Jason Bleazard <dml@bleazard.net> wrote:
: I have a Sony CD stereo with detachable faceplate in my '95 that's been
: there since before I got the truck. Lately the backlight on the display
: died for good. For a couple of months before that it had been
: intermittent, but I was previously able to get it back by tapping on the
: faceplate. I figured something had come loose in the faceplate itself,
: so I picked up a replacement faceplate on eBay.
: Unfortunately, that didn't fix it. Clearly there's some problem with
: the stereo itself. Other than the backlight, it works fine so far. Any
: idea if it would be inside the stereo, or could it be the connector? It
: looks fine as far as I can tell. Anything I can do to fix it?
: Unfortunately I can't afford to replace it at the moment (if I'm going
: to go to the effort of putting a stereo in there, I want a nice one with
: XM, and so on).
That's a bummer. :-( If 'twere me, I'd probably pop the
radio open and see if I could find anything obvious that was
loose, etc. Since the new faceplate doesn't work either, that
does seem to point the blame elsewhere. I'm not certain how
the backlight works; I think sometimes they use special high
voltage inverters and the like, while others might just be
as simple as providing voltage to a bulb.
Any chance you could find a pinout of the connection? Even
if not, since you've got two, if you don't mind risking one,
you might want to apply ground and about 5 volts to the various
pins and see if you get any sort of reaction. If that doesn't
work, maybe up it to 12 volts. I would suggest trying to power
up the radio in the truck without the faceplate attached so
that you can probe the pins of the connection with a multimeter
so as to be able to find the power for the faceplate, but if
its a problem inside the radio itself, obviously that probably
isn't going to be too helpful. :-( If you could find a
pinout, that might help to answer a few questions. (Wether or
not there is a separate pin to provide power and/or ground to
the backlight, and which pin it might be.)
If you do discover that there is a pin which is supposed to
be providing power but isn't, that might put you in a better
position to find the problem when you crack the radio open, or
worst case scenario, you could wire up an external switch to
power the backlight. :-)
Speaking of which, another angle to take might be to open
up the faceplate itself, and see if you can figure out how
the backlight works. See if there is a bulb there, etc. and
then give it 5 or 12 volts. If that works, you could maybe
attach some jumper wires which would allow you to probe
them as you connect the faceplate and power up the radio.
(Or use them to install an extermal switch to provide
power to the bulb inside the faceplate.)
I guess failing that, the last resort would be to mount one
of those 12v reading lights on the dash and point it at the
radio. ;-)
--
-Jon-
.- Jon Steiger -- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com -.
| '96 Kolb Firefly, '96 Suzuki Intruder, Miscellaneous Mopars |
`-------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
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