I hope its the ribbon, right now I have the fabric removed up to the point where I suspect it could have been crimped, I will study it later. One thing that might have contributed is the battery. I plugged in the speakers and buttons/ir mouse cables before I plugged in the battery cable; when I plugged in the battery cable, a spark occurred around the 3rd pin from the edge of one side of the cable. This seems to occur when something is plugged into the board (if the battery cable is the only thing being plugged in, the spark doesn't happen). So it might be that a transistor fried or something, or it could very well be the ribbon, as another thing that occurred was the lcd screen flashing white when I lifted the board to re-seat it (this white flash happened after the battery plug spark, but before I managed to power it successfully for the last time.) The last possibility I am thinking of at the moment is that whatever switch/sensor that tells the edge that its closed is broken so that it thinks its always closed, and thus the lcd screen stays off, although if the lcd lights up during boot even if its closed, then that possibility is shot. At the moment I will take it easy and hope for one of those godsend $100 deals for another edge, and keep this one for parts
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