So, my pastor's HDTV got whacked by his kids and he decided to let me have it after we found out replacing a broken LCD is about as much as buying a new HDTV. Long story short, I took it apart with an artist friend and we found something that looked suspiciously like the heart of a glorious lightbox inside. I already found this thread,
http://madmodder.net/index.php/topic,2780.msg34777.html#msg34777, which let me know that this kind of conversion is possible. However, I have just enough experience with electronics that I can take them apart, see what connects to what and read a few of the symbols on the cards; so I thought I'd ask for specific advice from the more experience folks here.
The goal of this project is to make a lightbox that can attach to the underside of a glass-topped desk and switch on an off conveniently. A rheostat would be nice, but I'm really not sure if those work with flourescent type lighting.
From studying the boards I figured out that the board responsible for running the backlights connects to port CNI801 on the power supply. There I found a convenient little chart that lists the power blend for CNI801 as HIGH(273V) AC at 1.12 amps and LOW(193V) DC at 1.12 amps. At least, I thing the sine wave symbol means AC and the solid line over the dashed line means DC. From this I presume I just need to feed it the desired power, somehow...
That's about where I'm stuck. I could possibly just hook all the necessary boards together in a jury rig, but I'm kind of worried about all the frame connections the boards appear to have for circulating electricity back through the frame of the TV. I don't want to blow any of the circuits or cook myself.
Serious help is much appreciated. I attached a number of informational pics below.