Fixing up a Dell Latitude C640

My friend gave me an old Dell Latitude C640 that has some issues and I wanted to fix it up and upgrade. The main thing that's wrong with it is that the LCD backlight doesn't work, I can see what's on the screen if I hold a bright light close to the screen. Will a new LCD inverter fix the backlight issue or is there anything else I need to replace? I was also going to do the following upgrades:

- Upgrade ram to 2GB PC3200 DDR400. Will the dell be able to use it at the DDR400 speed since the FSB is 400? or should I just buy DDR333?

- Upgrade the HDD to 60 or 80GB. The BIOS is A10 so I'm not sure if a 160GB HDD would work or not.

- Install an 802.11g internal wifi card

- Maybe upgrade to a Pentium 4-M 2.xGhz CPU from the 1.8Ghz stock CPU

 

Assuming the backlight is the dead, replacing the inverter won't do anything. The same is true for the reverse. In the advent of a dead backlight, you CAN replace it, but it's a bit of a pain and not documented (at least not in the standard Dell service manual).

DDR400 will probably work, but I doubt the chipset supports running it at full speed. I don't think the hard drive size is bound by the 48-bit LBA limit either, but again, not totally sure.

 

I put a 100Gb hdd in an ancient C600 and it worked, so I'm sure your C640 won't care about that.

 

So you don't think the dead backlight has anything to do with the inverter since i can still see the screen load up in bright light? Should I go for PC2700 ram instead or just stick with the stock PC2100 ram specs?

 

Seeing the image on the screen means that the display itself is OK. The problem is either the CCFL tube or the inverter. Normally it is the inverters that die first but it is possible that the drop has killed the tube.

John