Written by Ryan, ryan@smalldog.com. Ryan is an Apple certified tech in our Waitsfield Store!
He writes:
A customer brought in her 14” iBook G4 this week because it was having “video issues.” The internal display was very garbled, but when hooked up to an external monitor, the external showed a perfectly clear picture.
Because the external video was fine, I knew immediately that this was not the video processor on the logic board; it had to be either the LCD itself or the LVDS cable (low voltage differential signaling) causing the issue. The first step I took was to swap in a known-good LCD, which didn’t fix the issue. Knowing this, I dove deep into the machine and swapped out the LVDS cable, and the problem was resolved.
Had the screen been defective, the repair would’ve been prohibitively expensive, so I’m glad for the customer that it turned out to only be the cable!
Have any Mac fixes to share? We’d love to hear them. Feel free to write your thoughts below!