Neck Ache: Part 5: yuck

So I had a little chat with my dad this morning and he suggested that it could be a grounding issue. When he was my age he built a dune-buggy with a VW Bug chassis and a fiberglass top. The when securing the instruments to the new fiberglass dashboard, they kinda worked but always gave funky data. He realized at that point,  the instruments were all designed to be grounded through the original metal VW dashboard and since the fiberglass wasn't conducting electricity, they acted funky. A couple jumper wires later and he was in business.

Fantastic story really, and it all seemed to fit so well into the problems I was having. On the video card and power supply, all the screw holes on the boards are surrounded by solder as if to make sure there's a good connection between that point and the metal housing they're all connected to.

Well it turns out grounding may have been some of the problem, but I'm not sure how much this actually had to do with this. (granted, all my testing was done with all the screws securely screwed into the original metal housing)

I had the exact same symptoms as before: staticy picture with no backlight. However, I made the discovery that the reason the I got no image or backlight yesterday was because I had taken the rear of the display off and hooked the neck directly to the LCD. If the metal chassis the LCD sits in was not in contact with the metal inside the back of the display, there was no image what so ever.

I did have one interesting revelation however. With the monitor still on showing the staticy image from my computer, when I unplugged the VGA cable from the monitor, the backlights came right on and the monitor's dialog box saying "No display connected" (or something like that) flashed on for about 1 second. It was crystal clear, just the way it should be. However, after that one second, the backlights went out. The message still seemed to be there just as clear though or a second or 2 more.

I also tried hitting the monitor's menu button and the menu did come up, but the backlights didn't turn on. This is very strange.

Monitor Replacement Part 3 - Devastating Failure

There it is.... Well, the backlights worked at least, right?

Anyway I set the LCD matrix in the housing (went to lowe's and called local electronics shop and nobody had heard of that double sided tape so I gave up on it) and put the metal surround back on. Used a little electrical tape to secure everything and went for a test run.

I think the worst part about this is I had the monitor face down on my desk when I first turned it on. When I saw the backlights come... never mind. Needless to say, I'm super down about this.

I have no idea what happened here. The screen obviously cracked in a few places, but that's not what's causing the blue. I've seen tons of people drop their laptops, completely shattering the LCD but there are still portions of different colors and usually have small portions that still accurately map. Not just blue. It doesn't seem to be a problem with the connection to my laptop either (Aluminum 13" MacBook) because the monitor's built in menus weren't working either.

The monitor is no longer on sale at Staples.com but I was able to find it for $107 at PCconnection with free shipping so hopefully it will arrive sometime next week.