Thursday, 31 October 2013

Fix for Apple Cinema Display power supply failure

My 20" Cinema Display failed, the LED giving the short long short flashing error message with the white LED. I had read on the net of a solution which involved messing about with tiny bits of tape to isolate the centre pin of the connector to the screen, and reckoned that repair would not last more than a few insertions of the connector before it would fail again.

I took apart the power supply by sawing through the shell on the three clear edges carefully
so I could then crack it open.

After lifting out the board I removed the two screws holding the internal connector and on turning it upside down noticed that the centre pin was not isolated due to a surface mount resistor in there connecting to one of the other terminals. Follwing the idea of isolating the centre terminal, I desoldered the resistor, and bingo! the screen works perfectly now, and it is a proper fix.