The backlight on my Mermaid screen has stopped working. The LCD bit is still fine but you cannot see it!! Is this the end or is this sort of thing repairable?

Hi Peter,

Thats strange - mine also failed last week - perhaps they have a half life...

I think mine is the powers supply - it just blinked off whilst in use, and is now stone dead.  Haven't had time to poke around yet.  They are samsung panels I think, so there may be a route for you to get get it looked at via a samsung repairer. 

Very nice monitors.

I know nothing of Mermaids specifically, but often in TFT monitors this fault is because the voltage inverter for the CCFL backlight has died (sometimes the CCFL itself). In most cases the inverter is a separate small module.

The inverter may be repairable and it is often possible to rig up an inverter from a different monitor, but obviously that falls into the tinkering category - most service installations will probably refuse the job if specific spare parts are not available.

I had thought it was the power supply which has gone before, so I got a new one. Looking closely though, it would appear that it is the backlight though there is an initial slight flash when plugged in. May pull it apart to have a look!

Be careful in there - if the inverter happens to be working, it will feed about 1 kV to the actual light tubes! Otherwise it should be pretty obvious where it sits if you get the monitor apart. It usually just takes 12V in and there can be 1, 2 or 4 tubes that it is supposed to light up.

If you can see the display operating with a flashlight, I'm pretty sure the problem is either the inverter, the CCFL tube (if there is only one) or the power control of the inverter. This is a problem common enough to motivate webshops like this!

Any joy with your Mermaid Peter?
PS Like the new Avatar, Boris and Eleanor?
Happy New Year to you and yours.