Chosen Solution

I have a MacBook Pro 15" early 2008 A1226. For a long time it had white lines on the screen which I was Ok with. (see image taken from another poster on this forum, thank you!) Then about a week ago the screen went really dim and then black. Everything runs Ok and I can use the Mac with an external monitor. I have reset the PRAM, SCM and opened it up and did a quick scan of connections. However, haven’t gone so far (yet) as to open the display. I’d prefer to do that only once, so… How do I know if this is the inverter or the LED driver board or something else without opening it up and checking or replacing the parts and cables? Is there a simple way to figure out what parts to order? Thank you

Thank you oldturkey03! Please see attached images. If you need photos of another part, please let me know. I have been thinking that perhaps I have two issues going on. 1: the backlight. My reasoning for this is the screen is black, mac works great with an external monitor and I can see images when I shine a light through the apple logo on the back of the laptop LED. 2: the stage light issue. Hopefully the images I have attached will help narrow this down. Am I correct that there are two issues with the screen? I actually don’t care as much about the stage lighting effect. I’ve had that for quite sometime. I’d really just like to have a laptop again. Right now, since I have to use an external monitor it has become a desktop. (though having the larger monitor is really nice for viewing photos) Perhaps the stage lighting and black screen are the same… Update: I replaced the LED driver board and still have a black screen. Any other ideas?

@mp22 this is not an inverter issue. The “stage lighting” effect is most commonly caused by issues with the LED returns. Check the resistors around your LVDS connector. Also check the LED driver. For that you will of course need the logic board schematic, the boardview files and a good multimeter. So you will have to identify your logic board by its 820-XXXX number and possibly post some good images of your logicboard with your question. Use this guide Adding images to an existing question for that

Would you give us a link to the exactly where you got that image? It sounds like your answer is on that post and this is just a “me too” question.