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On the left is what's inside the front plastic section, and on the right is the
inside of the other half of it. The clip simply needed to be pressed in all the
way, and it releases. Pushing a screwdriver into the notch would hit the
clip, bending it inward, thus releasing it from the small protrusion inside the
casing. There was no danger of harming anything either, as the
clip is fairly thick, and right behind it is a heavy metal shield.
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There is that shield, or rather, both shields. The part closest the camera is sheet metal, almost like
metal roof flashing - nice and sharp around the edges, and held in place by at
least 15 screws.
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There's the inside of the monitor, as seen from what would be the top, were it not setting
on the screen. You'll notice a big metal shield around the bottom of the image - that entire
thing needed to be removed to allow for the extraction of the largest circuit board. The
main CRT plug and the beam landing circuit needed to be disconnected as well, since they
had wires running to the main board. The CRT needed to be discharged (which it seemed to
have done by itself anyway) so that the anode wire could be removed.
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There's a shot of the label on this excellent, genuine Trinitron tube.
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There's the CRT plug; forgive the bad focus on this picture. Macro mode was a new thing
for me when this monitor needed repairs, and you'll not find me taking the thing apart
just for one picture!
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There's a shot of the plug from the other side.
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There's a top view of the flyback, and some of the deflection circuit.
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This is the back of the main PCB, showing the black plastic backing that
helped secure the board.
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Another view near the flyback, with some of the power circuit in the back.
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This is the shield that covers the video circuit board. |
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There's the top of the video circuit; there's a block there that screws
right into a metal shield, allowing it to act as a heatsink. |
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And here's the bottom of the board, as it sits mounted to a metal plate. |
There's the back of the yoke controls, and a view of the yokes themselves.. |
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And here's the bare yoke controls. |
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Another shot of the side of the covered board. |
At one point, before ever even opening the monitor, I thought that the problem might be
dust accumulation trapping heat, so I gave it a few shots of canned air through the
topside vents. But as I was repositioning the can for another blast, the plastic straw popped
out and fell right into the monitor. So I then was given two reasons to pop the case open.
Granted, the straw is an insulator, but there are plenty of hot spots in the monitor -
last thing I needed was a piece of plastic melting itself to my monitor's guts. Finally, at
some point in the surgery I noticed the wayward piece just sitting there, out of the way.
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During my troubleshooting, I'd need to rotate the monitor from upside down,
rightside up, etc. Well on the first rotation, I noticed that the color was
completely screwed up. But then I remembered reading somewhere that Earth's
magnetic field could affect monitors when they were reoriented. Both screens
here are showing the same thing - the left was before the degaussing. One thing
I noticed about this monitor - its degaussing cycle is a good bit longer than
cheaper monitors. A lot of monitors I've seen will take only maybe 2 seconds to
degauss. This one takes a little over 8 seconds.
Now, finally, after much rapping at the back of the big circuit
board, in the area of the deflection circuit, I got closer and closer to an area
that would require ever decreasing amounts of jarring to produce glitches in the
image. So, I started tapping individual solder joints until I found one that
required only a tiny amount of pressure to affect the image. It was a
rectangular capacitor, C228. The joint actually sparked a bit when it was
wiggled. I merely needed to reheat the solder joint, add a little more
solder for insurance, and the monitor was fine. The picture was stable, and no amount of
prodding or jarring would affect the image on the screen. That was it - all this
over one broken solder joint. And it wasn't a cold solder joint either; it was
nice and shiny like it should have been. I guess the stress of multiple heatings
cooling cycles, and the above-average amount of time it spent in shipping during
its life finally took its toll.
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There they are - pics first of the solder joint, and then of the capacitor
that it's attached to - C228.
Once that joint was resoldered, and I was convinced that that was all there was
to it, I put the monitor back together, and set it back on its rightful place on
my desk.
And so this tale ends. Hopefully the next journey this monitor takes will be to
a recycling center when it is no longer able to put out light.