I've never seen so much as an image of an active matrix monochrome or grayscale display get vinegar syndrome. Not a portable, a 170, 180 or any other one. Has anyone seen one with it, or are the active matrix mono/grayscale displays somehow immune?
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Has anyone ever seen an Active Matrix Mono/Grayscale LCD get vinegar syndrome?
- Thread starter 3lectr1cPPC
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… yes, but not in early PowerBooks - Ive seen it happen with later Clamshell iBooks (poorly stored from Japan) and PC laptops like Packard Bell, Toshiba, Sharp units around the Pentium II time (comparable era to Clamshells). Later Wallstreet, G4 PowerBooks I’ve yet to see.
Hate it - my favourite PC laptop an IBM PC110 has been knocked out due to it, replaced the film but it displays just a white LCD image now.
EDIT: misread your title sorry, Active greyscale no but only a small subsection of PowerBooks have these.
Hate it - my favourite PC laptop an IBM PC110 has been knocked out due to it, replaced the film but it displays just a white LCD image now.
EDIT: misread your title sorry, Active greyscale no but only a small subsection of PowerBooks have these.
Yeah, that's what I was saying. Never seen a 170, 180, or similar with it. A few PC laptops used active-matrix mono/grayscale displays as well. The color ones can absolutely get it, and I'm sorry to hear about your PC110. Seems very common on those, as for whatever reason (humidity?) panels coming from Japan have it a lot. My guess is that you got the angle wrong which is why you see no image. A solid white screen is what you'd see without any film at all. Color active matrix displays all use the same PVA film adhesive that the passive matrix ones do, they'll degrade in the same way. It just seems like that wasn't used on the active matrix non-color panels, at least, that would be my only explanation.
Passive and active matrix screen polarizers are both assembled with the same basic materials. They both contains layers of TAC (tri-acetyl cellulose) as core elements of the polarizer, which are the genesis of the vinegar syndrome. The TAC degradation process is generally influenced by two things, moisture and heat. The TAC layers are supposed to be coated with a material that is meant to keep moisture out, but that obviously didn't work. There may be a construction difference between active and passive that prevents water from attacking the TAC in active matrix LCD's, it's hard to say. We'd have to know more specifically about the construction of models during that time period and differences between them to be able to really drill down on the subject. Just in the last 10 years have the TAC layers in LCDs begun to be replaced by PET layers instead, so TAC was used in passive and active matrix screens for a very long time.
If you want to read more about the construction of polarizers, I would suggest this site:
www.panadisplay.com
I guarantee it contains more information on polarizers than you ever cared to know.
If you want to read more about the construction of polarizers, I would suggest this site:
Basic knowledge of polarizing film - Exhibition - PANASYS
Basic knowledge of polarizing film
I guarantee it contains more information on polarizers than you ever cared to know.
Thanks for the info! That site has quite a bit of info, doesn't it. We'll have to see what happens as more time passes. Right now at least they seem to be fine as compared to other displays, but we'll see. I know one guy in your old thread from 2013 cooked his film by going way over 100 degrees Celsius trying to bake out tunnel vision after misreading a forum reply, but the polarizer not holding up to that is understandable 
Right now I'm working on a big ol' list of LCD part numbers for my website and eventually also the wiki. Should be a good resource to have.
Right now I'm working on a big ol' list of LCD part numbers for my website and eventually also the wiki. Should be a good resource to have.
The IBM PC110 uses a very early passive STN display with dual polarizer films (front and back) comparable to that used in a Nintendo GameBoy DMG. My LCD was fine for years but started losing contrast and could only see an image looking diagonally down. Pulled it apart, removed films, and it appears the glue has leeched into the LCD display itself - holding on by a thin thread. I'm hoping some smart cookies develop a TFT mod for this amazing device soon - there is a person in Japan and also US looking into this.
I think my Duo 250 has the only active matrix grayscale screen in my collection? No problem there, but it's been sitting open on the Apple Display Unit since the day I got it. That was long before vinegar syndrome became a thing.
