I don't know what it is about old monitors recently I seem to be having bad luck. I had another one start to flicker. Usual problem, failing capacitors in the power supply.
This Acer from December 2007 also seemed to be unnecessarily difficult to service.
Everything behind metals panels.
And then the boards are upside down, but you can't just take out the one with the capacitors on.
There are captive cables soldered at one end that you can't get the other side of to unplug, just like the Phillips one I did previously - http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2024/06/annoying-lcd-monitor-repair.html
I don't think anyone will be surprised to see several caps with their vets bulging at the top.
I don't know if they deliberately place the capacitors right next to the heatsink to ensure they fail so they can sell you a new monitor in a few years time*. They don't need to be there, the traces run up to the heatsink for no reason, they aren't connected to any of the devices attached to it.
* OK, these lasted from 2007 until 2024, but let's not split hairs
Take the two green ones for example. They are both marked 1000µF 10V. One almost touching the heatsink, and one set back slightly.
The one away from the heatsink was sort of OK, 90% of rated capacity.
The other one that was almost touching the heatsink was down to half of it's marked capacity. Same age, same brand, same ratings.
The big one at the other side of the heatsink wasn't even bothering anymore.
Time for the replacements. Something you don't often see when people are recapping things is testing the new parts. Are they actually any better? (in some cases, I would argue they are not, but let's not get into that).
You can often get better choices by going for physically larger capacitors, and that usually means going for a higher working voltage than originally fitted.
In the case of the two 1000µF 10V caps, I tried two options. The first is the ones I normally use these are "low ESR" capacitors, and rated for 105°C use.
0.16Ω isn't bad for ESR (the lower the better), and the capacitance is 1062µF, so a touch higher than the rated value of 1000µF, which is good.
Stepping up to a 16V capacitor, that also reads a bit high in capacitance terms, but does even better in terms of ESR. However those are only 85°C rated, and these things are unnecessarily close to the heatsink as previously discussed, so I went for the 105°C rated parts.
The replacement for the larger one looked like it would be too tall, so I fitted a larger axial one on it's side. Which also has the benefit of moving it further away from the heatsink, so should extend it's life futher.
Another monitor resurrected.
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I don't sell 20 year old monitors in my store, but I do have the full range of Minstrel and Mini PET accessories. Mini PET kits are all sold out now, but I do still have some Minstrel 3 kits left, which will last until I run out of Z80s.
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