I just picked up a Dell 2208WFPt, for free. It was advertised as not working. I plugged it in, and low and behold... It isn't working. Except my computer is recognizing it, and the green power light is on. Huh.
I take a much closer look, and there actually is a display there! I can see it, just barely. Obviously the thing is working, but no backlight. I was able to adjust the brightness all the way up - it makes no difference.
Is this something that can be easily repaired? I have a soldering iron. I can read directions and follow them, but I don't want to spend more than $20 on parts, so it may be cost prohibitive if possible at all.
Old LCD monitors used a narrow fluorescent bulb for backlighting. I don't know the specific failure points, but it could be the inverter board that powers the bulb(s) or the bulbs themselves are burned out.
I've had that happen to one of my monitors. I looked up the possibility of fixing it, but it was too scary for me. Some people do apparently repair them though.
Mr_Asa
SuperDork
10/25/20 4:31 p.m.
From what I've gathered from my few EE friends, capacitors are usually the most common problem when something modern goes tits up. I'd remove the back and see if any of the caps have swelled up on the top portion
In reply to Mr_Asa :
That was definitely tho normal cause 5 to 10 years ago when the "capacitor plague" was in full swing. So if this is a free to you monitor it is worthcpopping open. The caps I replaced were a no image power control failure, but possibly one filtering for the backlight could have given up the ghost.
You should be able to just read the part numbers (you may not be able to tell which are swollen) spent $10 on Mouser/Digikey and at the very least youll end up in the same place you started with better soldering skills
Looking up the model number for the monitor can sometimes yield spare parts on eBay and the like to help troubleshoot/repair.
Well, I took it apart. I'm sure that I could figure out what is wrong with it and repair it, but the juice is just not worth the squeeze here. These things are NOT meant to be serviced. Dell didn't even service them. From what I could figure out, the chance of breaking it while attempting to diagnose it is very high. Then if I could diagnose it, it is more than likely going to cost at least $20 to fix it. After that, another chance at breaking it while reassembling... No thanks, I don't have enough time to waste on maybe being able to diagnose it and maybe being able to fix it and maybe being able to put it back together. I don't need another monitor; this one was going to be an upgrade for when I work from my parents house on "vacation".
Oh well. I also picked up a charger with the monitor (again, free) that works with my computer, so definitely still a win for me. This, however, will be going in the trash.
Back in '12 we had a dev who would harvest all of our failed Dell 170X LCD monitors from the trash, put a $.05 capacitor in them and $profit$
