Contents:
1. Use an isolation transformer. A variac can be helpful too. A cheap isolation transformer can be constructed by wiring two identical transformers of adequate power capability back-to-back. (Here is a use for those old boat anchors you can't bear to part with). 2. If it's just the power supply or flyback switching transistors that have failed, then the repair is probably easy enough and quick enough to be worthwhile. Blown power transistors are trivial to locate in the circuit and quite easy to find replacements for. In many cases I've found that the monitor would have lived a much longer life if only the transistor mounting screws had been tightened properly by the manufacturer. Make sure you use appropriate replacements and the proper heat sink parts and heat sink compound. 3. If it's the flyback transformer, then judgement should be made based on the cost and availability of the replacement part. Also, on the risk of there being additional problems beyond that of the bad flyback. Who get's to eat the cost of the part in the event you don't succeed and give up? However, determining that the flyback is indeed at fault may prove challenging without a flyback tester. Sometimes there will be obvious damage such as burnt marks, cracked plastic, or other signs of overheating. If you have the correct resistance measurements, then for the primary you may be able to detect shorted windings. You can also construct the brute force flyback tester at the end of the document. 4. If it's the CRT then make the project "someone else's problem" and give the monitor to someone else to use as a parts carcass. My life is much happier since I learned there is no disgrace in making this choice. 5. There is another common failure category which is a result of people who are too lazy to turn off the power switch at night. The constant heat causes the electrolytic capacitors to dry out and become intermittent. I often replace all of the smallest electrolytics in the power supply section especially when I know the switching transistor is good. If after a couple of hours of labor and a dozen caps I still don't have it running, I give up on these too. 6. Be realistic with yourself about the value of a used working monitor. CGA's EGA's and monochrome Hercules monitors rarely fetch more than $25 at a swap meet. 7. Don't sell a used monitor to a friend unless you want to continue repairing the thing until you're old and grey. 8. Don't put a scope on the collector of the supply or flyback transistors, unless you have a special X100 high voltage / high frequency scope probe.
(From: Andy Laberge (tic-toc@wolfenet.com))
1. When you go to discharge the anode of a picture tube make sure you
hook up your ground first or you may get an unexpected surprise. I
have.
2. Picture tubes will hold their charge for a long time. In fact I
have been bitten from a tube that was removed from a TV, discharged
and allowed to sit for six months. Treat all picture tubes as though
they were fully charged.
3. There is a practical reason for using an isolation transformer for
troubleshooting monitors besides the safety issue. The primary side
of the power supply is isolated from ground and if you start probing
it with a grounded scope you will short out components that were
perfectly good until then. It will cost you more time in trouble
shooting and more money.
4. When looking for real small cracks in a monitor board try to use a
strong indirect light to keep the glare and reflections to a minimum.
You can loose a crack in the glare. Cracks also hide underneath the
solder mask (the green stuff). I have scrapped away the solder mask
and there pretty as you please is that little beggar. Next you want
to fix it; scrap more solder mask off the trace about 1/2" on both
sides of the crack. Brighten the copper using an ink eraser (it has
abrasive grit in it). Tin the exposed copper very well and then
solder on a piece of bare tinned buss wire. This is sort of an
acquired art. Cut the bus wire about 6" long. Next bend the wire at
90 degrees at the 5" mark you now have an L that is 1" on the bottom
and 5" on the stem. Hold the stem and solder the bottom to the PCB on
top of your excessively soldered crack. Now just clip the stem off.
You should now have a crack that is bridged by a soldered on wire
which will give your cracked board the added strength that it needs.
If there are near-by traces you should also check these for possible
hairline cracks or the starts of some. On boards with high trace
density this method may not be possible; in that case use small gauge
(#30) Kynar covered wirewrap wire and solder it to the associated
trace pads on opposite sides of the crack.
5. Some connections won't take the solder very easily. In that case
remove all the old solder with either wick or a solder sucker.
Pre-tin the connector until it excepts the solder readily and then
solder the connector and it's pad. If you don't do this you will end
up with a cold solder joint underneath your new solder.
6. If you are a person that is for some reason or other always moving
or unplugging your monitor; go out and buy yourself an extension for
your monitor signal plug. Hook the monitor signal plug to the extender
and then use the male end of the extension plug as your signal plug.
If you bend one of these pins it will be a lot cheaper then having to
buy a signal plug for your monitor if you can find one.
7. In some VGA monitors you may have video smearing with dark letters
on a light background. This maybe caused from some low value
electrolytics (usually around 1 uf) that have gone bad in the video
driver circuits. Usually you can check these in circuit with an
oscilloscope or out of circuit with a capacitance checker.
8. Other filament problems might be low voltage caused from a leaky
filter capacitor in the filament circuit. The capacitor will dropped
the filament voltage down. A resistor can increase in value causing
the filament current to drop off. Both of these problems can give you
a faded picture look. A filter capacitor that has opened up will give
you a bright picture full of noise and that is hard to trace
especially if you are looking for it in the video.
9. Homemade degaussing coils can be made using three degaussing coils
(out of junked monitors) in series that way you do not need a ballast
load and it acts more like the heavy duty degaussering coils. They
still get warm though.
10. When checking a focus control the main thing to look for here is
that the best focus is not on one end of the control. If it is then
your focus control block is bad or falling out of tolerance.
11. High voltage regulation circuits can give you some weird problems.
One particular monitor would shut down when it went from high white
screen to a black screen. High voltage will elevate when the screen is
darker and sometimes exceed the high voltage safety limit activating
the shut down circuit.
12. Changing out CRT's is more of an art that gets better with
practice. Some color CRT's line right up with a new tube and some take
over four hours experimenting with results that still do not fall
within specs.
13. Capacitors in the primary of the SMPS may go bad and cause the
shape of the switching pulse to be distorted; the SMPS becomes
inefficient and causing over heating and lower voltage. Change the
capacitors if they look bad; shrinking of the vinyl casing or leakage
underneath (looks like a leaky battery in a radio). Capacitors with
105 degree temperature ratings are recommended in power supplies
instead of 85 degree types because of the self generated heat.
Everything in the power supply is a suspect of failure. SMPS
transformers can even fail although it is rare. Some produce
a high audio frequency whine at times due to material oscillations and
load conditions.
14. Metal film resistors can cause weird shut down and start up
problems. These are usually found in the power supply over current
sense circuits. These resistors check good cold but fail after
applying heat to them. When cool they would seem to run all day but if
heat is applied they fail faster. The value of these resistors would
fall between 100k and 500k usually.
15. A good flyback source: Component Technology 1-800-878-0540
A typical monitor warranty is something like: 2 years parts, 1 year parts and labor (i.e. you have to pay for labor the last year of your warranty). What should you do when you are totally unsatisfied with warranty service or when your monitor blows up 1 day after the warranty expires. (From material provided by a former head service guy for a major computer sales/service company.) The behind the scenes secrets to get what you want are to do one or a multiple of the following: 1. Call the "Service" (it appears they really aren't) Department of the company you procured the monitor from, and kindly ask to speak with the Service Manager. If they ask for your name, they will most likely pass it on, as well as your service history... The manager will be "not at his desk". They will ask to take a message... say something like "I would like to discuss a service contract" (free money) or "I would like to speak to him about your firm's good service" (appeal to his ego). These are positive things they like. They person on the phone will get your # and you will hear back within maybe an hour or so. Reason: Service people like myself live in a very, VERY negative world... in the back of our minds we like to hear good and hide from the every day bad. He will call back thinking good and when you get him, you can either beat him up, or butter him up... depending on your personality or style. The later is best. The nicer you are to someone, the more they will do for you... treat him like you've known him for years... talk to him on a one on one type style... tell him what has happened in a very calm, relaxed mood... sit back and relax... imagine yourself as Jack Nicolson.(?) Talk as long as you can... joke, talk about golf, whatever... The longer you are on the phone with him, the more likely he is to do something. 2. Hardball! Tell'em you are going to call the Attorney General and get this monitor covered under the Lemon law in your state if they don't get it fixed NOW! They will have to give you a new monitor if the machine has to be fixed under warranty more than 3-times in a 1-year period. 3. Call the manufacturer. Tell them your monitor is bad and that the company that sold you the monitor has sent it to for service multiple times and that you must have it fixed because it monitors a dialysis machine for a 5-month old baby with liver cancer and a broken leg or something like that... Pull their strings. Kindly let them know you aren't pleased with the monitor and you would like to send it in personally... (yes! you can do this!) The key acronyms are RMA# or RA# or MRA#.... they all refer to Return Merchandise Authorization number in some form. 4. (This one is from sam) Threaten to plaster their miserable product name all over the Internet. Note that I do not believe one should actually do this - posting whiney messages to a bunch of newsgroups is largely non-productive and may leave you open to legal repercussions. But, the threat will need to be taken increasing seriously as the importance of Internet as an international medium expands exponentially. When you send it the monitor, the RMA# has to be on the box. Call the manufacturer at their 800 number. Ask for Customer Service. Tell them the story (kindly) and say that you would like to get an RMA#. This is a type of laundry ticket # they give you to track the monitor's progress... and they report directly to you when you call the RMA department to check on it's status. If they won't do this for an individual person, ask for an address of an Authorized Repair Depot. You will have to call the repair depot and get an RMA#. Let them know you would like to deal with them directly. I would use tip (3) as a last resort, (just before I call the Attorney General). I would also be careful of the game they may be playing: let the warranty on labor run over so we can get some money.
(From: Stephen Swann (swann@panix.com)).
Monitors are more prone to shipping damage than most other computer
components, and it doesn't help that they typically pass through several
people's hands (several stages of shipping) before they get to you:
factory -> distribution center -> vendor -> you.
And from what I've seen first hand of shipping practices (I put in a
couple of months working in a distribution warehouse during college),
you can safely assume that each stage of shipping is roughly the
equivalent of your monitor being dropped down a flight of stairs.
You wouldn't *believe* the abuse that UPS and FedEx can subject
packages to. In fact, putting a *FRAGILE* sign on the side of the box
is about the equivalent of writing "KICK ME" on it. I remember
receiving packages marked "FRAGILE" where the (originally cubical)
cardboard boxes had been smashed into shapeless cardboard "bags", and
it took us 20 minutes to figure out what the contents of the box had
originally been. ("What are all these shards?" "I think it was some
kind of vase" "No, it was some kind of lamp." "Where's the bulb
socket, then?" "How about this squashed piece of aluminum?" "Yeah,
you're right, but where's the cord then?" etc). :-) Shipping guys
would think nothing of dropping "fragile" boxes from waist-high onto a
concrete floor - safe in the knowledge that the package had passed
through so many hands that the damage could never possibly be traced
back to them. "Blameless is Guiltless" should be the motto of these
folks.
Basically, what I'm saying is that if 1 monitor in 3 arrives arrives
in workable condition, you should be surprised that even that one
monitor survived.
(From: Steve Cunningham (swc@tamu.edu)). Yes folks! As a training exercise for the 2002 Summer games, Bill Baxter (not his real name), a union thug from United Parcel will attempt to beat the steroid enhanced monitor-throw record of 55 1/4 feet set by Udo Schrank of the former East Germany. But seriously folks--UPS and I just "go round 'n' round!" Over the past two years, they have broken about one third of the monitors shipped to us, even those packed in the original polystyrene foam. One monitor had the case shattered, and the tube neck sheared off--even though the monitor was packed securely in the original box and foam. The stock response from UPS is that "it probably wasn't packed securely," or some such drivel, while ignoring the obvious--they are careless with fragile merchandise. The latest outrage was when I was taking a short nap in my house (I work out of my house), and a very loud crashing sound startled me awake. My wife said that it sounded as if someone was crashing through the front door. Turns out that the UPS dude dropped a $2000.00 70 pound 20" Ikegami monitor from waist level to the ground, hitting the front door in the process. After cooling off, I carefully inspected the monitor, and, amazingly, it wasn't destroyed (I have witnessed monitor boxes dropped from the airplane to the ground). To add to the outrage, when I was ready to return the repaired monitor, the local UPS manager made me purchase a new box, and have foam injected into it, at a cost to the customer of about 50 bucks, before they would consider shipping it (the old box was dented, but no worse for wear). In a remarkable bit of restraint (if I don't say so myself), I calmly walked out of the UPS office (after waiting in line 30 minutes), and used a remailing company in the area to ship it via UPS at an additional fee. The customer received the monitor a few days later, and yes, it was broken. All of this despite being packed with several inches of hard foam, and in a new, sturdy, 27" Uhaul TV box. The package arrived at the customer's place of business upside down, despite up arrows. I realize that they are a discount shipper, but, they are not paid to merely ship packages. They are paid to ship them in one piece. If they can't do that, I think that they should get out of the business and quit running an insurance scam. I can't return repaired monitors to people with the screws missing, saying, "it's because I'm a discount servicer." There is a minimum level of quality that is acceptable. Sometimes the lowest price is not the best value. As in all things human, let the buyer beware! Hopefully someone will find this useful to that end. We won't be using UPS anymore.
(From: Captain Mocha (CaptainMocha@Electra.com)). I used to work for UPS, I loaded the trucks. It's amazing you get anything in one piece when shipping with UPS. There are so so so so many packages that need to be loaded in those trucks in just three hours per work shift. The floor managers would encourage us to get the trucks loaded in 'any way possible'. We used to treat the small packages as 'footballs' and try to throw them through box "goals" from the other end of the truck. We also did 'punt kicking' etc. So get your facts straight!! It's not 'Hammer Throwing', it's football! =) (From: Michael Schuster (schuster@panix.com)). A friend used to work in Manhattan, NYC and during lunch hour he often passed the large camera/electronics retailer, 47th Street Photo, just as the UPS truck was unloading. It was common for this to be accomplished by having the driver stand in the truck, and KICK the boxes to the ground one by one. So you see, it isn't a hammer throw... It's football (or soccer) that they're modeled after.
"After receiving my third crunched monitor this week, I've about had it with these "Brown Shirted Box Stompers-in-the-mist!" You would think that a well packed 14" clone monitor would survive a 30 mile journey while in their very incapable hands. Actually, I should apologize to Jane Goodall, or whoever that Gorilla babe was--her objects of study would probably be much more care with monitor boxes than the knuckle-walkers at UPS. I have been thinking of doing my own study as to what deceleration it takes to do the damage to a monitor that they have done. My guess is that they must have to drop the thing on concrete from 5 to 7 feet high! I've seen high impact cases shattered, tube necks sheared off, board cracked in half--sheesh, where do they get these guys? From a zoo? Sure, they reimburse the owner, but I lose the repair fee. Does anyone know if can make a loss claim also? (From: David Rouse (david.rouse@engineers.com)). Actually they are probably only being normally clumsy. It probably is the packaging of the monitor that is causing the failures. A monitor is a fragile thing. It only takes about 50 g's of acceleration to kill one. This translates into about a 3-4 inch drop onto a hard surface. The packaging is supposed to protect it by spreading the shock pulse out over a longer time period. Alas, though, all styrofoam (or whatever is being used for cushioning) is not created equal. The maker was most likely trying to save a couple of pennies and use something a little too rigid. The wrong material can provide too little cushioning and in some cases even amplify the shock transmitted to the product under the right(or wrong) circumstances. FYI Trinitron tubes have really bad shock characteristics.
For surface contamination like grease or tobacco smoke, a variety of household cleaners will work including Fantastik, Windex, 409, etc. - some better than others depending on the type of coating. Verify that whatever you use is safe for the plastic by trying it out on an inconspicuous location first. For ozone or heat damage which penetrates deeply into the plastic, painting may be the only a solution. Test on a non-visible section to see how deeply the discoloration has penetrated. For modest discoloration, I have had some success with water and scouring powder containing bleach.
"I've seen some tantalizing references to the SECRET menu for adjusting VisionMaster Pro 17 monitor secret menu. Could someone kindly point me to some details so that I can access and properly use this covert functionality?" (From: Scot Miller (scot@cts.com)). Shut the power off, then switch it back on while simultaneously holding down the 'menu', '-', and '+' buttons. Then the 'menu' button works normally but will bring up the secret menu.
"Considering a 21-inch monitor and have seen a number of resellers beginning to carry refurbished monitors. Under most circumstances I would walk right past anything refurbished for the shiny new model, but at the price of new 21 inchers, well... Monitor would be used primarily in Windows and for playing Quake. Locally I'm seeing prices of $1100.00 to $1300.00 with a 2 year warranty for 1st & 2nd tier products. Feedback, anyone?" Assuming you can fully test drive it and/or get a money back no questions asked warranty, then they are worth considering. The most critical issue is the condition of the CRT make sure it is bright, sharp, and has no screen burn. If the CRT is in good condition, then there is no reason to think that the rest of the monitor will fall apart or go up in smoke. Note: Test from a power off for at least an hour condition. Once an old CRT warms up, it may appear to be better than it actually is. See the document: "Performance Testing of Computer and Video Monitors" for additional evaluation criteria but be warned that no monitor is perfect - some 'defects' you find may be inherent in the design or simply due to normal variations in manufacturing quality control. The two terms 'refurbished' and 'remanufactured' may be mean the same thing. However, it would probably be worth trying to get a clarification in writing of exactly what was done to the monitor. Depending on the integrity of the reseller, these terms could mean anything from 'well, we turned it on and it didn't blow up' to 'unit was completely overhauled and restored to new specifications replacing parts where necessary'.
From: pinecone@pacbell.net (Ron) Here are some possible causes for ghosting, smearing, etc.: 1. A poor quality video cable. 2. A video extension cable (making the cable longer always makes things worse). 3. Running the video card and/or monitor too close to their maximum bandwidths. 4. Impedance mismatch between the video card and the monitor. Most cards, monitors, and cables are 75 ohms, but 50 ohm parts exist. 6. Bad video card. I've seen many video cards with this problem, and a manufacturer recently admitted to me that one revision of their board has a grounding defect that causes...ghosting. 7. Bad monitor. I think this is unlikely. Usually poor monitors produce muddy images that hide ghosting, if indeed there is any.
(From: Bob Myers (myers@fc.hp.com)). The bottom line is that I've been involved with the design, manufacture, specification, and purchase of CRT displays for longer than I care to admit, and I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty: it is IMPOSSIBLE to maintain visibly perfect geometry, linearity, etc., on the things over a production run. You can spend hours and hours getting a given unit to look pretty darn good, but even that is iffy - it depends to much on the limitations built into that particular CRT and yoke. And even if you CAN get that unit 'perfect', this ISN'T something that you can do in normal production - not unless you find customers willing to pay SIGNIFICANTLY higher costs for the products. Despite claims to the contrary here, that has NOT been the desire expressed by the market. (From: Gary Flynn (gary@habanero.jmu.edu)). Many years ago I did TV repair and there were LOTS of adjustments available. I haven't cracked open a TV or monitor lately but your statement about CRT and yoke limitations jogged my memory. Are most monitors today "rack and stack" or are there internal factory adjustments? Having just ordered a 17" Trinitron based monitor and having confidence in my old TV abilities makes me want to explore :-) (From: the editor). No, you will not find many of these sorts of twiddles in modern monitors. Most purity, convergence, and geometry adjustments are via strategically placed magnets glued to the CRT, the orientation of multiple magnetized rings, the position and tilt of the deflection yoke, etc. You really do not want to mess with these unless you have no choice and lots of time. Many modern monitors control the picture adjustments via hidden menus and digital controls. The 'good old days' are gone forever... :-) :-(.
"Does anyone out there know how the Timex/Microsoft watch is programmed by holding the watch in front of a VGA monitor. There must me some sort of sensor on the watch that picks up some sort of pattern on the screen retrace of the monitor...." (From: Len Turnbow (quartlow@netcom.com)). I know nothing about the Timex/Microsoft VGA optical communications protocol. But, sometime when you have nothing better to do, you might connect a phototransistor to a biasing source and thence to your oscilloscope. Aim phototransistor at your computer monitor and check out all the weird patterns produced as a result of various screen displays. Before long, you will note that the leftmost edge of your scope display represents information present near the top of your screen. If you have your trigger properly set, you will also note that the whole contents of the screen are presented (top to bottom) on your scope (left to right). With a blank white raster, you will be able to move your hand in front of the screen and see the result on your scope a la flying spot scanner. But I digress. Armed with a borrowed copy of the Microsoft interface software and your phototransistor, you could probably reverse engineer the protocol. Or ask someone at Microsoft.com :-). What would be the fun in that, though?
In 'the good old days' before digital controls and service menus, one could spend a substantial fraction of one's life tweaking monitor adjustments. The newest monitors (and TVs) are nearly totally controlled by settings stored in EEPROM. The service adjustments may only be accessible via a port connection to a PC running a special manufacturer specific setup program. This is the wave of the future and we are stuck with it for better or worse. In all fairness, digital adjustments are less costly to manufacture and permit much more automation in the factory setup of screen geometry, color, and so forth. However, not making the setup software available for a reasonable licensing fee is a serious problem which will result in lost opportunities for smaller independent repair shops. (From: CiaraTom (ciaratom@aol.com)). The point is that each manufacturer has written a program for his monitor to tweak things that we used to do with a screwdriver. It is model specific, not generic, and often requires an interface (special cable, with or without circuitry in between) sometimes connecting to your parallel port, sometimes to the serial. Goldstar does this with a special proprietary software and special cable; Viewsonic has (that cost me $220 - try to recoup that from a repair) and it is so user unfriendly that you don't even know what to do with it.
(From: Bob Myers (myers@fc.hp.com)). This refers to the interface to the monitor, with "analog" generally meaning that it can plug directly into the same video connector as your typical CRT monitor. Digital-input monitors have in the past required special interface cards, but there are new standards for digital video outputs (such as the VESA "Plug & Display" connector family). The displays themselves (the inner workings aren't REALLY "inherently digital" either - although the interface to the panel itself usually is - but they ARE fixed-format devices, which brings along its own set of problems. Digital interfaces, assuming you DON'T need a special interface card in the PC, will be less expensive than analog interfaces and will offer better performance. The performance increase doesn't come so much from having the information provided in "digital" form, but rather from having accurate timing information available. The biggest headache in designing an analog interface for these monitors is trying to generate the correct clock for sampling the incoming video. It's usually been done by multiplying the horizontal sync rate up to the proper frequency, but that is hard to do with REALLY good stability, and the phase relationship between the H. sync signal and the video isn't all that reliable. This makes for an unstable display, with what looks like considerable noise (especially when you have lots of single-pixel details).
If the solutions to your problems have not been covered in this document, you still have some options other than surrendering your monitor to the local service center or the dumpster. (Also see the related document: "Sources of Repair Information and General Comments".) Manufacturer's service literature: Service manuals may be available for for your monitor. Once you have exhausted other obvious possibilities, the cost may be well worth it. Depending on the type of equipment, these can range in price from $10-150 or more. Some are more useful than others. However, not all include the schematics so if you are hoping to repair an electronic problem try to check before buying. Inside cover of the equipment: TVs often have some kind of circuit diagram pasted inside the back cover. In the old days, this was a complete schematic. Now, if one exists at all for a monitor, it just shows part numbers and location for key components - still very useful. SAMs Photofacts: These have been published for over 45 years but have never been common for monitors. There are a few for some early PC monitors but for anything modern, forget it. Whatever the ultimate outcome, you will have learned a great deal. Have fun - don't think of this as a chore. Electronic troubleshooting represents a detective's challenge of the type hat Sherlock Holmes could not have resisted. You at least have the advantage that the electronics do not lie or attempt to deceive you (though you may beg to differ at times). So, what are you waiting for?
For general information on PC video cards and monitors, see the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video FAQ. This relatively new document has wealth of data on nearly everything you could possibly want to know about video for the PC world. (From: Michael J. Scott (mjscott@heartlab.rri.uwo.ca)) The FAQ is available via ftp and the WWW: To ftp a text-only version of this FAQ, and/or the chipset list: Compressed Video FAQ at ftp://ftp.worcester.com/pub/PC-info/pc-hardware-video-faq.Z Compressed Video Chipset List at ftp://ftp.worcester.com/pub/PC-info/pc-hardware-video-chipsetlist.Z A WWW version (Netscape enhanced) is available at: http://www.heartlab.rri.uwo.ca/videofaq.html Uncompressed and compressed (pkzip, gzip, compress) text versions are also available at the web site. The FAQ has received news.answers approval, so it should be archived at rtfm.mit.edu and all mirrors, as well as in news.answers and comp.answers. Contributions, questions and corrections always welcome and appreciated.
There don't seem to be that many readily available books on monitor repair.
Here are a couple:
* Troubleshooting and Repairing Computer Monitors
Stephen Bigelow
McGraw Hill, 1995
Hardcover, 304 pages
ISDN 0-07-005408-8
Some of the topics are
- CRT alignment and degaussing
- State-of-the-art plasma displays
- Specifications and architectures of monochromw, CGA, EGA, VGA, and SVGA
- Linear, switching, and high voltage powersupplies
- Logic and drivers supporting both CRT and LCD monitors
- Graphics standards
- Sample schematics
* Computer Monitor Troubleshooting & Repair
Joe Desposito
Howard W Sams & Co, 1997
ISBN: 0790611007
Also, since monitors share much in common with color TVs, books on their
repair would also be applicable for many problems - and may be more readily
available from your local public library.
There don't seem to be nearly as many TV repair books for modern solid
state TVs as I recall for old tube sets. Here are is one suggestion
which you may find (or its predecessor) at your local public library
(621.384 if you library is numbered that way) or a technical book store.
MCM Electronics has this as well.
Troubleshooting and Repairing Solid State TVs
Homer L. Davidson
2nd Edition, 1992
TAB Books, Inc.
Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17214
(From: Skip (skipperm@mtc2.mid.tec.sc.us))
I recently attended a monitor repair course put on by Philips electronics.
They have a technical training manual titled
HI-RES COMPUTER DISPLAY SYSTEMS
part # ST1496-1093LE/KGPGC
I am sure this can be ordered from Philips Service Co.
P.O. Box 555, Jefferson City, TN 37760 phone 423-475-0044
This book does an excellent job of explaining how these monitors
work. Most is about Philips monitors but the material is applicable
to most manufacturers. This course and reading this text has
help me a lot with my monitor repair efforts.
The following doesn't specifically deal with monitors but may be of interest
as well:
"Video demystified: A handbook for the digital engineer", Keith Jack,
Brooktree Corporation, 1993 (ISBN 1-878707-09-4).
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