I just got a sexy, slim, and altogether awesome LCD screen from someone on Freecycle, who said it just turns off after a while. Hm. Well, I brought it home, hooked it up, and it seemed to work great, except for one problem… the brightness control didn’t do anything.

Tore it apart and on the power board (with the inverters integrated), I found one NASTY sight – there was one chip with an explosion-mark on it (like it caught on fire), and the one next to it also looked Xtra Crispy™ but not quite burned. Obviously we have a problem. I looked on the other side of the board and instead of brown like the rest of the board, it was BLACK in that area. Nice and crispy.

I Googled the part number and found that the chips are dual channel (N and P-channel) 35v “enhancement mode power MOSFET” chips. Couldn’t find any sources for that chip, or even a cross reference, so I started browsing chips. Combined SO-8 package and dual-channel, and got a short list of possibilities, all but one are not in stock.

http://www.mouser.com/Search/Refine.aspx?N=4932268+4294741803+4294689029&Ns=P_SField|0

So the question. Would that one 60v chip work in place of the original 30v? Isn’t that just a maximum rating (like a capacitor) or is the circuit actually designed to drive these at those particular voltages?