Monitor Replacement: Renaissance

Today went very well. The new LCD Monitor came and when I opened the box I was surprised and very worried. It wasn't the same. HANNS•G model HW173A (old) vs. HB171B (new)

Ignoring the outer shell, the components themselves are quite different. The new boards are linked directly together instead of with a ribbon cable. The monitor controls use a 12 wire ribbon cable instead of the six used by the original which nixes my plan of using one of the iMac's Firewire ports as the outlet for that. The power supply is slightly longer where it meets the video card. And the cable connecting to the monitor is not the same ribbon cable.

However, it turns out all of this is either quite beneficial or easily gotten around. The longer board doesn't seem to pose any problems in terms of fitting into the dome, I should be able to get a simple cable extender for where the two boards connect, the controls ribbon cable... well that really does suck but I'll think of something, and finally, the cable connecting the video card to the monitor saves me a lot of work; it should be super easy to splice it into the iMac's cable that goes through the neck. Ohh and the new one has DVI too which I initially thought would make the card bulkier but doesn't and will provide me with better video quality.

After my epic failure with the last display, I was keen not to make the same mistakes twice. I did a little forensics work on the old panel and it seemed to me like the new panel (which is slightly larger than the old) cracked because of too much pressure along the edges from the metal surround holding it in place.

This is because the metal surround was made for the smaller screen and thus is ribbed to help hold it in place. When the ribs pressed up against the glass panel, they cracked it and coast me $100! Grrrrr

I also wanted to hedge my bets so I'm going to be sporting matching powder free latex gloves and anti-static wrist strap.

With this in mind, I got to work. The steps I went through are the same as in Monitor Replacement Part 1 and Monitor Replacement Part 2.  Here's where we left off:

With the new backlights in place, the newly dremeled black plastic surround is placed back onto the backlight assembly fallowed by the diffusion sheets from the new monitor.

I then placed the LCD panel on top of this and used electrical tape instead of the metal surround to secure it in place on 3 sides. And that's it. I screwed the whole assembly back into the iMac's front bezel and hooked it all up. I must say at this point I was honestly expecting it not to work. However....

IT WORKED!!! Please forgive the poor lighting and all but... it worked!

So tomorrow I'm going to bring the iMac's neck into a Cable company I found on the internet called QCM inc. and see if they'll fasten some connectors to the video cable so it'll easily connect to the monitor's video card. I'm super excited for all this!