Any good tips for testing LCD inverters and the CCFL tubes
they hook to?

I am working on more of these and think i need to rig up an external
inverter to test the tubes in a LCD unit in some manner.
When these tubes age and degrade, do they just get weaker like
home units, or do they take more start voltage or current?
How do you really gauge when the bulbs are really bad?


What i am trying to trouble shoot in some cases of units
starting up for a few seconds and shutting down whether its
the inverter, or because the lamps are bad the inverter is
shutting down but otherwise ok.

I have seen some information that its hard to test the inverters
because a slight load on the outputs affects there operation.
Should most scopes have a high enough input z on 10x to do this?

Anyone that has tried some of this please let me know what your
results are.

The gateway i posted about (and got no responses) try's to start up
but shuts down. Caps were OK, and I soldered up what looked bad.
So, short of ordering new bulbs for it i need to know which
part i can eliminate as the problem.

What i thought about is making a external jig or such to power each bulb
up and seeing if they light. Is there a way to sub a dummy load
on the Inverters for the bulbs to test? It would have to have a high
voltage zenar with high z series resistor or such on it to simulate the
CCFL plasma voltage of conduction?

Bob


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