I have an Acer TravelMate 4402WLMi. It's old but it does what I need which is mostly nothing as I rarely use it. Since the iPhone, there's no need to lug this around to check business email.
A couple years ago the hinges...er...I mean where the hinges attached to the top...failed. The hinges are very high friction to hold it open and Acer's design was really poor in concentrating the forces involved to very small areas of the plastic top. It just cracked completely through on both sides. And I didn't even use it much. Rather than toss the whole thing I did a kludge repair with some bits of metal, screwed to the hinges and pop riveted to the top.
The metal bits eventually broke (that hinge friction is REALLY high) so I did a new and improved kludge repair recently. I was all set to submit to the "There I Fixed It" site except no more screen illumination. (I can see the faint image so it's not the LCD).
So the questions are these:
What is the failure mode for the cold cathode lamp? Do they suddenly just stop working, especially if the screen is got handled a lot?
This piece of junk isn't worth putting any money in but I did go ahead and order (from a Chinese web site) the inverter card ($8). But still no help.
Should I be able to read some sort of high-ish voltage on the wires going to the bulb (this was be with a DMM). I saw nothing reading the output connector on the old inverter card. Haven't checked this new one but suspect it would read zero as well. No voltage = no illumination. Unless maybe the DMM drags it down. Haven't tried putting a scope on it. If the inverter is good and there's no output I don't know where else to look.
Anything else I should look at before pitching it? I did look at where the LCD ribbon cable and inverter input line combine into a single connector but don't see anything obvious nor is there anything in the BIOS that would seem to shut off screen illumination.
It's junk but I'd keep it going if I can.