Samsung LCD monitor repair question

inside.

Tried another monitor on the same PC, or this LCD on another computer, just to make sure?

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Regards, Joerg

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On a sunny day (Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:29:43 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

inside.

Jup, same monitor on other PC, same problem. It happened during a resolution mode switch, and it is very very hot here (for the Netherlands), so temperature may have been a bit too high for it.

w

and

inside.

Do you have a breakout VGA plug or can you get in the PC and probe? Maybe the termination ain't there when it clicks into the selected mode because some CMOS switch blew?

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Yup and it depends. Some monitors have a seperate ADC others use one big chip. You could open it and do some measurements with an oscilloscope to see where the problem is.

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On a sunny day (Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:46:26 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

Jup, same monitor on other PC, same problem.

I have not yet figured out how to open the thing. I thas a 3 year guarantee, it is now exactly 1 year (minus 12 days). So I want to be sure that I can actually fix it, before I break some seals. The connector is hidden, perhaps one separate board, within the plastic case.

On a sunny day (Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:47:03 GMT) it happened snipped-for-privacy@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote in :

Have to avoid voiding the guarantee. It is from

Their service department was gona send me a new IDE cable 7 years ago, still waiting.. Last few times I ordered something there, nothing happened until I made a follow up phone call.....

Then why not send it in? You can also measure an open terminator at the PC side. Run it in VGA basic mode which it usually does for the first

10sec during boot and look at the levels. If the blue level suddenly jumps a little when going to a similar blue-level screen in your regular viewing mode then the terminator most likely goes open. If that happens only on blue then it looks like a warranty repair case.

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On a sunny day (Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:07:37 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

Because their service department sucked, and no idea how long it will take them to repair it, even if they repair it.

I have fed it some nice test signals, also looked for a defectibe blue clamp, that seems all OK. I ran ntest.exe on it too (Nokia monitor test, recommended, do a google for it).

Well... I will think about this for a while..... what to do with it. Why am I so reluctant with service departments? Because I worked in one myself. I will save you the stories.

I worked in one too. Since you are effectively admitting you are resigned that way to waste time and patience, and time is money (or whatever) - I'd just stuff it in the trash* and buy another. They are cheap enough compared to hourly rates...

• i.e. sell it on eBay as a non-worker.

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Adrian C

On a sunny day (Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:30:58 +0100) it happened Adrian C wrote in :

myself.

Adrian, that thought of putting it at the street, and driving over to Mediamarkt and picking up a new one, did occur to me, and is very tempting. But then I may as well open it up with a can opener and have a look. If I have to ship it back and forwards 3 times before it works OK (and for how long), that gets close to new value. But if anyone had a look inside it might help me make a decision :-) That is why the question.

it).

A brief Google peek seems to indicate blue is sometiems a problem with this monitor series:

Chances are, it's one of those RoHS solder joint issues. So if it's easy to open you could take a look.

Done it, too, in Rotterdam. But it was medical and actually fun. Our subsidiary lost their service tech and since I was in the area they used me as a "tech" for a week. Some repairs were literally pit stop style. Truck arrived, unloaded, trucker had lunch, returned, loaded the unit and brought it back. It was also a good experience to brush up on my Dutch. Although they spoke a weird accent there up north. A velo is a fiets and so on, and the beer was better in Belgium :-)

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myself.

I've a samsung 940 syncmaster that died due to bad caps in the voltage supply board after about a year. To open it up press along the seam (parallel to the screen) at a bottom corner with a butter knife and start prying the halves apart. Remember to remove the stand first then carefully dissect the innards.

al

myself.

You can drop it at my place anytime :-)

Maybe they'll just send you a new one. I doubt they will attempt to repair a TFT monitor at component level. It may take a long while though because someone has to decide you can get a new one.

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myself.

Are those guys over there at all worried about customer retention?

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eals.

c case.

amp,

or it).

yself.

In the days of old, the RGB settings were just different value resistors in the negative feedback of op-amps. Blue required the most attenuation (least gain). Sorry, I forget the values, but there actually is a IEEE standard out there for broadcast video... I can dig it up Monday if you need it.

My total GUESS is that the monitor stores the value somewhere for a digital pot, and either the pot or the communication to it has a problem. If a surface mount resistor opened, that could explain it...

I concur that if it's under warranty, you should try to get it fixed that way. Newer electronic stuff sometimes just isn't worth the headaches you'll encounter trying to decipher the circuits, find the parts, and/or get them soldered up correctly. Best of luck. I don't envy you having to send something that's barely a year old in for service. If it's any consolation, I have a Samsung Syncmaster at work (probably not your exact model) but it's been very reliable. I'm sure they depot these repairs.

On a sunny day (Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:35:13 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

That is the 245BW, not the 206BW. If mine looked like that I would already have trashed it :-)

I did have the impression for a moment that I smelled burned resistor.

myself.

When we stopped the TV shop, I needed some income, went to an agency, and they placed me with the service department of a big Dutch company that starts with 'P', ends with 's', and they make light bulbs too.

The way things (video recorders) were repaired there, was: replace board, not fixed? replace next board, not fixed? replace third board, fixed? Charge for 3 boards + time. Some of those guys had no training, likely did not even know what a chip was.

Ja, zelfs in a klein land zoals Nederland zijn veel talen te vinden.

On a sunny day (Wed, 2 Jul 2008 14:47:10 -0700 (PDT)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in :

Thank you, sounds doable :-)

I know, but often the basic design of the electronics in them didn't change much.

Not good. There is usually a reason why it fried.

myself.

fixed?

That was all the rage in the early 80's in Europe, "modular design". Turned out a module swap repair was a lot more expensive so the whole concept fizzled. They thought they could get a recycling chain going where refurb modules would cycle through. Saba, and other companies.

Very true. The topper was when I rented a house with three others in Hengelo for an electronics gig. One was from Terschelling, one from Friesland (they have a completely non-Germanic language up there ...), one from Heerlen and me from Vaals but with lots of Vlaams because I was a member of a Belgian sports club. When the guy from Heerlen and I talked too fast the other two could no longer follow the conversation. When we listened to an Urbanus tape and had major ROFL episodes they did not laugh. They didn't understand a thing, often not even what he was joking about.

Out here at a company they had the regular auditors there and one was born in South Africa. When docs from the Dutch subsidiary came up they sometimes called me in to explain stuff, mostly about what the legal importance of something was or what an invoice could have been for. Sometimes I read stuff aloud, mumbling to myself. Then she would fall back into Afrikaans and all the other guys became totally confused.

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On a sunny day (Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:00:53 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

Here is a picture: ftp://panteltje.com/pub/double_sided_tape_saves_usenet_and_samsung_is_blue.jpg There must be a clamp problem too, the horizontal bands are where there is text at the left side of the screen. See how blue the Samsung is, in the pager top right, that is with blue gain at zero, and the other color gains at 90% or so. The mysterious thing that hangs from the window is a Huawei E172 USB high speed wireless modem (GPRS/HSDPA). Double sided tape saves Usenet :-) Interesting is that he plastic stripes do not seem to affect the RF, it is there so the signal is better.

The Vodafone man told me that these days the base stations have a generator, this thing will keep me online the next time there is a power failure for half a day or so. And it is portable too of course.

The orange creatue is from mars, and watches us.