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A VGA monitor may be easier to repair than you think

cnx-software.com

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Re: A VGA monitor may be easier to repair than you think

#4
post #2

Opening Amazon and buying a new one is even easier and you end up with a more modern and therefore better product.

"modern" does not imply "better" anymore, for at least a decade now.

Think of SmartTV, microwaves, or every kind of consumer electronics in general.

Re: A VGA monitor may be easier to repair than you think

#7
post #3

Power supply caps fail so often that maybe they should be socketed?

Nah soldering isnt that hard an operation and sockets are expensive.

Though it'd be nice if they made those kinds of things more easily accessible, rather than hiding it behind tons of warranty stickers and really tiny screws.

Re: A VGA monitor may be easier to repair than you think

#8
FTA:

> it was clear what the problem was with a swollen C812 capacitor.

> So no need to check anything with a multimeter or an oscilloscope, a visual inspection of the board could immediately detect the issue.

I'm looking at the picture. I'm not in electronics and I can assure you it's absolutely not clear to me that this is the capacitor I'm looking for. So what should it look like ? I understand these things sometimes burn or swell but is it always visible ? And if not, what should I do to detect it ?

Re: A VGA monitor may be easier to repair than you think

#9
I'm always wary if these guides. If you know what you're doing then yes, replacing a capacitor is a quick fix to give your hardware a new lease on life, but you can get seriously injured or even killed if you mishandled the open power supplies these devices often contain.

This guide addresses the danger by saying you need to "wait for a while" without telling you what "a while" is (a minute? 5? an hour?) and how to spot the dangerous parts of the circuit board.

Having said all that, I think a general education on how devices like these can be fixed (safely!) is something a lot educational facilities should offer. Repairing basic and often even more advanced electronics requires little more than replacement parts, a soldering iron and some practice, but people are quick to throw something out when it stops working. The assumption seems to be that things are too complex to repair these days, but in all likelihood dead devices just had some protective circuitry do its job and fail before frying the mail circuits.

Re: A VGA monitor may be easier to repair than you think

#10
post #4
post #2

Opening Amazon and buying a new one is even easier and you end up with a more modern and therefore better product.

"modern" does not imply "better" anymore, for at least a decade now. Think of SmartTV, microwaves, or every kind of consumer electronics in general.

I do think you should open your mind a bit. Smart TVs are pretty terrific, I can just cast whatever I want across the room and bam, it's on the TV. Friends can come over and share the input. I can lay in bed with nothing but a remote and browse my plex library.

I used to go along this line of thinking, and had a "dumb" TV for a long time. I would spend hundreds of hours trying to get a PC/xbmc/kodi setup with a remote control to be comfortable, but always required a keyboard and mouse next to the TV. In the end it was a waste of time and I wasn't enjoying my TV as an entertainment device.

When I finish work, I want to sit down and just have everything work. I don't want to have to keep getting up and pressing buttons and messing around to get a myriad of supplemental devices of varying quality to work. I just want one single device, on the wall, with a remote.

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