Successful Samsung 940BX repair !

[Gariarto]

Hi all !

First thing I'd like to say is a resounding thankyou to all the people who contribute to this goldmine of a forum. From those who ask dumb questions so I can avoid doing so (too much), to those who sagely answer them with expert ease.

I'm a self employed general computer tech in the Northern Catskills area of NY. After years of simply swapping out bad hardware and having myself and my customers buy new, I might foray into some lightweight electronics repair. I have the interest and a mind that hates to see fixable parts get tossed but... Well.. Computer parts 'aint vintage cars and these days 3 yrs plus is vintage.

I have to say I STILL don't have the time for this stuff and no-one really wants to pay you for it - 99% of the time its "Nah, just get me the new stuff, it's faster, right ?"

WHat ? Oh ! the monitor.. Sorry

One of my business customers is a small, multi location insurance broker. Fall 2007 I put in a bunch of 'mid-duty' workstation PC builds to upgrade the offices. The monitors I chose were Samsung 940 BX's. Nice all round 19" LCDs with a good rep. Now, since around late 2011 they are failing one by one. Not all the same way but these last 2 were what you guys call 2 seconds to black and they got me intrigued.. For about 10 to 20 secs they would work just fine then seem to power off. Only with the 'power on' light steady blue. "Has to be something simple" thinks I.. And that's how I ended up here.. Now understand I'm no electronics whiz, just the basics. The only computer I ever actually "built" was a Sinclair ZX80 before the Spectrum hit the scene. - Google it.

So I took them back to the office (after ordering 2 new 24" LED etc at their request) and opened one up. No directly obvious signs of any failure at all.
I googled the symptom and ended up spending many hours trolling your forum.
So on a "Lets try it for 20 bucks and see" whim I bought a 5 pc lot of inverters off Ebay and ordered a couple of 'sets' of 6 caps from Digikey.

An hour spent in removal, replacement and re-assembly gave me a Samsung 940 BX monitor like it was new ! Bright and crisp picture and continuous operation. I left it running a screensaver for an couple of hours without flaw.

Wow guys.. Without you and this forum these monitors would be landfill. Gee.. Now I'm trying to talk myself out of fixing too many.. My customer didn't want it back for an hours labor and a few bucks parts. They are happy as larry getting a capital expenditure excuse to buy the bigger shinier stuff.

" Depreciated it see.. Not worth it see.. If you want it, you can have it or just toss it." Thats the official line.

Yard sales, thats it, and the folks that don't have 2 cents to rub etc

Thanks again guys for this forum. I've a feeling I'll be back with furrowed brow.

[budm]

Welcome to the forum.
Thanks for sharing, it is good to keep stuff off the landfill.
There is no dumb question, it's always good to ask questions when you do not know or do not understand, that's how you learn. You will be making some mistakes along the way, but that's how you learn and you will always remember that mistakes.
I have to warn you, this site is addictive!

[Gariarto]

Thanks for the welcoming Budm !
Yep I'm well familiar with mistakes along the way, its the ones you survive that yield progress ! I was mostly kidding about the dumb questions.. I learned early if you don't ask you don't get.

"I have to warn you, this site is addictive!"

Yeah ! I found that out ! Time races by while you're in here ! I considered doing some pics of the repair like the other guys but there was really nothing to see that isn't here already. Before the repair it looked like new
and after, it was the same. Keep up the good work you guys and thanks again.

[budm]

If you want to see what are usually wrong with monitors/TV/Electronics, look at the pictures I take.
http://s807.photobucket.com/albums/yy352/budm/SAMSUNG/

[Gariarto]

Thank you Budm for sharing that, a valuable resource for the future to be sure ! Speaking of which..
For the last year and a half or so (following the ever developing tech and trend shifts) I've been placing mostly LED backlight monitors. After research I settled on Asus brand which so far have been without flaw. I'm sure as time goes by they will begin to fail, but have you had any experience with this line ? So far my customers (that I've placed them with) love them.. Picture, color, size, cost.. All good. Had any bad ones in showing a common failure yet ?

G

[budm]

I have not been seeing any LED backlights TV or monitor at the electronics recycle (www.crc.org, I do volunteer works there) that was donated due to caps or LED failure yet. Only time will tell how reliable they are.

[Gariarto]

Originally Posted by budm

Only time will tell how reliable they are.

Always the way.