13 October 2012
One of our near neighbours left a 55cm (22 inch) Viewsonic VX2235wm LCD monitor on the footpath this morning. It was drizzling at the time so the monitor was a bit wet. Chances are, it was either dead, or had some dead pixels. I was hoping it was dead... because I'd recently watched this:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Ytw57212X2o" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
In which Dave Jones pulls open a dead LCD monitor and finds bulging electrolytic capacitors. He replaces them and that fixed the problem. See also: Capacitor plague
So - I took a punt and grabbed the monitor.
Once home I opened it up and went over it with a hair drier to remove the water.
Then I looked at the power board:
Attach:Viewsonic-VX2235wm-powerboard.jpg Δ
It's branded DELTA and dated 2006.
And - just like Dave - I found most of the electrolytic capacitors on the DC portion of the board bulging.
Attach:Viewsonic-VX2235wm-DC-capacitors.jpg Δ
In fact - all the bulging caps were CapXon brand - just like in Dave's Samsung monitors. Their were two Taicon branded caps on my board which looked fine.
Attach:CapXon-bulging-capacitor.jpg Δ
For comparison; the one on the left is a salvaged Ltek cap and on the right is the CapXon.
So I followed Dave's example and replaced the caps with Low ESR caps from Jaycar, with a total price of NZ$12.
Here's the result:
Attach:Viewsonic-VX2235wm-fixed.jpg Δ
Quite a productive afternoon.
Now my only problem is my old computer can't drive the monitor at it's full 1680x1050 resolution. Still - it's better then the old 19 inch LCD monitor I had.
Cheers, Paul
Feel free to email me