[HN Gopher] Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of Computer ...
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Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of Computer and Video
Monitors
Author : WorldPeas
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-11-25 22:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.repairfaq.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.repairfaq.org)
| notherhack wrote:
| (2009) And this is about CRT monitors. Is there something like
| this for the LCD monitors we all use today?
| tom_ wrote:
| Is it economically worthwhile to attempt to repair them? They
| seem to be generally reliable, and replacements of any kind are
| cheap. Certainly cheaper than having somebody else figure out
| the problem and probably cheaper than having you do it too.
| Especially once you add in any equipment involved, multiplied
| by the likelihood (low) of having to do this repeatedly.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Is it economically worthwhile to attempt to repair them?
|
| In a developed economy, maybe barely. Depends on the monitor,
| and what's wrong with it. If you're good enough at soldering,
| and it's just a capacitor in the power supply issue, and the
| case isn't going to fall apart when you open it, sure. But if
| you have to hire help, or replace a module, probably not.
|
| In places where skilled labor isn't going to billed at
| $100/hr or more, then there's more you can do ... I don't
| think it's worth replacing a panel if the panel (or its
| wiring) go, but you can replacing modules likely makes sense,
| if you can source them; maybe some light module repair too if
| it's just cold solder joints need rewetting.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| Depends. I'm not sure you could make a business out of just
| fixing monitors. As another thing the phone repair shops can
| fix - maybe?
|
| As for why? $ per benefit.
|
| I had a pair of Samsung 204B screens I liked. I didn't see
| dollar per benefit in upgrading from 1600x1200 4:3 to
| 1920x1080 16:9.
|
| They went funny, I obtained a capacitor, pop the back off,
| unsolder and solder new cap, put the shell back on. Job done.
| 20 minutes per screen because man, am I bad at soldering...
|
| They worked happily for another 5 years each. Until society
| got well past the 1080p rut and into proper 1440 and 4k etc
| screens which were _actually_ worth upgrading to.
|
| Edit: make shorter
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| 1920x1200 in 23" or 24" were an OK upgrade from 1600x1200
| CRT 21" for me. I did the stuff you did on an 18" 1280x1024
| SPVA LCD from Fujitsu-Siemens. Since I hadn't soldered for
| a long time, I just bought that stuff 2 times, because the
| parts were a few cents only. Didn't need them 2 times,
| though :-) Worked for some mainboards in similar ways.
| Except I've been afraid to completely desolder them on
| mulitlayer mainboards, for fear of destroying the
| VIAs/through-holes. Just pulled the capacitor from it's
| pins still stuck in, cleaned them, and soldered the new
| one(s) onto the old pins. Looked like sort of a water tower
| in miniature, but the boards worked flawlessly afterwards.
| For years :-)
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Depends on what's wrong, and how much a person's free time is
| worth.
|
| The panel? No. The panel was the singular expensive part, and
| the cheapest and most available way to get a new panel is
| usually to buy it in a retail box with the rest of the
| monitor already wrapped around it.
|
| The backlight tubes? Surprisingly enough: Yeah, if a person
| really wants to do that, and if the display uses fluorescent
| backlight, then sometimes the tubes are replaceable. (LED
| backlight is basically ubiquitous on newish displays and is,
| AFAIK, kind of a non-starter to dig into repairing. But it
| might be do-able by swapping bits from a broken panel if one
| were sufficiently motivated.)
|
| Power supply bits? Sure. It's just a power supply, right?
| Power supplies are often repairable or replaceable. (I've
| repaired power supplies in LCD screens myself, and I'm pretty
| lousy at component-level troubleshooting.)
|
| Broken connectors and switches such? Very repairable.
| (Difficulty depends a lot on how much, if any, of the board
| also got destroyed, but generally speaking hot air soldering
| is a lot easier than it looks like it should be.)
|
| Mechanical issues, like a wonky stand or broken housing?
| Often repairable. (The screen I'm writing this with has a
| cast zinc base that broke due to metal fatigue. I've fixed it
| twice: Once with two part epoxy, and a second time by adding
| CA glue when the epoxy's grip on the zinc failed.)
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I have an OLED that crapped out and I didn't get around to
| sending it back to the OEM while in warranty. I suspect the
| issue is some minor component burned out, as the monitor
| powers on and the desktop recognizes it.
|
| I have no idea what to do with it though and tossing it feels
| wrong.
| pmontra wrote:
| If you kind of know how to fix the problem and if you are
| doing it in your spare time as any other house tidying
| activity, yes, it's worth it. Add to it the value of the fun,
| if you're that kind of person. If you are spending a day
| instead of working, probably it's not worth it unless it's a
| very expensive monitor.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > replacements of any kind are cheap
|
| Of a bog-standard 1080p 60 Hz monitor, perhaps.
|
| I have a 4K 144 Hz 27-inch monitor I bought in December 2021,
| and paid nearly $850 for. These monitors still aren't a
| commodity good, and still end up being pretty expensive.
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| Bit of a tangent but maybe this a good place to ask: I've been
| trying to diagnose a weird display issue on my 4K IPS monitor. It
| seems to have a stuck pixel, which looks bright green on a dark
| background. But weirdly, the pixel changes color if you move your
| head from left to right, cycling from bright green to hot pink to
| purple and then back to green (though it doesn't change color
| when moving your head up and down). Also, it seems to "float"
| slightly above the actual pixels. For ex, if I open a paint
| program and draw a straight vertical line directly adjacent to
| it, there's a gap when looked at from the right, but it seems to
| overlap the line when seen from the left.
|
| Anybody experience an issue like this before, or know if it has a
| fix? I've searched but only find discussion of regular stuck/dead
| pixels.
| simoncion wrote:
| > Anybody experience an issue like this before...
|
| I have, but only when I've gotten something on the monitor
| (like liquid droplets or thin hairs placed _just_ right) that
| did funny things. Have you carefully cleaned your screen
| recently?
|
| If it's not crud on the screen, then my vaguely-educated
| layman's guess based on the symptoms is that some part of the
| light guide layer between the tiny shutters and external
| surface of the screen [0] has gotten damaged somehow.
|
| [0] Would this be called a polarizer? I'm not sure.
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| Considered that, but I've wiped, scratched, and put light
| pressure on the spot with no visible change. Not sure how it
| could have been damaged in one pixel-sized spot without
| affecting the surface or any surrounding pixels.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| I think you have an actual tiny physical chink in the plastic
| or glass on the surface of the panel. Especially if you run
| your finger across it and can feel it.
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| It feels perfectly smooth -- like the flaw is somehow between
| the surface and the pixel layer.
| qazwsxedchac wrote:
| That's exactly where the flaw likely is, on the side of the
| top surface layer which faces away from you. Air bubble in
| the plastic, or dust inclusion. If you really want to get
| to the bottom of it, put a 30x pocket microscope over the
| spot, you'll see the problem clearly. The bad news: It's
| neither fixable, nor covered by "dead pixel" / "stuck
| pixel" warranty policies.
|
| (Source: First hand experience.)
| autoexec wrote:
| > With new monitors going for under $200, the costs of any
| significant repair are no longer justifiable unless there is
| something unique about your monitor.
|
| When it comes to CRTs this is probably more true today that it
| was when this was written. I can imagine a future though where
| more people seek to repair their non-CRT monitors as stores stop
| selling normal computer monitors to push "smart" monitors filled
| with ads and anti-features.
|
| I've still got a massive sony trinitron desktop monitor that
| stopped working properly but is so heavy I've neglected to get
| rid of it. I keep hoping I'll come across some old TV repair guy
| who can give it life again for a reasonable fee because it was
| honestly the best monitor I ever had and I'd love to be able to
| use it again with older systems even though it weighs a ton,
| takes up a huge amount of space, and will throw off enough heat
| to raise the room temperature.
| squigz wrote:
| > When it comes to CRTs this is probably more true today that
| it was when this was written. I can imagine a future though
| where more people seek to repair their non-CRT monitors as
| stores stop selling normal computer monitors to push "smart"
| monitors filled with ads and anti-features.
|
| I sort of doubt this will happen. Computer monitors are used by
| professionals in every industry all over the world. Going the
| way of smart TVs - which are more consumer-facing - would not
| make any sense.
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(page generated 2025-11-26 23:02 UTC)