Well, here is the next thing I would try to see if you can narrow down the problem...
It is fairly obvious that you are not afraid of tinkering with your hardware since you have moved the LCD panel between several systems. I would take the video board from the non-working system and swap it with the one from one of the two working systems. The I8000, I8100 an dI8200 all use the same video interface. This would allow you to determine if the problem floows the video board or if it stays with the LCD panel. Since your LCD works up to 800x600, it could be bad video ram, or it could be the LCD panel. The video board is "easy" to replace, and is also much cheaper than the LCD.
Hopefully for you, the problem is with the video board, but I am beginning to suspect that it is with the LCD panel itself... If it is the video board, you can get a replacement from Dell Spare parts. The last time I prices them it was around $129, but that was some time ago, so they might even be below $100 by now...
aldta, you are correct. Guess I had a momentary brain ****. The part number I posted is for Samsung SXGA+ display. Don't know why I confused the two, so your part number is indeed correct. When you swap this with other notebooks, are you swapping just the display, or the entire assembly? One thing that comes to mind is a bad LCD cable, which can do strange things to a display. Since the display works (in VGA, bios screen) and you're sure the video cards are OK, that only leaves the inverter or cable, both of which can cause some very strange outputs if they are defective.
The other possiblity is that this display is still not compatible with your notebook. There are certain configurations that simply do not work. I cannot recall all the details but I believe it was a Hitachi display that would only work with 32mb video cards and I believe there is a IBM display that also falls into this catagory. Could this be a possibility?
I know how to completely tear down and rebuild the machine from scratch :-)
Thanks for your suggestion but that was the first thing I tried a while back... and as I said...
I tried it in two other Inspirons that have their own Geforce 4 440 go cards so i know the card itself isn't the issue
I8100 and two I8200's I have all have thier own Nvidia GeForce 4 440 go 64 mb cards and putting the LCD in each of these laptops and yielding the same result tells me it's not the video card :smileywink:
But if it is in fact the LCD, how can it work in one resolution 800x600 and not it's native 1600x1200?
"aldta, you are correct. Guess I had a momentary brain ****. The part number I posted is for Samsung SXGA+ display. Don't know why I confused the two, so your part number is indeed correct. "
It's cool we all make mistakes :smileyhappy:
" When you swap this with other notebooks, are you swapping just the display, or the entire assembly? "
At first yes... so the next thing I did was use a different flex cable (LCD cable)
"One thing that comes to mind is a bad LCD cable, which can do strange things to a display. Since the display works (in VGA, bios screen) and you're sure the video cards are OK, that only leaves the inverter or cable, both of which can cause some very strange outputs if they are defective."
Yea, I am still thinking it's the inverter
"The other possiblity is that this display is still not compatible with your notebook. There are certain configurations that simply do not work. I cannot recall all the details but I believe it was a Hitachi display that would only work with 32mb video cards and I believe there is a IBM display that also falls into this catagory. Could this be a possibility? "
I know exacltly what you are talking about but most of those , if I am not mistaking, pertain to SXGA and higher end video cards(Geforce 440 , ATI 9000 , Quadro4) ...but also, the service tag on the laptop showed that it came with this LCD.. I have two other UltraSharp UXGA screens, but none of them are the same model as this... so I can't try a different inverter board... :smileysad:
My latitude C840 (which is the same beast) has an SXGA+ screen. nvidia geforce4 440 go 32MB.
When I just loaded XP it did the same thing, then I installed the DELL nvidia driver and it fixed it. I presume you've tried the dell driver?
I've tried to install a newer nvidia (66.93) driver but after it's installed you notice that the actual driver file versions haven't changed from the dell one meaning that the dell ones are the newest available.
JersWork
770 Posts
0
January 15th, 2005 03:00
JersWork
770 Posts
0
January 15th, 2005 11:00
Well, here is the next thing I would try to see if you can narrow down the problem...
It is fairly obvious that you are not afraid of tinkering with your hardware since you have moved the LCD panel between several systems. I would take the video board from the non-working system and swap it with the one from one of the two working systems. The I8000, I8100 an dI8200 all use the same video interface. This would allow you to determine if the problem floows the video board or if it stays with the LCD panel. Since your LCD works up to 800x600, it could be bad video ram, or it could be the LCD panel. The video board is "easy" to replace, and is also much cheaper than the LCD.
Hopefully for you, the problem is with the video board, but I am beginning to suspect that it is with the LCD panel itself... If it is the video board, you can get a replacement from Dell Spare parts. The last time I prices them it was around $129, but that was some time ago, so they might even be below $100 by now...
Message Edited by JersWork on 01-15-2005 07:43 AM
RedsB3
106 Posts
0
January 15th, 2005 12:00
aldta, you are correct. Guess I had a momentary brain ****. The part number I posted is for Samsung SXGA+ display. Don't know why I confused the two, so your part number is indeed correct. When you swap this with other notebooks, are you swapping just the display, or the entire assembly? One thing that comes to mind is a bad LCD cable, which can do strange things to a display. Since the display works (in VGA, bios screen) and you're sure the video cards are OK, that only leaves the inverter or cable, both of which can cause some very strange outputs if they are defective.
The other possiblity is that this display is still not compatible with your notebook. There are certain configurations that simply do not work. I cannot recall all the details but I believe it was a Hitachi display that would only work with 32mb video cards and I believe there is a IBM display that also falls into this catagory. Could this be a possibility?
aldta
30 Posts
0
January 15th, 2005 12:00
aldta
30 Posts
0
January 15th, 2005 13:00
Thanks for writing again :
"aldta, you are correct. Guess I had a momentary brain ****. The part number I posted is for Samsung SXGA+ display. Don't know why I confused the two, so your part number is indeed correct. "
It's cool we all make mistakes :smileyhappy:
" When you swap this with other notebooks, are you swapping just the display, or the entire assembly? "
At first yes... so the next thing I did was use a different flex cable (LCD cable)
"One thing that comes to mind is a bad LCD cable, which can do strange things to a display. Since the display works (in VGA, bios screen) and you're sure the video cards are OK, that only leaves the inverter or cable, both of which can cause some very strange outputs if they are defective."
Yea, I am still thinking it's the inverter
"The other possiblity is that this display is still not compatible with your notebook. There are certain configurations that simply do not work. I cannot recall all the details but I believe it was a Hitachi display that would only work with 32mb video cards and I believe there is a IBM display that also falls into this catagory. Could this be a possibility? "
I know exacltly what you are talking about but most of those , if I am not mistaking, pertain to SXGA and higher end video cards(Geforce 440 , ATI 9000 , Quadro4) ...but also, the service tag on the laptop showed that it came with this LCD.. I have two other UltraSharp UXGA screens, but none of them are the same model as this... so I can't try a different inverter board... :smileysad:
PlasticSpatula
11 Posts
0
February 26th, 2005 20:00
My latitude C840 (which is the same beast) has an SXGA+ screen. nvidia geforce4 440 go 32MB.
When I just loaded XP it did the same thing, then I installed the DELL nvidia driver and it fixed it. I presume you've tried the dell driver?
I've tried to install a newer nvidia (66.93) driver but after it's installed you notice that the actual driver file versions haven't changed from the dell one meaning that the dell ones are the newest available.
Any help?
aldta
30 Posts
0
February 26th, 2005 23:00