I received a Syncmaster SA350 (LED type) that is two months out of warranty for a symptom of no display, as in black screen with no signal icons dancing, and a blinking red power light. According to many posts over the last 18 months a common solution is to flash the display with new firmware. I connected this to a laptop and desktop and performed a dual display check to see if a known working display signal could be sent to this and "wake it up" as some web results claimed this monitor and it's siblings are known to go into sleep mode and not come out. This monitor was unresponsive to both output signal sources. I looked further and found that a common issue is with a 8-legged Winbond controller IC (25X40BVSIG located at about 2 o'clock of the Magic Color chip) on the logic board that needs to either be flashed with a firmware available on Samsung's site or replace the IC. Numerous posters claimed to reflash using the external VGA of a laptop and the monitor came to life again. I understand that if the firmware flash fails the monitor is locked up and the above mentioned IC has to be replaced. This reminds me of the old AMI BIOS, Phoenix BIOS, Award BIOS days when your BIOS crapped because of a failed update by way of poor flash installers and buggy code. I downloaded the firmware and it's installer and made the attempt to flash with a know working desktop that has dual display capability. While attempting the firmware update the software recognizes the SA350 and attempts to flash but the procedure never makes it beyond 10% as indicated by the progress meter. There are a few YouTube videos on this procedure and it seems straight forward though none of them ever showed an unsuccessful procedure. As with most firmware upgrades the warning of power loss or turning off the hardware during the procedure is eminent as it will leave the device dead. At that point the mentioned IC must be replaced. I really would like to know if any here have heard of this model's issue or similar. Also have any of you done the firmware update or know of the IC I mentioned? I have accounts at Digikey, Mouser, and Allied so I don't mind grabbing a replacement and flashing it if this is really plausible.
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