Chosen Solution
I have a MacBook Pro “Core 2 Duo” 2.4 17-Inch (Santa Rosa) Mid/Late 2007, 2.4GHz - MA897LL/A - Model No: A1229 (EMC 2137). It was factory supplied with the 1920 x 1200 CCFL-backlit display. My screen is flickering intermittently which I believe may be related to the inverter board, or the CCFL is past it’s best. Is it possible to replace the inverter? If not, can I replace the current CCFL 1920 x 1220 screen with the slightly newer LED backlit screen that was used in the Mid 2008 Macbook Pro A1261?
My understanding is that the CCFL displays cannot be interchanged with LED displays. I imagine this is because of the backlight inverter and brightness control. PowerBook Medic sells new displays for your model $199 but they get bad reviews as a business. The trick is that I believe you need to replace the whole display assembly and not just the LCD module or CCFL bulb. Has anyone succeeded at replacing just the CCFL bulb themselves? That would only be $14 on eBay for the bulb. Maybe, though I doubt it, you could take the backlight circuit from a Penryn MBP 17" (A1261) and put it where your inverter goes, then install an LED display from the Penryn MBP 17" (A1261). I haven’t looked at the Apple service source manual, but my gut feeling is that the backlight circuits are not interchangeable/drop-in compatible between the santa rosa and penryn models. I would love to be proven wrong. Let me know which route you take and how much it costs.
