screen replacement

[barnesy]

Hi all,

Would a replacement screen for my (early) Pandora be difficult to source? And how difficult a job would it be to fit it if I did find one?

Mine has a bit of colour bleeding caused by me using it as padding when I went over the handlebars on my bike a while ago, so I'm wondering what its options are. I'm also wondering about putting it in a new case. I forget which of those jobs was considered scary, or if it was all of them!

Cheers.

 

[MTPDA]

I imagine it depends on what's broken, I don't know about the screen itself, but the ribbon cable is pretty scarce, and also creates colour issues. You say colour bleed so I'm assuming you are meaning different colours mixing? Is it the liquid crystal spreading and causing shorts? Or is the whole screen slightly purple or green?

 

[barnesy]

A quick photo is probably the best explanation. I think it looks like damage to the panel itself? I could just put up with it, but if there are options I'll consider them!

edit - the damage you can see to the top edge of the case has been there for a long time by the way: I think that was a fault in the case.

 

[MTPDA]

Yeah, that's impact damage to the LCD panel, had something similar happen to a full sized laptop. I don't see any screen replacements on the dragonbox site but they may offer it.

 

[MTPDA]

As for how difficult, if it is anything like repairing my old laptop, it requires essentially a full disassembly, but thankfully no soldering.

 

[levi]

On a Pandora? I think you can remove the LCD surround without disassembling the hinge, but it is a long time since I watched that old disassembly video so I may be wrong there. But the main complication in Pandora disassembly is reassembling the hinge when you're done, do if you can avoid doing that it would just be a matter of unscrewing the LCD surround, removing it, flipping the LCD over and disconnecting it. You also have to be aware that there's a touchscreen there, and I can't remember how that's connected on a Pandora (on the Pyra it's a separate flat flex cable coming out at right angles into the display PCB). I'm not sure if it's already combined with the LCD cable on the Pandora's screen, or if not where it comes in.

 

[daveshah]

Even though they are out of stock, Aliexpress and eBay tend to be a fairly good source of old LCDs (with the risk of the odd dead pixel). If it has a part number on the back, search for it and see if anywhere is still selling it (I think the Pandora used a fairly common one but I can't remember the details).

 

[barnesy]

Thanks for the answers. I also just found this:


Er yeah, I'm not too eager to give that screen extraction a go!

 

[levi]

Jesus, that's a craigix video I suppose. Here's the official one which doesn't contain any use of the side snips and doesn't advise to destroy your case by cutting the edges:

The corner where you start did crack on my unit after three or four times removing my case, so in my opinion it will go eventually, but the first time or two might be okay.

In my opinion you should only need to remove the screws around the screen, stretch the case to undo the clips around and undo the plastic around the LCD. Seems the LCD cable and the touchscreen cables are merged in this case, so if you get the same screen you can more or less install it at this point, IMO you might not even need to remove the LCD surround, but it might be easier to remove it so you can flip the LCD over and work on the top of the cable where the LCD (and touchscreen) cable comes in.

 

[barnesy]

The difference between those videos is hilarious! I've just realised that the damage to the case means most of the clips were already open. You can even see that in the photo I posted. So I'm very close to completely getting the screen out. It's still stuck next to the hinge for some reason, but I maybe don't need to finish that experiment now anyway.

That's allowed me to find the part number for the screen: TD043MTEA1. A bit of googling throws up good info on that.

I'm going to email ED to ask if he can help: I'd quite like a new case anyway.