Inverter board or cable bad?

[adam9c1]

Got a hold of a white Macbook early or mid 2009.
Seller states screen is bad.

Booted it up and I can see everything.
After an hour of time or so everything is super dark, I was able to finish 10.10 installation when I lost backlight.
Now at the default login screen it's so dark I can't see where to navigate to clone display.
I know I have a work around to stick the drive into another machine to turn on mirroring but...

I wonder if it's possible to replace the inverter?
https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/MacBook-Display-Inverter/IF186-038-2

or cable?
https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/MacBook-Display-Data-Cable/IF186-073-1

 

[mns579]

Incredibly short-term work-around: Shine a flashlight on the screen. Can you see the display?

 

[adam9c1]

Incredibly short-term work-around: Shine a flashlight on the screen. Can you see the display?

Fired up the machine again, and this time I lost the display pretty fast (within few minutes).
I have checked with a flashlight and I can see the display (much harder to see anything if I'm looking at "white background only"
With a flashlight I can clearly see dark text etc.
It's been this way for an hour.
This is with the machine running idle.

 

[mns579]

The fact that you can see the display under flashlight suggests that the display data cable is okay. I'd focus first on the inverter (more likely) and the inverter cable (less likely). The ifixit guides will lead you through the disassembly:

https://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook_Core_2_Duo

 

[logana]

Normally on the 2009 MacBooks it is a faulty backlight. Most of them came with Samsung displays and the backlight fails on those ones......

You can buy a replacement backlight tube on eBay. Not too difficult but not exactly easy !!

The cables and invertors do fail but normally it is the backlight itself.