A tale of frustration and expense...
A while back a client requested a field service, complained that their display was no longer working. After checking the system with another screen there was no output, trying my field test screen on DVI also showed no output so, the diagnosis goes "Dead GFX card". Replace the card, comes up just dandy fine with the test screen. Plug the client monitor back in and it's dead again *scratches head*. Okay, maybe the replacement GFX card doesn't agree with the LCD for what ever reason, plug the test screen back in, it's definitely dead. "Maybe a bad GFX card out of the box perhaps?" (seriously, thinking back, that was just a terrible mistake). I request to take the whole system back to the workshop.
Back at the workshop, like a FOOL I plug the screen in to one of my workstations - nothing comes up "Huh, must be a dead screen too"... plug my original screen back in to the workstation, nothing comes up :-O :palm: It now makes sense to me, the screen is killing the GFX cards when on the DVI port. I say my curse words, get a new screen, new GFX card for the client machine, they're all good again, and I put the LCD in to the "naughty corner" for me to one day take a look at for curiosity sake.
.... today ....
Finally I open it up. On first glances there's two things that strike me;
there's a faint splattering of coke-coloured drops all over both top and bottom of the black portion of the DVI socket ( you can see the effect on the underside of the DVI connector too in the picture )
there's a small blob of plastic at the base with very faint charring around it
Firing up the hot-air I manage to extract the DVI socket off to reveal a pitted PCB at where I saw the blob.
The VGA side still works a treat, so I'm almost considering using it in the workshop as a status display.
Only sorry I didn't video the whole process, would have made another interesting YouTube video on my channel
A while back a client requested a field service, complained that their display was no longer working. After checking the system with another screen there was no output, trying my field test screen on DVI also showed no output so, the diagnosis goes "Dead GFX card". Replace the card, comes up just dandy fine with the test screen. Plug the client monitor back in and it's dead again *scratches head*. Okay, maybe the replacement GFX card doesn't agree with the LCD for what ever reason, plug the test screen back in, it's definitely dead. "Maybe a bad GFX card out of the box perhaps?" (seriously, thinking back, that was just a terrible mistake). I request to take the whole system back to the workshop.
Back at the workshop, like a FOOL I plug the screen in to one of my workstations - nothing comes up "Huh, must be a dead screen too"... plug my original screen back in to the workstation, nothing comes up :-O :palm: It now makes sense to me, the screen is killing the GFX cards when on the DVI port. I say my curse words, get a new screen, new GFX card for the client machine, they're all good again, and I put the LCD in to the "naughty corner" for me to one day take a look at for curiosity sake.
.... today ....
Finally I open it up. On first glances there's two things that strike me;
there's a faint splattering of coke-coloured drops all over both top and bottom of the black portion of the DVI socket ( you can see the effect on the underside of the DVI connector too in the picture )
there's a small blob of plastic at the base with very faint charring around it
Firing up the hot-air I manage to extract the DVI socket off to reveal a pitted PCB at where I saw the blob.
The VGA side still works a treat, so I'm almost considering using it in the workshop as a status display.
Only sorry I didn't video the whole process, would have made another interesting YouTube video on my channel
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