  but I guess I will need to do so to check whether or not the capacitors are leaking or not.

 

[mjamesf]

Update:

I just took it apart and indeed there are capacitors leaking on the back of the display. Luckily, it's not bad, though. It is probably why the display acts as it does.

 

[tjjq44]

The most difficult is to find tiny enough capacitors... 

 

[Ferrix97]

Those SMD cans are still readily available, This one should be a good replacement

You can also use ceramics as I did in this video:

 

[Rajel]

Those SMD cans are still readily available, This one should be a good replacement

You can also use ceramics as I did in this video:

[video redacted for space]

This is fantastic. the LCD on my PB160 isn't anywhere near this bad yet, but I think the degradation is starting, and was planning to replace the caps.

Thanks for the video, it'll be invaluable to the effort.