Sorry if this type of problem has been discussed before, I didn't find any useful usenet search of this newsgroup history. Boy, do I miss DejaNews! If someone knows of a usable search of sci.electronics.repair please post it. The google one was pretty terrible IMHO.
I have a "computer" on a Schwinn exercise bike that the monochrome LCD is nearly blank. I can see that it is working, but the display is very light. When I turn it on I can hear the friction control motor in the bottom of the bike working. That system does seem to work, I can increase the friction with the buttons on the computer. So buttons work, display works a little, other functions work.
A single failure in the display circuitry. The problem is just the display.
This runs on 4 C cell batteries, I did check the voltage on the batteries and when I press the soft "start" button on the panel the battery voltage diminishes from over 6V to less than 1V. Something is dragging it down!
I unplugged the harness from the computer to the rest of the bike, that didn't change anything. So the short is likely in the computer related to the LCD display.
Do the driver chips for such a display fail shorted? That seems to be what I have here.
It seems unlikely to me that this is actually repairable since the large LCD display probably has integrated drivers in it's module. But I haven't disassembled it yet.
Is there going to be a whole bunch of driver chips along the edge of the LCD and something that runs those that has failed shorted?
What should I be looking into?