Willow

Here's one for the records if I've ever heard it.. So I have this 10 day car trip, and I want to put the carputer through a good test before I can say it's nearing completion.

I finally found out how I wanted to mount it in the car temporarily, yet in a cool manner. I perfected the electrical circuit turning the thing on and off. Blah blah. Anyhow, just for safe measures I wanted to enlarge the vents in the rear plastic a bit, as they narrow too much.

I took the screen apart, carefully, as I work with electronics by trade. Took the speaker out, and scraped away some of the plastic, so the vents were much more breathable.

Bear in mind, the entire unit is safely set aside. I put it back together, and get the inevitable "no power" scenario, which I later found out was the stupid ribbon cable. 13 pin connector on the mainboard, 13pin ribbon cable, and 14 pin connector on the daughterboard--that is inane, obviously management made that decision to save money somehow.

Anyhow, I figure that out and fix it. Now I'm up to the "white screen" scenario, but I have a feeling it's not the 40 pin ribbon cable. Why? Here's why:

* I checked continuity and resistance, even while flexing it--it's fine.

* I only seperated the boards for a brief moment to move them safely.

* Most "white screen" scenarios, the screen is white, but it functions and responds to buttons -- mine only responds to the power button, and only kicks the backlight in if i hit the "pc/av" button. Also, once you hit it, it won't respond to either button for 10 seconds after you hit it. That, has absolutely nothing to do with with LCD controller.

I've already ordered a new cable from DWW. Why, on God's green earth, do these units die the second you so much as breach the plastic case? I was protected from static accidents, I set the boards away from harm, I ensured the 40pin cable was put back together properly.

The only thing I can imagine is, the hour or so I spent trying to figure out why it wouldn't work, when that one cable was shifted, probably fried something. I was doing spot checks and backtraces on the board while power was applied to it, when I finally found the cable had a shift in it.

Any clues? I leave in 2 days, and have an overglorified mp3player sitting in my trunk. All I can do is queue up about 40,000 songs, and hope they're fun songs. The touchscreen still works (obviously), so I can still press where I know the buttons are, but I can't navigate through the songllist to save my life...

Out of like the hundreds of LCD units I've worked with, I've never seen anything more tempermental.

*Sigh*

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