Success! I just did the LED backlight mod on the IBM panel in this Tangerine iBook, and wow, it’s bright! WAY brighter than my XGA-modded Indigo, and as bright as my M2 MacBook!
I did not need to shim the backlight, I simply used the rubber that previously held the CFL and it fit perfectly. The backlighting is even and did I mention it’s bright?!
As expected, brightness control was backwards out of the gate, so I did the trace cuts with a nice wide cut and added the wire bodge. I have the same quirks, using the brightness buttons in Mac OS X results in:
- 1-4 are dim but brightness does increase slightly
- 5 is medium brightness, but the screen is flickery
- 6-8 are almost full brightness
- 9 is dim
- 10-11 are very dim
- 12 is almost full brightness
- 13-16 are full brightness
I do see flickering sometimes after waking from sleep at anything but 13-16, so that’s interesting.
I did notice that touching the board tweaks the brightness a little. I wonder if we can put a resistor on the signal wire or something to make it behave as expected… In the meantime, this looks amazing, thanks documenting your efforts and the fix for inverted brightness!