Chosen Solution
Due to the condition of the panel (black spots from wet storage), I do not plan on spending a lot of money on repairs for this monitor - $20 max with margin of error. As much as I like 1920x1200 16:10, it isn’t worth spending a lot on a monitor with panel damage :(. After this monitor is on for a few minutes, the unit has a audible hum - a dead giveaway for bad capacitors. I have ordered 35V 220uf capacitors for the inverter to see if that fixes the issue, but if this doesn’t, what should I focus on that’s cheap? The capacitors on the power supply look okay, so I don’t think it’s those although I do suspect it having experience working on multiple monitors I was given in the past that tell me it probably is. If I let it run for a while it clears up and goes nearly silent, but it’s still an issue. If it is the power supply caps, is it okay to ignore the AC side and just focus on the DC parts of the display? It usually is safe to do so in my experience, but I have yet to do it on a monitor with more then 2 CCFL connectors - this has 6.
In addition to those checks, I did run it without the inverter connected to the power supply and it was more or less gone at the same time I was checking it out to isolate the fault - hence why I’m working on the inverter first.
I tried cleaning the inside of the display as it was a dirty disgusting mess with black spots in multiple places and it didn’t make it through - TAB failure. I knew it was high risk, but this was the right time to try and salvage the panel since I didn’t have much in yet. Soon… Maybe the next try at a cheap 1920x1200 will work out. I’m still going to keep the parts that aren’t damaged but this attempt was a bust.
@nick “The capacitors on the power board look okay “ does not mean they are okay. The proper way of recapping is to replace all caps. You also need to check the power IC’s which ultimately can get the whole board to “hum” as well. For more suggestions we’ll wait till we see what you got going on there.
