Mothra wrote:

I have a car stereo front panel (model: Panasonic CQ-DFX572N mp3 player)
in which the display suddenly stopped working the other day.

I'm not much of an electronics buff, but on opening it carefully, I can
see that there is a large plastic backlight (presumably an LED?) the
size height and width of the whole front panel that sits behind an LCD
'mask' which then lets through the blue light to display the text,
giving a blue text on black background effect. The blue backlight also
liights up some front panel buttons and the area around the volume knob.
The only front panel light the currently works is a red one, and
therefore must have its own LED/backlight.

I plugged the naked circuit board into the car stereo head unit and saw
that the LCD screen still works, it's just the backlight that is broken.

I can see what I'm sure are the the two solder points on the back of the
PCB that correpsond to the backlight. They look OK, although by that I
mean the solder points don't seem to be loose or dirty.

So all that's broken is the backlight.

Questions:

Are these types of backlights just LEDS?

Do they normally have fuses, is this what might have blown?

Is this easily fixable, is there anything I can try given that a new
front panel is almost the same cost as a completely new stereo?

You probably have a EL display. No, there NOT leds. They take a higher
voltage to make them work. Typically 40 to 100 volts.
If there is a higher voltage at the terminals and its dead, the display is
bad. If not, the power inverter the supplies the display is bad.

Bob



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