Yet another dead monitor made its way into the Kuzyatech lab. A 2007 vintage Viewsonic VA1930WM monitor that stopped turning on.The symptoms were classic- power on light cycles on and off, but the screen stays dark,while a faint repeating squeal can be heard from the unit. Sounds very much like that Samsung LN32A330 I fixed recently. Time to take it apart! Continue reading
It’s time to see what the flea market special $5 Fluke 8000A looks like up close
Missing an overlay
This is an old repair I did a while ago and posted on thinkpads forums. Reposting here to put it all under one roof. We have quite a few IBM Thinkpads X31 in the family. They are built like a tank and work well enough to keep using them despite 2003-2004 datecodes. One day two of them started exhibiting identical symptoms- they would just refuse to turn on. No lights, fans or other signs of life. Luckily I stumbled on a schematic on the web, so that was a good starting point.
Well, if we remember the EEVblog episode 247 about parts arriving in pink bags, this beats it by a mile. The chip arrived in cling wrap! Continue reading
Samsung streak continues. This time I am a proud new owner of a dead 23″ Samsung 2333SW LCD monitor from September of 2009. Dead is a bit of an overstatement, but that’s what the previous owner told me. Since the alternative was for it to go into a dumpster, I figured worst case I get a 23″ LVDS panel to play with. On to the symptoms: backlight seems to operate and the “connect you video source” banner is bouncing around the screen. When I do connect it, I see a brief attempt to display an image and then it’s back to gray. Time to take it apart. Continue reading
You’d think after almost a decade of blown caps on motherboards, that the OEMs would finally take care of that? Yeah, sure. I got my hands on a Samsung LN32A330 TV, made in June 2008. Pretty much a brand new thing as far as TVs go. Main complaint- it stopped turning on. So I plug it into my trusty Kill-A-Watt meter and try to power up. I see that it’s trying to draw some current, but then shuts down. Continue reading