Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
This week it’s back to the dentist to have my wisdom teeth pulled out of my head, for real this time.
Was supposed to have had it done a couple weeks ago, but canceled it because of what I thought was a cold that wouldn’t go away. Turns out it’s just allergies, according to my doctor.
Hopefully everything goes uneventfully and the recovery relatively quick.
On one of my quasi-regular checks of the T-Mobile forums for the Galaxy S2, I noticed that the Android Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade was released almost 2 years ago. There were some indications that Samsung might release Jelly Bean (4.2) for the Galaxy S2 later on, but now I think it’s pretty much given that the S2 will be stuck at ICS 4.1.2 and the only way I’m going to get anything higher is to root the phone and install a custom ROM myself.
My Transformer Prime is in the same boat. Its last update was a year ago and looks like it will be stuck at ICS 4.1.1. It’s a shame. I was under the impression that ASUS’ long term support was better than most manufacturers.
I guess my next project will be learning about the whole process and finding a JB ROM or higher that will work on the phone and tablet.
We’re doing an Advent wreath this year, so I offered to make the candles instead of buying some. I think it will add a nice personal touch. The candles I’ll be making are short round pillar candles about 4 cm in diameter that should be a good match for our wreath.
Apparently Advent candles are purple and pink, which seem like kind of odd colours to me. Our Advent wreath will be nice and simple. A green wreath from the craft store and four candles that I”ll make using pink and violet that I found in a stash of wax dye blocks that used to belong to Connie’s mom. A fifth candle will be just plain white. Now it should just be a matter of getting the colour intensity right. Wax dye blocks are pretty concentrated and it doesn’t take much to colour a batch of wax, but at least now I don’t have to worry about mixing colours to get what I need.
It’s been a while since I last made candles. My candle making gear has been sitting in a box in the garage for a few years, so I’ll have to spend some time cleaning them up before anything gets melted and poured. Will be fun to make a few candles again.
It was off to the operating tableworkbench with the dead monitor. In case you haven’t been following along, the Samsung 226BW monitor I picked up a while ago from EBay died a couple days ago.
Following this very helpful disassembly/repair guide, I got the covers off and the display panel separated from the chassis. In the process I discovered evidence of either a previous repair attempt, rough handling or just fragility from old age, since holes for two of the three screws holding the case on were broken.
After disconnecting the wires and separating the display panel, I made it to the circuit boards.
Right away, I could see four bulgy capacitors. My board must be a different revision than what was posted in the guide because that board had three caps. They are very bulgy indeed. It’s a good thing they didn’t explode or anything.
Note the very domed looking tops of the capacitors. The other brown thing in the middle of the capacitors is an inductor.
Fortunately the back of the circuit board has the capacitor positions labeled, so there’s no need to guess which joints need to be unsoldered. I’ve outlined them here in the yellow boxes.
Inspecting the other capacitors suggested they were all still good with no signs of bulging. There are a couple others that I could probably replace, but some of the others, like the big black 100μF 450V capacitor, are glued to the board or other components and I don’t want to risk damaging the board just to replace them. So now it’s off to do some shopping to find some replacement caps.
Here’s the shopping list.
Two of the 820 μF and the 22 and 47 μF still seem to be in good shape, but I figured since I’m replacing capacitors, I might as well replace those too. I’ll probably order at least two sets of each so that I’ll have them on hand in the event my other monitor (which is even older than this one) dies in the same manner.
Parts are on order from Mouser and should be here in a few days. Stay tuned for part 2 (or maybe 3), in which the capacitors are replaced.
The monitor finally gave up the ghost. It powers on, but no backlight. Fortunately there’s a spare monitor, but I’ll need to scrounge up a VGA/DVI cable or find an adapter (think I’ve got one somewhere). It’s a smaller monitor, but it will do for now.
I think I’ll take this monitor out to the bench and poke around inside to see if I can find anything easily repairable. A bit of Googling suggests the primary culprit is some bad capacitors on the power supply side of things, which should make it a repair well within my skill range.