From: ekblaw@vnet.ibm.com   
      
   Greg kindly sent me his 5140, which has a working battery pack (very low   
   capacity, but working) and the 3rd generation backlit display.  Unfortunately,   
   the LCD isn't displaying any characters -- the backlight works and the level   
   is adjustable, the    
   contrast control also works, but it just changes how well you can see the few   
   vertical bars that appear.  The display is recognized by the system, so I'm   
   not getting the one long and two short beeps that you would get from the 5140   
   when no LCD is    
   installed.   
      
   When I took the display out of the front/back covers, I found that the foam   
   material between the back and the circuit board had degraded significantly --   
   not quite to the the "black goo" level, but very sticky.  The good news is   
   that the degraded foam    
   had not become conductive, so 5140 owners don't have to worry that bad foam   
   will cause their displays to fail.  The bad news for me is that the display   
   problems are internal.  The board is made by Epson and is labelled TCM-A0270.    
   It has sixteen Toshiba    
   T7778 modules and three Toshiba T7900s.  The board is mostly (not completely)   
   free of corrosion, so I still have a chance that the problem is a short or bad   
   connection on the outside of the board -- it needs a long and careful   
   cleaning.  If I do have to "   
   dive in",  there are 25 metal tabs that need to be straightened to remove the   
   board, and I don't see any alignment pins or slots to help me put it back   
   together.  But I think the entire metal frame just sits around the display   
   assembly, so perhaps the    
   alignment is not critical.   
      
   Rick   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)