My latest project.

[ThePCGuy]

This Thanksgiving I was given a 15" MAG LCD monitor from my Uncle. He said that the monitor had a bad spot in the vga cable. I brought it home and checked it out and sure enough, the red and green signals weren't making it through the vga cable. I tried that evening to repair the cable and was unable to fix it. I then slept, had been up way too long. Friday morning I decided to try again (I have trouble with things not going my way :) ). I double checked my pinout (that I had created) and found it to be way off. I then re-connected all 14 connections (15 including the wire mesh insulator) and fired it up. It displayed perfectly. I then put it all back together and decided to hook it up temporarily as a second monitor. This is my first LCD monitor, and I will tell you that you cannot beat free. Now I've got to fix the 17" HP LCD I was given, and I'm doing really well. Eitherway, here's a picture of the lcd next to my 20" IBM CRT.

http://thepcguy.myvnc.com/jim/monitors.jpg

I didn't take pictures of the re-wire job on the vga cable, but to the untrained eye, they'd never see it (hidden inside the casing).

I'm happy,
- Jim

[sephiroth_749]

nice job man.

[freakdiablo]

gotta love free stuff.

[ThePCGuy]

And here is addition number two. This is a HP f1503 monitor that I was given sans power supply and vga cable. I snagged a vga cable, and used the powersupply from the Mag monitor above to test it out. What was happening is that the OSD (on screen display) menu would randomly pop up and change settings on it's own. During this time the manual controls would typically not work. I took the monitor apart to start diagnosing which led me in quite a few places. I saw a small cut in the ribbon cable that feeds the power on and 4 control button panels. I decided to replace it (slaughtered a floppy cable for it's goodies). A little soldering time and a bit of hot glue, good as new. I then hooked the line back up hoping to see the fruits of my labor, but no. It was not meant to be. Well after a bit more troubleshooting (and a bit of searching onlline) I found that this particular model has an issue with cold sodler joints. I decided to touch up each joint on the front control panels, and also double checked the joints on the vga and power board. Even after this, I noticed no change in behaviour. Finally I got my trusty Centech ($3.00 at harbor freight) multimeter and started checking continuity on each individual button switch thinking I might have a collapsed switch. Sure enough, when testing the power on switch, I noticed that every now and then with the switch in the up position (cuts the circuit) I was getting continuity between both sides of the switch. Well I decided that the switch had to go so I desoldered it and tried the monitor in it's current form. Yay, no random OSD any longer. And the switch that was in the power board is a standard switch used in most copier control panels so it looks like I will be able to get a replacement fairly easy. Overall the monitor (just like the Mag) is a fairly nice unit, especially for the price of $0.00. The only thing wrong with this HP at the current moment is a bit of noise in the screen that I've noticed in the Natural Selection Mod. When browsing for servers/menu items, there is a noise appearing in the monitor, however as soon as I'm in a game, it's not at all noticeable. Just one more thing to trace down. Eitherway, here area few pictures:

http://thepcguy.myvnc.com/jim/f1503

Also pictured is my new set of helping hands. I think they will come in useful in the future.

- Jim

[ThePCGuy]

New pictures of my test rack with the 15" MAG lcd in use.

http://thepcguy.myvnc.com/jim/rack2.jpg

- Jim