Repaired a Dell 17" monitor today, quite proud of myself! This whole bringing back dead stuff with a few bucks worth of capacitors is pretty addicting.
This is a monitor that was being used at my place of employment, as a paramedic, I work at an ambulance company. It had been being used as one of three monitors in a computer aided dispatching workstation and has been running continuously for about 5 years now. One day one of the dispatchers spilled a beverage on it and would not turn on after that. They bought a new one and this one has been sitting around collecting dust ever since. I asked if they would mind if I were to try fixing it, they said "sure".
So, I got it home and it didn't want to do anything, I tried pressing the buttons and nothing. I opened it up, and for a monitor that had a drink spilled on it, the interior was surprisingly clean, really no sticky residue anywhere. But, I gave the contacts and the boards a quick clean with isopropyl alcohol and distilled water nonetheless.
When I took out the power board and the controller, I found a few bulged capacitors on each. I replaced each capacitor on the power supply board with new capacitor from either FR or FC series from Panasonic and the main capacitor with a Chemi-con KXJ series. I decided not to completely recap the control board and only replaced the bulging one, I know it's not great for longevity but they were just so difficult to desolder that I didn't want to risk damaging the board and the others were pretty small capacitors.
Well, I put it all back together, and it now works just fine now! I really wanted to do before and after pictures, but honestly, it was such a pain in the ass to put back together that I didn't feel like taking it apart to do the photos.
I am not sure if it was the drink that killed the monitor, or if it was the capacitors and the drink just pushed it over the edge, but I don't really care at this point.
Now, I am planning on building a computer out of spare parts I have and using the monitor with it and then putting the system in the day room at the company so that those who are not fortunate enough to own a laptop (like me) can have a computer to use for basic web browsing.
Definite win today!
Yours,
Justin
This is a monitor that was being used at my place of employment, as a paramedic, I work at an ambulance company. It had been being used as one of three monitors in a computer aided dispatching workstation and has been running continuously for about 5 years now. One day one of the dispatchers spilled a beverage on it and would not turn on after that. They bought a new one and this one has been sitting around collecting dust ever since. I asked if they would mind if I were to try fixing it, they said "sure".
So, I got it home and it didn't want to do anything, I tried pressing the buttons and nothing. I opened it up, and for a monitor that had a drink spilled on it, the interior was surprisingly clean, really no sticky residue anywhere. But, I gave the contacts and the boards a quick clean with isopropyl alcohol and distilled water nonetheless.
When I took out the power board and the controller, I found a few bulged capacitors on each. I replaced each capacitor on the power supply board with new capacitor from either FR or FC series from Panasonic and the main capacitor with a Chemi-con KXJ series. I decided not to completely recap the control board and only replaced the bulging one, I know it's not great for longevity but they were just so difficult to desolder that I didn't want to risk damaging the board and the others were pretty small capacitors.
Well, I put it all back together, and it now works just fine now! I really wanted to do before and after pictures, but honestly, it was such a pain in the ass to put back together that I didn't feel like taking it apart to do the photos.
I am not sure if it was the drink that killed the monitor, or if it was the capacitors and the drink just pushed it over the edge, but I don't really care at this point.
Now, I am planning on building a computer out of spare parts I have and using the monitor with it and then putting the system in the day room at the company so that those who are not fortunate enough to own a laptop (like me) can have a computer to use for basic web browsing.
Definite win today!
Yours,
Justin
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