Chosen Solution
I have a Samsung ereader E60 bought in the UK which uses e-ink for display. Afte carrying it around for a day in jacket pocket (soft down jacket) I noticed the screen was garbled and though the unit was powering on (a blue LED comes on) and parts of the screen flashed (the whole screen normally flashed 4 times while powering on) the display was bands of grey. The position of the bands have been static, but the grayscale within the bands change over time, and varied from reboot to reboot. Sometimes part of a band dispays some characters and sometimes not. The characters are from file names of documents in the device memory, and I have chekced this through USB. My feeling is that either the display is malfunctioning or the display addressing hardware or software. The bands tend to lead me towards the former explanation. I have located the Samsung service manual for this product but its somewhat cryptic (I guess its not for Samsung engineers, as they are familiar with the board and wiring nomenclatures). I am technically knowledgable enought o take apart the device, but would really appreciate guidance in isolating the problem. Thanks
Screen problems like you describe could be due to the flex cable not making proper contact with the circuitry on the glass layers. This may or may not be easily fixed, depending upon how the cable is attached. Sometimes there’s just a clamp that requires more pressure. But usually it’s bonded with adhesive, and this may be impossible to deal with without specialized equipment. But if you are able to open up the device and still have it operable, sometimes you can just try squeezing on different parts and see how that affects it.
Had the same problem on a used 5” (S-505) purchased in the hope of transplanting its screen to my dead unit. Alas the problem was with one of the COG ICs not the controller. Someone did suggest years later fusing the IC back on by spot heating via blue laser (GOGGLES!!!!) where the interconnects go, on the basis that the fail can be one of the contact areas on here rather than the ribbon cable. The idea being that the spot size was smaller than the actual silver copper based micro links so fusing where the bad area was might achieve some level of function. Incidentally the S-600 also has this “feature” which is why they don’t make these any more. Additionally they are prone to failed clock crystal also causing garbled screen, USB not working etc.
