13 August 2010

Sad Day for the Great White Boxster

After a little more than a year of ownership and the main reason that I haven't been updating my blog, I sold my Boxster (the Great White). She was a good car but after buying a 911 in early Spring, I just wasn't driving her much.

My family is much sadder than me though cause they liked the Boxster better than the 911.

I really love the mid-engine Boxster and will probably buy a Cayman S in the near future.  After getting the Porsche bug, I wasn't happy until I had a 911.  What a complete different experience.  The Boxster is refined and hugs the curves like no other car I ever driven.  The 911 is raw, loud and dares you to give it too much gas so it can swing its ass around and make you look like a noob driver.  But it's so fast and the power is addicting.

09 August 2010

Sanyo DP26648 White Screen of Death

 Santa brought my game player son a Sanyo SP2664 26-inch Widescreen LCD HD Television last Christmas.  A few months into the year, the TV started getting occasional white lines diagonally across the screen, the greens looked weird, and then the audio went in/out.  I could've/should've hauled it back to Wally Mart but grumbled about it and did nothing.

We came home from our July 4th vacation and the darn TV is dead.  White Screen of death.  No sound, just a stupid looking white screen.

An interesting thread on the Electronics Repair Google Group led my son and I to think that we could fix this beast.

According to the thread, "it has been reported that there is a defective ribbon cable that causes this problem".  And the possible fix is "Clean glue like material from spaced further apart trace of FFC ribbon or replace the ribbon wire P/N: N6CD FFC".

Well, I'm pleased to report that we hacked and smashed and tore that darn TV up, finally got to the elusive cable.  And it looks nothing like that picture.  Our cable looked fine, no glue, seemed like a good connection.  And the TV remains broken and in 300-bazillion parts.

We had fun exploring the TV but it would have been a better story if the darn thing would have actually been easy to fix.  I think our TV had more wrong with it than just the cable.  But if your TV is showing the white screen of death, read the link and good luck.