MBP 17" 4,1 Early 2008 Backlight does not come on sometimes?

[M3Stang]

Hello everyone,

Just got my 17" MacBook Pro Glossy Display in the mail today from ebay. Been wanting one of these since they were new and FINALLY won an auction for one under $300. It is in great shape, did a clean install of El Cap and firefox, and will probably go the DosDude route in the future with it as I have done on some other older MBs I have. Anyone, I noticed that when I woke it up from sleep earlier today, the display back light did not come on. I could see the log in screen was up since I shined a light at it, but I opened and closed it a few more times, and it did not come on. I shut it off, and turned it back on, and the back light still stayed out until it got to maybe halfway through the boot loading bar. Glad it came back. I moved the display at the same time so not sure if coincidence or something is loose. This thing is in near perfect condition so I don't think it would be from physical damage or anything. I saw an old post from Early 2008 on the Apple forums of similar behavior so wondering if its something these did sometimes, or maybe the inverter board is going out on it. I have an SSD coming in the mail for it, so maybe I will order an inverter board and change it "while im in there". Thanks for any input.

Edit:
I forgot to add that it also seemed dimmer than it should at full brightness earlier today at one point, but did not think much of it. Seems extremely bright now in a dark room.

 

[chscag]

It's been awhile, but you're probably correct to swap out the inverter board as part of troubleshooting the backlight. That model does not use LEDs so if the inverter board does not resolve the problem, you may wind up changing the fluorescent tube, which is an involved job.

 

[M3Stang]

It's been awhile, but you're probably correct to swap out the inverter board as part of troubleshooting the backlight. That model does not use LEDs so if the inverter board does not resolve the problem, you may wind up changing the fluorescent tube, which is an involved job.

Thanks, I actually just remembered I have another 17" MBP 2,1 that may use the same inverter board. (I am using the battery from it as this one did not come with it's own). The 2,1 is in pretty rough shape and the display has some nasty yellow spots. Maybe I will take it apart and pull the board from it. Probably been 10 years since the last time I worked on one of these old displays though. I think I may do an SMC reset and PRAM reset as I just realized I have not tried that yet.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

I would carefully keep track of the return window to the seller. It's sounding like a money pit instead of a great deal...especially for something that old.

 

[M3Stang]

I would carefully keep track of the return window to the seller. It's sounding like a money pit instead of a great deal...especially for something that old.

Unfortunately, it was from an individual sold as-is. It has been working fine since, been using it for this thread the whole time. I reset the SMC just to be safe. I was more asking about if anyone knew of this being a thing from these back then. I was a teen when these were new so was playing around with PowerBooks and such that were cheaper to mess with at the time . Some systems have their quirks such as the 2011 MBP GPU issues and such. MacBook Air display hinge problems and so on. And dare I mention... the horror of the 2016 keyboard lol.

 

[M3Stang]

Reviving this thread. I have been using this Mac almost daily since I got it and posted here last. I have been using Mojave, which the brightness has been annoying with anyway since I have to use a third party app to control the brightness called "Brightness Slider" in the App Store. Yesterday, I finally got around to putting an SSD in here and reinstalling Mojave and it works really fast now! Crazy this thing is 12 years old! So last night after swapping the SSD and getting it all set up, I turned it off for a couple hours. Went to turn it on and the backlight did not come on again. Pulled the battery, did an SMC reset and it was fine after that. Today I turned it on and it did not light up again. Did a PRAM and an SMC reset twice and it did not come on, but randomly came on maybe 10 seconds after trying to boot it up this last time. Any other suggestions? It almost seems like a software issue from the SMC reset fixing it the last 2 times. I am wondering if I disturbed a connector when I had it apart yesterday. The display never does any like backlight flickering or anything which is usually indicative to a CCFL failure. It is either working beautifully or just off until I turn it on and off and reset things a few times.