I decided to post this in the tech/home-brew area due to the highly risky nature of this display replacement.
The display on the PRO finally completely died after looking ghastly for years with OLED burn-in.
There is some inkjet looking part numbers on the back side of the display (2864KSWE). After googling a while, I found a datasheet and some other info. The sources didn't look too promising though. Just for the heck of it, I put the part number into Amazon and I found a couple of promising display units. One of them had VCC and GND reversed from the board in the PRO. There is a link URL on the original display, I think that this is the display:
https://heltec.org/project/096-oled/, the white only model without the yellow and blue.
The original display had the glass removed from double-sided tape and was loose in the case to be retained by the front bezel.
Here is the link to the displays that I bought on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085WCRS7C This display matched the pinout for VCC/GND. The I
2C SDA/SCL pins agreed with the existing one. I was concerned about the address, but these displays worked out of the box. The original display had a chip jumper to select an alternate address, but since it works, no worry there.
My "
Don't Try this at Home" disclaimer. I am an experienced electronics engineer, I have designed and developed products and built and modified prototypes for years during my working career. (I'm retired now)
I DO NOT RECOMMEND CHANGING THIS DISPLAY UNLESS YOU HAVE THE EXPERIENCE AND SKILL LEVEL FOR THIS KIND OF WORK! You are on your own and I accept no responsibility if you ruin your MB PRO in the process.
I had a lot of trouble with my first attempt, I think that I might have damaged the glass display during the removal from the PCB. This is the biggest risk, but at $16.88 USD for five of them, you have plenty of 2nd chances. I think that the stresses on the display when the case was reassembled caused a latent break in the conductors to cause the display not to work. The 2nd attempt was successful.
I used an "exacto" type knife and an
iSesamo tool to coax the glass display off of the double-stick tape on the PCB.
PCB-before-removing-disp
disp-front-PCB
glass-disp-removed
And the new display operating in the PRO. It was totally dark before.
new-disp-working
Greg H.
