Defective Monitor

The Master needs to know if other things are dark as well?

Yes the monitor is dark all the time for every thing of course we dont notice it as much when we are using MS Word or Excel because the back ground is white. but any thing with colour in it is dark even the task bar on my desk top e.g. I use Firefox and the icon is on my quick start I can hardly make out the tail thats on the top of the icon. I just noticed I have a windows XP default background on my desk top its of a pic of a fall season with trees and leaves I have this window open but reduced in size so I can see about 3 inches of the back ground all around thin email Im typing the back ground appears really dark but hen I click on the blue title bar of this email and move it behind and below my task bar the back ground gets brighter when I bring the email back up the wallpaper gets darker again. Thanks Nikki

There is a Screen Adjustment control on the High-Voltage transformer (flyback) that controls the background brightness. Just take the cover off, turn the set on and display your normally dim picture. Turn the bottom control knob on the transformer and watch the screen. Adjust it so that you can just barely see the grey around the sides of the raster. Note: the flyback is the black transformer with the big red wire going to the top of the picture tube. Hope this helps... John

Does it have a lot of hours on it? The problem could be the tube going weak, but it could also be something simple. I've seen bad capacitors cause a dark picture, and sometimes resistors in the screen grid circuit change value.

Is the onscreen function display also dark?

Tom

You might be right, but I'm guessing that this will wash out the screen.

Too bad it isn't a TV if the CRT is dying, because you can sometimes milk 6-12 months with a juiced up scan-derived heater modification. I doubt that there are any supplies in the set that are tough enough to take an 8 VDC heater tap as an add-on.

Tom

Thank guys for all your help I did what jdgill suggested. I took the cover off and adjusted accordingly the screen is allot brighter now Nikki