"Michael A. Covington" wrote in message
...
"Ray L. Volts" wrote in message
...

I ended up buying an NEC FP2141SB, for several reasons. I read lots
of
good
reviews on it, it's $50 cheaper than its identical twin Mitsubishi,
it's
black to match the rest of my system (hey, aesthetics counts
AND..
they
will sell the schematic for it.

I'm still kinda ****ed they charge $50 for their manual, while Sony
wants
half that for their large monitor service lit.

NEC monitors have always been built with a critical audience in mind.
The
original NEC Multisync was clearly built with the idea that all the
rivals
would examine it closely and envy it. (We used one of them something
like
10 years, from the CGA era until the end of the 640x480 VGA era.)

A good reason for the lack of service manuals for *some* products is
that
the makers don't want us to see what corners they've cut!

Zackly! Like the old Samsung b/w monitors back in the '80s, before
anyone had heard of that Korean company. They used a few ohm resistor
in the V supply line, instead of a fuse. Whenever the computer fed it
the wrong horiz freq, the resistor would act just like a fuse, and a
column of smoke would come out of it! I finally just ran a pair of
wires off the PC board and put an inline fuse in each monitor. Worked
just fine, and it was easily changed.

In comparison, the old Ball Bros monitors would just sit there,
screeching, without a trace of smoke. One thing, I have to admit, was
that it got the people to turn it off when they saw the smoke! 'Cept if
there was no one around...