Saturday, October 22, 2011

Wild and wacky touch screen repair


I really need to start taking pictures of this stuff. I'm kicking myself right now.

OK, Here's a good one. My dad's gps broke. The touch screen became unresponsive. You couldn't get it to do anything at all.

I tore it apart, all the ribbons and connectors looked ok. It was one of those "It's no use to me as it is, so if you completely ruin it it's no big loss." situations.

So I peeled the touch screen apart, looked it over, and put it back together. That didn't fix it, so I started peeling it apart with the unit powered on. After I got the top separated it started working, something on the top was shorting, so I put a piece of clear tape along the upper edge (above the viewable area), stuck the screen back down, and it's still working.

I recommend you do this only when you have nothing left to loose. It was a resistive touchscreen, I doubt it would work with a capacitive one.
Steve