Hello all...
I have a Smile International CB0913DL, which is a very small color SVGA computer monitor. The other day, it fell off the top of a mini-tower computer case that was sitting on a concrete floor. I tried to catch it and partially succeeded. It hit as softly as one could expect, but I thought I heard something go "hissssss" when it landed.
It was not powered when this happened. I'm not even sure I really heard a hissing sound, as the room air conditioning was on and it is loud. Looking inside the monitor, I can find no sign of damage or broken glass anywhere on the picture tube. The circuit boards are all tightly in place and everything looks good there. All the interconnecting cables are in their sockets and I haven't been able to find anything that was loose or intermittent by prodding the boards with the power on.
The monitor does turn on normally and the controls respond when pressed. I've just got no sign of a picture whatsoever, and there isn't even a flash on the screen when turning the power off. (The monitor always flashed when turned off before this.) The CRT heater does appear to be running. The only trace of damage I found was a piece of case plastic that was already cracked.
My question--if the CRT had lost its vacuum in the fall, wouldn't there have been a show of sparks and other violent signs of failure when I powered the monitor? Would the heater in the tube still be functional? I'd have expected it to burn out quickly.
William