Thu: Feb 19, 2015

Repair of a Samsung 204b LCD monitor. I've had mine for almost 10 years and I love that monitor (so hard to find a current one with a 1600x1200 native resolution) but I thought my backlighting was going out. It took a while to turn on and when it did the whole thing was dim. I googled around and found that it's actually a known problem for these monitors, and a $12 kit (I ordered mine from CCL-LA) was just the thing. I actually ordered it a couple months back but I've been lazy about actually doing the work.

I finally decided last night to just deal with it and when I got the monitor open I did have 2 bulging capacitors, though I replaced all 5 since that's what the kit included (I figured I was in there anyway, might as well go for it.) Took me about an hour but I was very slow and conscious about what I was doing. Having a good soldering station helped I think. There's also some quite good YouTube videos on repairing the monitor that show the dis-assembly and what you'd be looking for, highly recommended to watch one or two before starting.


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