Can anybody recommend a shop that does monitor repairs?
I had an out-of-warranty 30-inch Dell LCD monitor with a flaky power supply. I took it to a local repair shop that got good reviews on google. A couple months later, they reported that the power supply was fixed, but now there were major screen artifacts that they didn’t know how to fix. To their credit, they were up front about the fact that they may have triggered or caused these artifacts when repairing the power supply.
I think it’s past the point where I could learn to solder and fix this myself, given that the first repair shop is stumped. I guess my next step is to take the monitor to another, better repair shop. Can anybody suggest one? (If your suggestion rhymes with “The Snackery,” see paragraph two.)
Most likely problem is bad electrolytic capacitors on the power supply or main board. The caps were either mortally wounded by the part that originally failed, or the caps were leaky, and strained the other part(s) to the point of failure. The repair shop probably replaced only what they could determine as completely failed. Another possibility, is a defective heat sink on a main video driver chip. When boards are removed for servicing, technicians don’t always re-position it perfectly, or apply fresh thermal compound. A gap (even a fraction of a millimeter) can cause a video chip to not contact it’s heat sink. Such a chip will overheat, and cause artifacts. Heat sink issues may take some seconds (or minutes) to show up, and may be overlooked by a busy tech.
I know several people have repaired tvs and monitors at VHS, mostly those with cap issues. The heat-sink-chip issue is definitely very suspect. However, the Hackery folks are very good so if they are stumped I’m not sure where you should take it next.
You could bring it down on a Tuesday night and crack it open at VHS. I’m sure there will be a few people around who’d be able to take a look/weigh in.
I’m sure you’ve probably done this already but have you googled the model and issue? Maybe someone else has fixed this issue.