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Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Success!!!

I was able to fix my first LCD w/o changing the whole board today!  I realize that Stan's been doing this for a while so it's no big deal but, I hadn't actually dusted off my electronics classes in years.  Whenever I got an LCD that didn't work i'd start with the most likely board and just start replacing!  There's only 3 boards and a TCON so at worst the total investment is like $60 to do them all.  This generally works out.  Well, I was working on a 19" Monitor w/o DVI.  These things have about a $60 street value IF they're working.  I wasn't about to put $60 worth of boards into a $60 Monitor.

So, I set out to actually repair it and not just change parts until it worked.  I was talking to some of my friends about it who are so disturbingly intelligent and good at this that they have not just their geek card; they have their geek platinum card (or Mithril as it were - LOL).  I got all kinds of advice.  All of it i'm sure would have worked.  But, I couldn't use most of it due to time constraints and the lack of an oscilloscope.  Then I got the most useful advice you can give someone who's troubleshooting Caps: Look for the bulge and leaking (Credit for this goes to Stan for stopping me from over analyzing and making it way harder than it needed to be).  So I took it apart and found a cap that had about a 1/16th of an inch bulge.  I checked it with my meter and it was shot!  I ordered the cap, replaced it, and reassembled the Monitor (BTW it's a Dell).  Finally came the moment of truth...  It worked like it was new.

Total Parts Investment: 7 cents including the solder
Total Time: 34 minutes including dis-assembly and troubleshooting

**UPDATE**
I forgot to mention which Caps I used.  From what I was reading these are in pretty much everything.  You'll also notice that these have a little bit higher voltage rating than the originals (the originals are 16v these are 25v).  That's ok - it's actually a good thing.  They work like a champ and are less likely to swell and not work than the originals.  Here's the link:

Gino 50 Pcs Radial Lead Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors 1000uF 25V

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