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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

#11

Post by ksec »

jonatron wrote: post #3

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

The answer isn't socketed but high quality capacitor ( Solid or Tantalum etc ) . Swollen capacitor should really be a thing of the past.

Unfortunately Capacitor is an area that is easiest to cut cost and has no immediate effect on the devices function and are hard to spot. Part of the reason why I switch over to Mac ~20 years ago. I dont want to spend time looking at every capacitor on a motherboard or to gather enough information on all these details. That was before the time when Capacitor marketing on motherboard was a thing.

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

#12

Post by blueflow »

kichimi wrote: post #10
blueflow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 remot…

What you didn't include: the data gathering and the ads. tons of ads. I interacted with smart TVs before, but when i pay for it and it displays me ads in the UI, its an instant return. I'll have none of that shit.

And don't get me started on weird bugs that i can't even fix myself. Stuff like my dad's TV randomly outputting 1-2 seconds of audio of the last selected sender /while being turned off/. Audio only, with the screen turned off. Just a few moments. Nightmare fuel when its dark and you are sleeping in the same room.

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

#13

Post by kalium-xyz »

contravariant wrote: post #7
kalium-xyz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, just saying that it not being socketed should not be that big a barrier to entry. If you want an awesome way of doing things look at old tektronix scopes https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/Ceramic_Strips

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

#14

Post by gbil »

wiz21c wrote: post #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 someti…

I'm an electronic engineer by education and have worked with boards many times as a hobby only though (outside of the university) and I can tell you I do see the capacitor being swollen just from the picture, you can see the ones below are in a normal state. Many times this is very very obvious but other times not in which case you need to remove each capacitor and measure its capacitance with the relevant (cheap) equipment

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

#15

Post by mrweasel »

glugc wrote: post #2

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

I don't completely disagree. VGA should have been removed from monitors 10 years ago. Some companies still buy new monitors and hook them up via VGA. That should be prohibited by labour laws. The image quality wasn't good enough to be used for an entire work day in 2010 and it certainly isn't acceptable today.

Tens years ago I argued with a previous boss that it didn't matter how cheap the monitor was, he shouldn't force anyone to use a VGA monitor and hurt their eyes when DVI was available and only slight more expensive.

That being said, if you need a VGA monitor, perhaps for some retro computing or a system that only supports VGA for some reason, it's better and cheaper to just fix it, if possible.

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

#16

Post by rock_artist »

Since the days of ISA and DIMMs I've been 'fixing' things myself. I also do all sort of 'handy-man' work at home.

Being 'technical' I'd still suggest evaluating things before engaging to them.

Some repairs aren't worth it. this is per-basis calculation based on your capabilities, experience and time.

So the important word is... MAY be easier... maybe it won't be easier than you think ;)

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

#17

Post by squarefoot »

I've repaired several TVs and monitors, LED lamps, etc. just by replacing bad capacitors, and in a few cases some diodes too, so it's worth trying especially on electronics that would otherwise be thrown away. If you see a TV/monitor going off randomly or a LED lamp starts flashing, pretty sure there are one or more defective capacitors in there.

Defective capacitors are a common plague in modern electronics, and the culprit is always the capacitor: the market is literally invaded by rubbish quality capacitors, and swapping a bad quality one with another bad quality one guarantees it will fail again one day, so buy only reputable parts from reputable vendors; avoid online purchases of branded parts from unknown resellers (pretty sure that 99.999% of Nichicon or ELNA capacitors sold by any Aliexpress, Ebay, Amazon, etc. sellers are relabeled fakes); pay them more but pay them once. A web/image search for "counterfeit capacitors" works better than 1000 words.

Anyway, when shopping for (hopefully genuine) electrolytic capacitors, respect also the temperature ratings. Capacitors mounted into a power supply are exposed to higher temperatures, so always choose the 105c degrees type. Capacitance is usually not critical; electrolytic capacitors accuracy can be worse than 20%, and that's not a problem because they're not required to be accurate for their job, so if you don't find the exact value, you can safely swap the part with one with slightly higher capacitance; same for the rated operating voltage which can be higher (not lower!). Low ESR rated ones are preferred; if you can, buy them instead of generic ones.

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

#18

Post by barbegal »

jeroenhd wrote: post #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 s…

IEC 60335 and IEC 62368 state that the voltage across the capacitors must be below 34 V in 1 second after the input power is removed. Modern electronics are remarkably safe and I have never heard of anyone being shocked by power supply capacitors in the last decade. Of course cheap electronics sometimes aren't standards compliant and bleed resistors can conceivably fail hence the advice to wait a bit longer if you want real piece of mind and don't mind waiting.

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

#19

Post by akerr »

I did this when I was a teenager - with CRT monitors. Higher voltages and I had the fun of refocusing the tube and fixing the colour registration while it was on, reaching around the back while I looked at my test pattern.

I learnt a lot about computing hardware and software on that Pentium box: 166 MMX (overclocked to 200MHz), 16MB RAM (later 64MB), running Debian and my resurrected 15” LG CRT. Oh, and a 56kbps modem.

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

#20

Post by squarefoot »

jonatron wrote: post #3

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

Whoever uses junk capacitors to save some cents would never ever spend more money to add a socket. That is not the problem, shitty parts are.

Good capacitors do exist, but they're getting less common with time; actually you're more likely to find good electrolytic caps in a 30 years old radio than in a 5 years old one. Today some manufacturers are cutting corners everywhere and parts quality tanked.

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