LCD woes

Immediately following my success with the Mac yesterday, I got to work on 'fixing' my portable '286 box with LCD display (which I think is _barely_ classic). The cable leading to the display had had three of its wires pulled out, and I figured that this was the reason for the very weak and grungy display. I managed to solder little bits of wire into the holes and solder the stray wires from the cable onto those, but then I realized that I couldn't plug the thing in anymore as the holes (from the underside) had filled with solder. :/ And I also realized that my solution was a bad one because the protruding wires would short against the metal frame that holds the LCD panel in place. So I used the connector from the C64 keyboard instead. Anyway, I got the cable rebuilt. I've tested it with the multimeter and all the wires make contact and go to the right places. But now I can't get any kind of display from the LCD panel. It doesn't light up at all. It looks like it's totally dead. I put a monochrome display adapter card in the machine, and it will boot up with that and display fine on a monochrome monitor. So the machine is _mostly_ OK. I'm not sure the power supply is OK, though. It squeals now. So basically, I've turned an ill-looking display into a dead display, and for some reason a healthy power supply is now sounding sick. Bleah! Anyway, the machine has a special card in it for driving the LCD panel. It is labeled "LCD & HGC CARD". What is "HGC"? It has an external 9-pin port on it and I tried plugging the monochrome display into it, but the picture was all distorted so I figured it was using a different frequency or something. The cursor comes out about an inch wide, and none of the craracters are recognizable, possibly just from overwritten numerous times in the same scanline. I don't know where I'll go from here. I'm just taking a breather before continuing. I wanted to be rebuilding the TS1016 RAM pack by now instead of still messing with this damn PC. <s> Oh, and BTW, I electrocuted myself last night when I touched some exposed wiring going to the LCD panel. It surprised me that there was that much juice going through there. My thumb and forefinger are still tender. But the display was still working at that point, and looking much sharper than it had been. But the machine wouldn't close up properly because the connector was too thick and that's why I went back in today, just to reverse the cable so that the big fat Commodore connector was on the inside instead of on the LCD panel end. (Which meant pulling the connector apart and rebuilding it the other way, just so it would fit in.) I haven't crossed any wires, I haven't plugged anything in backwards, and I haven't dropped anything into the machine, so I don't know what I've done wrong. <s> Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/