[ale] Can Bad Video Settings Fry LCD Monitors?

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Hi David, and all,

Just had an interesting thought or two.

You mentioned pianos.

Wikipedia says that Steinway received their first major awards for their (mechanical) pianos in 1855.  So, it is conceivable that one of their classic pianos, if well preserved, could still be functional after 150 years.

Now, I'm a geek so I like things with power supplies.  But you said some of the electronic units are failing after 5 years.  Sounds like mechanical is trumping electronic.  If I paid $ 15,000 for a piano, regardless of type, I DEFINITELY wouldn't want to replace it after 5 years.  More like 35 years.

What happens when we have no more mechanical ones to base electronic ones off of?

Of course, I cannot afford a Steinway.  I'm much more likely to afford a $ 500 Casio or Yamaha electronic instrument.  $ 5000 - $ 15,000 is definitely not within my budget, but then, I'm not a musician.

The other thought I had was what if these bad caps got into the ECU's that run our cars?  That's a scary thought.  Hopefully, it would just die gracefully and not cause a crash or an engine fire.

Sincerely,

Ron



David Stephens <linuxrootuser at gmail.com> wrote:

>I work in a small electronics repair shop here in Atlanta. As of late
>we
>are seeing  a lot of gear suffering from failed capacitors, most are
>smt
>devices. It is one thing to have failed capacitors in a home
>computer/laptop since generally people upgrade systems on a regular
>basis
>as speeds/capacities increase.
>
>Musical instruments are another story. People don't want to "upgrade"
>an
>electric piano that cost $5,000 to $15,000, every five years. The only
>solution is a complete re-cap job. The process is not difficult, but it
>is
>time consuming. Use Chip Quik to remove the failed capacitor, clean the
>trace pads of all corrosion, inspect with a microscope, position new
>capacitor, solder new capacitor and re-inspect, repeat for the
>remaining 99
>capacitors.
>
>I suspect that there are more than a few servers running in data
>centers
>that are 2002 - 2005 vintage machines with the same failing capacitors
>on
>the motherboards. The effects of these failing capacitors will most
>likely
>be attributed to "bit rot".  Modern error correction can reduce the bit
>rot, however, when bit rot is generated by noise on the bus data and
>bus
>lines and supply lines feeding the error correcting circuits there
>isn't
>much that can correct the problem.
>
>We recently recapped several old IBM workstations, we're cheap and tend
>to
>hold on to shop gear, until the magic smoke escapes. The recaps worked:
>boot times returned to like new speeds, the systems actually shutdown
>when
>you asked them too, and the blue screens of death and kernel panics
>went
>away.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
>
>On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 9:46 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) <
>atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I just had a wild thought after reading an article in computer power
>user
>> magazine about liquid electrolytic versus solid electrolyte
>capacitors.  As
>> you may know, many modern motherboards use Japanese solid
>electrolytic
>> capacitors to increase quality and reliability.
>>
>> I already knew that.  What I didn't know is that, around 2002, the
>> industry started experiencing waves of returns / complaints about
>defective
>> motherboards due to a bad batch of capacitors with unstable
>electrolyte
>> compounds.  This caused a great deal of trouble above and beyond the
>normal
>> failure rate, and severely disrupted the industry.
>>
>>
>>
>http://www.computerpoweruser.com/DigitalIssues/ComputerPowerUser/CP____1311__/
>>
>> Like I said, long shot, wild thought.  But, maybe, if your monitors
>are
>> several years old and of similar vintage, they're all starting to
>> experience premature death.  This could be an outside factor that
>could
>> affect many units with nothing obviously in common but time of
>manufacture.
>>  The article says this affected monitors, network switches, a/v
>equipment,
>> and other things.
>>
>> In any case, I thought it was interesting.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>

-snip-



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Ron Frazier
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