silicon pop culture!

my more than 2 year old TR1MP is running almost 24/7/365. It gets opened and closed about 5 times per day. hinges are OK but when I move the screen, or touch it, or i am in a car, or train or plane, there is this flickering on the LCD panel. Horizontal lines about one pixel wide flicker for a brief second. it is definitely a hardware problem because it happens when there is physical movement. i have opend up the TR1 but could not see where the problem was (i did not take apart the LCD). I just looked at the hinges. Any suggestions on what to do? Is there a guide that shows how to take apart the screen?

This has happened on my PowerBook G3, PowerBook G4, and TR2. What happens is that the display cable going from the bottom part through the hinge to the screen gets fatigued after a lot of open/close cycles and causes the display aberrations when moved. It sounds like you’re experiencing the same thing.

pretty sureit’s the cable as stated, and t won’t be that expensive, but it’ll take a little work to replace it

My PCG-TR3A has always had a little bit of flickering from time-to-time, but recently it’s been acting up really bad. It’s awful when my computer has been off for a while, just the littlest touch or movement of the display makes it flicker. But, when it’s been on for about 5 minutes it seems to almost go away. If I smack the display around it will flicker, but with regular typing and what not it is just fine.

So, has any determined that this is caused by wear-n-tear of the video cable from the motherboard to the display? If it is, how do you fix it? Do you do it yourself or do you send it in to Sony? How much would any of this crap cost?

I love my laptop and I’d hate to see it flat line on me.

I had a similar issue on a TR1MP I got the other day, turned out to be the metal screen surround being loose. This is a thin shaped aluminium piece that clips over the glass of the screen inside and it is fixed with two screws to the LCD printed circuit board.

Both these screws had worked loose and because the surround is an earthing point, or shielding for the screen, just touching it lightly made the screen flicker in horizontal lines. I tightened the screws and it’s been fine since. They screw in from the rear of the LCD top corners through holes in the circuit board, so you’d not see them unless you take the screen out.

This might not be your problem, but worth checking out

Warning if you do this be very careful… the screen is made up of two mm thin pieces of glass with liquid crystal in between, and undue twisting or pressure in one point will crack it. They a very costly to replace even second-hand on eBay

The screen on my TR3A is flickering a lot more now, almost to the point where I haven’t been using it much lately because it’s so annoying. I’d be willing to take it somewhere to have it fixed, as I’m afraid of breaking the display as mentioned in the previous post. Any suggestions of where I can have it repaired? Could Sony actually fix this, or would they just replace the entire display so they can get the most money from me? I really want this fixed because I love this little laptop.

I could almost definitely fix it for you, but being in the UK it’s not much use to you.. I think it’s either cable, (I have spares of these), the screen surround being loose, or it could be the lcd pcb membrane, or where is soldered to the lcd unlikely but possible.

I’m pretty sure Sony would fix it somehow, but whatever they do you’ll be selling a kidney to pay their bill.