Chosen Solution
This is definitely a long shot, but I figured I’d see if anyone had some creative solutions. I salvaged a replacement LCD/Digitizer/Touch Screen for my first gen iPhone. The problem is with the LCD portion. There’s a small ribbon cable along the right side that is severed and barely hanging together. I’m guessing that one of the ribbon wires is for the LCD and the other is for the backlight because I’m able to tape it in place just enough to get the LCD portion to work and everything works except the backlight. I have an extra cable laying around and was wondering if there was someway I could attach the two similar to attaching two wires together without having to actually remove the connection to the LCD because I know there’s pretty much no way to mess with that connection without destroying the LCD. Probably gonna have to just replace the entire thing…
The pen that Polly is talking about is probably your best first try. It is called a silver trace pen. They are available online or at Radio Shack here in the US. It runs about $11USD and has enough product to do a great number of repairs. You will need to secure one side of the ribbon cable with tape, glue or something, so you do not rip it any further. You will need a jewelers visor, loupe or stereo microscope to see what you are doing. On the unsecured side of the cable you need to clean the plastic away from the broken copper trace in the cable on either side of the break with an exact-o knife or similar, you can also use heat. You need to make sure you are only exposing the 1 trace. If you expose multiple traces you stand a chance of shorting them out. Patching 1 trace is going to be hard, but much easier that trying to patch in a new cable. I have done this with DS lite upper video cables. If you are patient and can see what you are doing it can be accomplished.
