Intermittent failure on TJ27 backlight?

[historygeek10]

Occassionally the backlight on my TJ27 goes out. It always comes back, and has done this off and on for a year. Does the other thread about TJ35 backlights also apply to me?

Thanks for any/all input.

[AstroClieMan]

I assume that you know that holding down the on/off button for 2 seconds turns the backlight off... I sometimes forget that and in trying to turn the device on or off, end up turning off the backlight instead. If you try, you'll see what I mean.

Now, another possibility is if you are working with the PDA in its cradle, there is a pref setting-- General-- that controls the time before the the device turns off... wait, that's not the issue.

Some add on programs, IIRC, are able to control when the backlight goes on and off... maybe one of those got installed.

Forgive me if you knew all this already, but maybe it'll spark some ideas.

I see there's another thread around here that discussed backlight bugs on the TJ 35 and some other devices... maybe there will be a fix there!

[historygeek10]

Actually, no, I didn't know about the 2 second feature on turning the TJ on. I'll keep an eye on that. All I know is that I would keep turning it off and on, and then it would eventually reset to on. I am completely new to it though.

I don't have a cradle, so despite it being a good idea, that isn't relevent. I have cables that connect to it, but it is sitting flat on its back as I charge/synch it.

I don't know what IIRC is, but it did it with the 'stock' Sony software, before any add-ons.

Also, when I take it in my jacket pocket to work, etc. on my motorcycle, it generally has the backlight off when I first boot it up.

This leads me to think it may be a wire vibrating loose. I'll check to see if there are any repair-oriented threads on this also.

Thanks for the tip on the 2 second feature. I really didn't know about that at all.

[DanT]

I fixed my TJ35/E1 dead backlight by replacing it with TJ27's that has broken LCD but good backlight.

This is the first one I have seen a CLIE with a dead backlight. I have repaired many CLIEs (N760C, T415, T615, T665, NR70, SL10, SJ20, SJ30, NX73V, NX80, NZ90, TG50, UX40, UX50, TJ25, TJ27, TH55), none of them has that problem except TJ35. Among 50 or so TH55s that I have repaired, some of them have dim backlight, but not dead.

[AstroClieMan]

Oh, boy, uh-oh... my TJ37 just this morning started in with this intermittent backlight biz. At first, I thought I was just having trouble turning it on/off and had inadvertently held down the button too long...

but then even w/o or barely touching on/off button, the backlight came on.

I also suspected it had something to do with being in the cradle-- I couldn't even turn it off... now I suspect something funky's going on.

I've also noticed twice this past week that the camera software launched, but that's probably because i inadvertently hit the camera snapshot button.

I'll have to keep an eye on it and report back if I discover a cuase.

[AstroClieMan]

Follow up to this! I discovered something intriguing... that if I tapped on the small "star" "light" icon (next to the menu icon) it turned off the backlight rather than brought up the brightness slider!!

I think started checking on various programs that had anything to do with the backlight/brightness option... I turned off and then on with a different time setting the brightness control in DioPlayer... I switched the option in TealScript from brightness to keyboard (in fact, I inadvertently set this as backlight at one point!). In any event, there were various trials, various soft resets I did, and the pattern was reproducible in that whenever the backlight did its intermittent thing tapping the star icon made the backlight turn on and off rather than show the brightness...

all of which suggests to me a software pref corruption somewhere. In any event, some combo of what I did solved the problem.

So if you have intermittent backlighting (w/o human intervention) check what happens when you tap the star light.