On May 4, 12:57*pm, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:
So I tried various techniques to try reproducing the problem today,
all to no avail.
I don't mean to be overly critical, but I think I see a problem. You
remind me of something I had to deal with when training technicians
in a past life. I referred to it as "Circle the wagons. The Indians are
attacking". This was in reference to the tendency for some techs to
march around the problem area, gain a little more insight, but burn
huge amounts of time going literally in circles. The Indians never
had a chance, after tiring their horses, by going in circles around
the wagons. Both you and the attacking Indians would be far more
effective with a direct assault on the problem. At some point, you
will need to dive into the LCD monitor and get your hands dirty. No
amount of additional insight or diagnostics are going to prevent this
from happening. Even if you isolate the problem to a single capacitor
and totally undestand the failure mechanism, you'll still need to
crack the case and do the necessary parts replacement. Might
as well get it over with now (before your horse gets tired).
http://www.ccl-la.com/blog/index.php...ng-214t-repair

Excellent points, that need to be repeated often.

They're related to the issue of whether you're trying to figure out exactly
what's wrong, or simply getting the unit working again. Often (too often),
you have to abandon the analysis, and "dig in".

My guess is that this problem is related to the power-supply voltages for
the video driver circuits. Second guess would be a bad video driver. (I
don't know whether it's a board or a single chip in this unit.)

Yes, I understand your point.

I think I'm more apt to approach this cautiously for several reasons.

One is that I don't have an urgent need to address the problem. This
is partly due to my other monitor working fine, and also because the
monitor does not malfunction frequently or for extended periods of
time (a couple hours of downtime over several weeks).

Another reason is that I'm not very knowledgeable or experienced on
this type of problem, so I'm ramping up quite a bit.

Yet another reason is that I'm a big proponent of measure twice, cut
once. From what I've read, opening the case isn't simple, and will
likely lead to blemishes. So I'd prefer to minimize the number of
times I have to open it, which can be accomplished by having some
confidence in the problem & solution. I understand that I won't know
or understand every detail. But I don't think knowledge will hurt,
and I'm not in a rush.

So given this list, I find it reasonable to perform some extra
diligence and learn a lot that I don't know, before digging in. I
realize some people have suggested that the caps are a common problem
w/ this monitor, but their problem doesn't seem to be the same as
mine. And I'd prefer to avoid unnecessary de-soldering & soldering,
given that I can actually make things worse. Given the symptoms of
the problem and all that I've learned from this group and the web, I'm
inclined to think the problem is the video board. But since I need to
open the case to get the video board's part & rev numbers, I'll have a
chance to inspect the caps before proceeding.

Thanks to everyone for your help, I really appreciate it. I'll post
back w/ my progress.