05-28-2009, 09:26 AM

Hi Everyone,

I have just bought a second hand G5 powerPC 2.7ghz dual core, complete with 20" cinema display and this is my first MAC, I have a PC background but recently go into pro tools and I have seen the light (especially after the iPhone- nothing comes close does it?)

Anyway this is my first post here and I'm really hoping that some can shed some light on this hardware problem I'm having, When I first got the MAC home (second hand from ebay) everything worked as the auction promised, however about a week of use I came back to my machine and hit the space bar to take the display outta screen saver mode, only to find the screen split into 3 horizontal lines, the line at the bottom is pure white - a few pixels wide, after the white line there is a discolored band, then another dark line, another discolored band which stops at the top third of the display. (I have attached a photo so you can see exactly) It also suffers image persistence/ghosting- but not all of the time

I have connected my Dell monitor to rule out the readon graphics card and tried multiple resolutions and cant reproduce the problem on that monitor so I know it's not the graphics card

There is no blinking error code on the display
Finally I have tried the display on another G5 and it produces the very same symptoms so it's definitely something local to the display.

Inverter?
Backlight?
Logic Board?
LCD Panel?

Can it be fixed??......please help!!

Thanks
Rob

05-28-2009, 03:25 PM

You did a good job of troubleshooting by swapping out the display for the Dell and then trying it on another G5 machine.

There's not much else you can do, I'm afraid. It appears the display itself may be defective. It's not the logic board as that would also effect the Dell display when you tried it out. The inverter and backlight are OK as the symptoms shown have nothing to do with either. Usually a bad inverter or backlight will show up as either a blacked out screen or very dim screen.

Unless there's something else I'm not aware of that's causing the fold over and the horizontal lines, it would appear to be something wrong with the syncing circuitry with the LCD itself.

Repair it? That I can't say. Usually most LCD components are molded or encapsulated which would make a repair difficult. Maybe someone else in this forum can chime in with another idea or opinion.

Regards.