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[bigal]

The other day I noticed that some cold cathode lights weren't working on my cherished "printer-to-computer-deja-vu" machine. Not a big deal really, but none the less I was concerned. Surely two tubes didn't burn out at the same time, right? So last week I opened the top cover and started poking around a bit. I decided that everything was still hooked up, and the switch that turns the light on was still in the proper position, so maybe my inverter was not working. I removed the inverter (which I had to dissassemble to pull the dual cold cathode light wires out) and soon found the culprit - it blew out a few components. Two items show evidence of destruction, the blue (capacitor) and the brown (capacitor) components. These might not be capacitors, but if not, I'm not sure what they are. See for yourself.....




Lucky for me, I had a spare inverter in my box of tricks, so in five minutes I had the cold cathode tubes hooked up and running again.

[unholy]

i say, maybe two cathodes is to much for it

[bigal]

Perhaps, but it came with two cold cathodes installed (non-removable until you pull the case apart).

[unholy]

maybe its "el cheapo"

and they cooked whilist they were consealed inside the power supply

[The Modfather]

This is something that's been noted in the past, there were a bunch of manufacturers (probably cheap outfits selling the same crappy Taiwaneese junk) and this was happening a lot.

Stick to reputable brand name CCFL's.

[bigal]

Like who? Logisys, Thermaltake, what?? There are lots of "cheap" cold cathode manufacturers. This is actually the first failed inverter for me, so I'm not complaining. Especially when you look at the cheap prices I get dual kits for at www.SVC.com .

[unholy]

There is only one company i would trust for a CCFL invertor, and that would have to be CM, but then again all invertors are cheaply made.

[The Modfather]

Normally there's a rule of thumb to go by.

If the inverter is blue, it's a 50/50 chance it's bad.

If the inverter is black it should be alright.

Though that could have changed in the past 6 months.

[bigal]

The one that failed was black. I wouldn't go by case color.

[The Modfather]

Like I said, things may have changed, it was a rule of thumb last summer. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...22&btnG=Search