Two Scrap Sets Success

[mark pirate]

Last year I was asked if I could have a look at an Hitachi 22" LCD set, the symptoms were 'just a white screen'. The fault was soon traced to a burnt out surface mount transistor on the main board, a closer look showed that the fine tracks were destroyed and the board under the component was badly charred.

A look on ebay turned up a replacement panel for £30, the owner decided not to bother with it, and it went in to the spares pile.

I was recently given a few scrap sets for spares, one of which was a Linsar 22" LCD with a smashed screen. This set had been sitting outside in the rain for a while and was only destined for capacitor harvesting.

Just out of interest, I opened up the Linsar to see what could be salvaged from it. The PSU looked ok, as did the main board. I had chopped off the mains cable for use on another project, so I lashed it up to a safeblock and applied power.

This proved the PSU was good, as the set powered up and the backlights were working. I connected a DVD player to the scart and got sound and some sort of image on what was left of the screen.

I remembered that the Hitachi was also a 22" set, like the Linsar it was a Vestal set.
So it was dragged on to the bench and dismantled. The main boards were very different, the Hitachi also had a built in DVD player. But both sets used an identical PSU with inverter supply, so maybe the screen could be used in the Linsar?

After removing both the screens, it looked like I was wrong. One was made by Samsung, the other was an LG. The connecting cable to the main boards were also different. It was split between two plugs on the Linsar, whereas it was a single plug on the Hitachi.

Both screens also had different part No's, but the plug on the screen itself looked the same, with nothing to loose I tried the plug from the Linsar and it fitted

There was also a difference with the backlight connectors, on the Hitachi there were plug in extension leads. These were not required, as the PSU on the Linsar was in a different position.

The connectors were fed through and the screen screwed in to place, the connecting plugs were inserted and the mains lead was robbed from the Hitachi.

On powering up, I was delighted to see a blue screen displaying 'No Signal'.
I connected an aerial and scanned for channels, and I was rewarded with a fully working set

The Hitachi remote operates the set fine, I gave it a good clean and reassembled it.

I am really pleased with the result, the set is very usable with built in Freeview, HDMI, 2 Scart sockets, component, composite and a PC input.

The best part is that the total outlay was just a couple of hours of my time, and an otherwise scrap pair of sets has yielded a perfectly working set.

Mark

[mark pirate]

The rest of the photos.

Mark

A very well spent two hours, good job. Less landfill too.

[Phil G4SPZ]

Nice one! Well done. In 1977 I did something similar, making one good set out of two scrap Thorn 1400 sets. It's very satisfying and adds value as well as reducing waste. It led me into this wonderful hobby.