sanyo vizon

[zenith2134]

Aren't the Vizon series monitors LCD-flatscreens? I remember seeing them in the stores once. Anyway, -if the screen is bubbling and there is goo then the screen's probably cracked and thats the ink-gel leaking out. Definitely not worth the fix then. Good Luck,
Tom

[shrinkboy]

yes, it's an lcd flat screen, with cable input, s-video, composite inputs, dig. in, and so on. there does not appear to be a crack in the screen. i will do more vigorous cleaning today and report back

[andy]

I would just plug it in and see if it works, then worry about cleaning it. I would be careful about getting anything potentially corrosive under the edges of the bezel. It could damage the fragile connections to the LCD panel. They are literally glued to the glass screen and are impossible to repair without special equipment. There's no significant amount of liquid, or gel inside an LCD screen, so it couldn't be that leaking out. Even a totally smashed LCD screen doesn't have a noticeable amount of stuff leaking out. LCDs do have a plastic polarizing film over them which could have been damaged be heat, or chemicals. If that's the case, it's junk.

[Chad Hauris]

As far as computer monitors go...
We have a Dell LCD flat panel in the radio station control room...in use 18hrs a day. Have had it about a year and no trouble...looks good to me. Will see how it holds up. In my office we have some 6 year old generic VGA monitors...crt's still good. Turning off the monitor when leaving for the day seems to really help the CRT life.

At our repair shop we have a $1.99 goodwill special 1991 NEC multisync...still working good. Got a Compaq 17" at Goodwill last week and I tripped on the curb and the doggone thing fell 5 feet to the concrete...thought it was a gonner but got it home and it powered up and works fine!

[Jeffhs]

My IBM Aptiva 595 computer is on its third monitor since I bought the system five years ago. The original monitor quit three months or so after I got the system home; was able to get it replaced under warranty. Four years later, the replacement started acting strangely and eventually quit, so I went to the local Best Buy and purchased a Hewlett-Packard mx70 17" monitor. That did it. The HP has been working like a champ ever since (about a year now). I use my computer a lot (every day, sometimes several hours a day all told), but I would think most monitors would stand up to this kind of use or worse. (The flat-panel monitor in the control room at the radio station where Chad works is another example; if it can go 18 hours a day for a year without problems, it must be a very good make.) Why I've gone through two CRT monitors in five years puzzles me. Did I get two bad monitors (the original and its replacement) before finding a good one in the HP? BTW: The two monitors that went West were probably cheap generic units. It wouldn't surprise me if they were, as there was no recognizable brand name that I could see anywhere on either of them.

BTW (2): I remember reading somewhere, here or elsewhere, that Hewlett-Packard's computer monitors are not now and have not been made by HP itself for years. If they are no longer manufactured by HP, who does make them these days? My mx70 does have the "hp" badge above the CRT, and the legend "hp pavilion mx70" above the control panel; however, I doubt very much that it was actually made by HP. Probably, like everything else, this monitor (and my HP DeskJet 832C printer as well) were made by some offshore company. NEC, perhaps?

[RetroHacker]

I've generally found that most monitors made in the last couple years suck.. Plain and simple. Especially the junk you'll find at Best Buy and the like. The monitors I use on a daily basis are well over ten years old and still produce a stunning, sharp picture. They're 17" monitors, made for Sun and SGI by Sony. They don't have the proper input lines to connect to anything but an SGI or a Sun, but with a little rewiring they work great on anything. I've also got an old HP monitor, made over ten years ago, back when ViewSonic made the HP monitors, and it's never given me a problem in the seven years I've had it, I bought it used in the first place. I've got a good assortment of other old monitors, most of which I got free or broken, and I've never really had problems with them while in service here. I also regularly use some 20+ year old terminals, including a Lear Siegler ADM3A. Aside from a tired and somewhat dim tube in the ADM3A, they all work fine.

The trick is to avoid the cheap new consumer garbage and go for outdated business scrap - it's like night and day in terms of quality, functionality and reliability.

-Ian

[Chad Hauris]

Retro hacker, what do you have those terminals hooked up to? I'm working on a project with a thrift-store IBM pentium running Linux which can connect to the internet...this will then serve some of my terminals and apple computers, etc. with information.

We have had some VGA monitors at the shop which still worked but the CRT was so dim that we really couldn't use them anymore (electronics still worked well though).