Trouble getting LCD to work.

Okay, so here's the long story.

I recently purchased a Mid-2005 1.33ghz G4 ibook, without an LCD. I currently use a G3 dual-USB ibook, and happen to have a spare LCD (with frame, etc) laying around. I bought the G4 with the explicit intention of mounting the spare LCD on the headless G4 body.

So, here's what I did -

1. Bought the correct LVDS cable and inverter cable.
2. Opened up the old LCD, cabled it up with the new cables, and closed everything up.
3. Mounted it all on the G4.

And.... it didn't work. The backlight won't turn on.

So here's my troubleshooting process -

1. Switch out inverter board with known good. No change.
2. Switch out LCD panel with known good. No change.
3. Confirm that by leaving the back open, and sitting the **** thing in front of a light, I can see everything on the screen, and use the laptop. This means the LVDS cable is working.
4. Use a multimeter to check the inverter cable for continuity. Tests perfect.

I also disconnected the reed switch, even though I'm sure it's not a sleep issue. I also reset the PMU and the NVRAM.

I can't imagine why this isn't working. My guess is that I'm down to a logic-board problem? The pins on the logic board that are supposed to be feeding voltage to the inverter aren't, for whatever reason?

I have heard that this particular model of the G4 ibook is picky about which LCD panel it will take, but that was from a repair shop, and I'm not sure whether they just wanted to take my money.

Suggestions? Has anyone successfully done this? I'm pretty much out of options, and I'm not looking forward to trying to sell this on the used market.

that is just a bit too advanced for me. i would just buy a new stand alone ibook lcd off of ebay for around $100. it has the cables in place in the screen already so you just have to connect it to the body of te machine.

I'm guessing from the lack of responses that you're not the only one... I'm mostly fumbling around in the dark, but you'd be amazed at how much you can learn just from stripping your mac down to the skeleton.

On that note, does anyone know of any more technical forums, where there might be some hardware nerds that could help me out? I'm pretty close to just writing this whole thing off, and selling it for whatever I can get. I want to give it one more try, though.

you should look into that ebay thing though. they ship the lcd with the needed cables in the screen, ready to use.