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lockhartt · May 8, 2004, 10:02 AM

Over the past few days, our iMac's LCD had starting exhibiting some strange problems with the LCD. What started off looking like little dribbles of dead pixels starting to pour down my LCD every two inches has almost completely coalesced into about a 1.1" circle.

Click here to see what it looked like earlier
Click here to see what it looks like now

It's as though there were either air or liquid that managed to get in between the layers of the LCD. Yuck...

Had hoped I could pull out the LCD and replace it with a 15" PowerBook display... but tore the head of the iMac apart only to find out the LCD is basically glued into the white plastic frame (the one that holds the LCD, power LED, and mic) and I can't (or dare not) tear it apart without the likelihood of doing more harm than good.

Anyone seen this sort of strangeness before?

Dimitri · May 8, 2004, 11:16 AM

Haven't seen that before. Is there a way to hook up an external display to the iMac? It could also be a video card issue and that might tell you which it is.

lockhartt · 04:03 PM

Yes, you can hook up an external monitor, but it's not a video card problem. You can actually see the affected areas when the computer is off if you look at the screen at the right angle... they look slightly discolored (kind of a yellowish tint) compared the rest of the screen. And if you tap the circular area, you actually get a circular ripple effect in the screen... like a concentric ripple in a pool of water, only the waves don't propagate very far. Definitely a substance in between the layers, and I assume it's air since I can't figure out what liquid it could be (unless it's from another part of the LCD itself).

Definitely a bummer, since the LCD seems to be fine in the areas that had previously been affected (before the substance coalesced into the single circle)... so if I could figure out how to remove whatever is causing the distortion, the panel would probably be fine. Only thing I can think of is to remove the panel and leave it sitting top-edge-down for a few days and see if whatever it is makes its way back out of the panel (and hope that it stays out)... but that means giving up the computer for a while... blah.

Originally posted by Dimitri:
Haven't seen that before. Is there a way to hook up an external display to the iMac? It could also be a video card issue and that might tell you which it is.

macmad · May 12, 2004, 05:19 PM

LCD = *Liquid* Crystal Display. Turn it upside down and see if it 'flows' back

deadpuppet · May 23, 2004, 02:37 PM

I can use an external monitor with my imac?! Dual monitor or just to mirror image? and how would i even do that.

lockhartt · May 27, 2004, 08:03 PM

Originally posted by deadpuppet:
I can use an external monitor with my imac?! Dual monitor or just to mirror image? and how would i even do that.

Which iMac do you have? If you have a first generation LCD iMac, it will do mirroring. You'll need to to get the Apple VGA Display Adaptor see here to be able to plug a normal SVGA monitor into the iMac.

deadpuppet · May 28, 2004, 06:26 PM

It's the newest 15" imac I've got. Mirroring just means same resolution though?

lockhartt · May 28, 2004, 09:27 PM

I'm afraid so... maybe they'll put true dual monitor support in some day, but I doubt it... brings the iMac a little too near it's towering brethren.

Originally posted by deadpuppet:
It's the newest 15" imac I've got. Mirroring just means same resolution though?

deadpuppet · May 29, 2004, 02:33 PM

One of the reasons I'm thinking of getting a powerbook over an ibook next year is dual monitors, sucks that apple don't allow it in ibook, legally anyway.