rest of the link goes on to explain what to do - it involves opening the CRT case, disabling an existing resistor, and soldering in a new/different one
Thanks for posting this link! I have a Dell P1110, which was exhibiting this OTT brightness problem. Found your post & the associated link... I just replaced the resistor with a 4M7ohm one, and everything's perfect! I even managed to not electrocute myself....
Gone from 0 brightness 100 contrast & way too bright to 35 bright 100 contrast & its just spot on.
A friend of mine also has a Dell P1130. He has the brightness problem but it goes away after the monitor has been on for about 15 minutes from a cold state ie not been on prior to that.
Is that normal behaviour?
0
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
i may still try the resistor "fix" anyway, provided i can find any that meet the proper "specs" (4.7Mohms to 6.8 Mohms, capable of handling at least 1kV and 0.5Watts)
My problem has not been helped though just yet... I have the HP P1130 and exactly the same brightness problem as everyone describes.
- I cannot access the service menu currently (although my only video input available is a 60Hz laptop which might be the issue)
- The flyback transformer only has two controls, for horizontal and vertical convergance
- I can't find anywhere in the UK where I can purchase a 5MOhm resistor just yet
- More to the point, the P1130 does not have a PCB directly at the rear of the monitor to find the resistor that needs replacing on! It does have a PCB at its base, but this looks like a right pig to take off - let me guess, time to get brutish?
Sun GDM-5410 and HP p1120 , both have brightness problems.
I have a temporary fix, which kinda sucks but is allowing me to use it until i either find a place to buy resistors, or buy a new monitor.
The temp fix im using: Go into the EXPERT COLOR menu, turn your RGB Gain's up to 100, and the RGB Bias's at 0. This seems to level out the color quite a bit.
Does anyone know of any online site that sells resistors of this size? Or could someone mail me a few 10MOhm resistors? (i'll even paypal you the shipping charge if needed)
What are the foctory colour settings for the HP1110 monitor i just baught a used one and i want to restore all the settings back to default, so i can find out if it has any problems. Also what is the reccomended settings for a working p1110 in general pc use, just so i can get the best possible picture.
Thanks for this thread, after the resisstor fix, now I can enjoy a Crisp and Clear non hazy P1110.
Am using 6.8Mohm 1/5w, its just that what temp monitor are u guys using?
7500, 9500.... mine when set to 9500 temp gonna get dim unusable view (after 2-4 hours) 7500 its much better i think gonna try it if its work...
Thanks for saving couple of bucks from repairman...
I would like to resolve it myself if possible before resorting to paing somebody else to do it...
(FYI, Took the monitor apart some more - is definitely virtually nothing like the P1110)
Cheers...
=========================
I have the exact same model you have P1130 with same brightness problem and tried to replace the resistor but once open the casing of the monitor, wow its totally different. anyone can help me on this??? oh boy.
For the 1130:
You probably don't want to kill yourself doing this, so first off, be sure to know and follow standard safety when working inside monitors.
One way to do this fix:
Trace back from pin 10 on the crt. This should lead to R064 (220K), then on to a white single or dual pin connector (labeled G2?). Trace from the connector to R936, a 2.2M resistor. One end of that resistor connects to Q905 and the other end to a diode and C919. At the end that connects to Q905, you can connect a resistor from that point to ground. Ground can be found on the lead of C919 that does NOT connect to the diode. The resistor value will have to be determined experimentally but a good place to start might be 4.7 M 1W. If you have a resistor switchbox you can just dial the value in until you get it. When mounting the resistor, don't scrunch it down on the board, try to stand it off a bit. I do not have one of these monitors so these instructions are based on my schematics. If things mentioned here do not match, do not attempt the fix without verifying the connection points. If this fix is done incorrectly, resistor R916 or other component may fail and G2 will be lost (blank screen).
Hey guys , I gave the repair from Xweebie a try and had very good results.
Back in 2000 I got a 24" Widescreen Sony monitor and ended up returning it under warranty some two years later due to the brightness creeping up so much that I could see retrace lines across the screen. Fast forward to 2005 and the refurbished replacement they sent me had been suffering a similar fate for over a year. While no retrace lines were visible it was getting too bright at the lowest settings to tolerate. Sony wanted hundreds of dollars for a flat rate fix on this out of warranty unit.
Now this monitor is about 90lbs and a real pain to transport and from reading this forum it seemed like there had to be a better way. I thought about the resistor mod but didn't want to mess around inside the monitor not knowing if it is even the same as other models.
So anyhow, here is a little visual rundown of how I got it fixed. After getting the adapter in the mail and a few tries at getting it plugged in good (small / deep opening at the monitor connection point is a little tricky to get the fingers in there but may vary by the model of monitor. A few emails back and fourth and the same evening I was back in business with beautiful blacks and great contrast again.
Hello everyone... I have the Dell P1110, I've had it for 2-3 yrs and bought it used. Ever since I got it, it was way to "bright", everything looked too white and washed out. I found this really long thread about this monitor and read it thru 3 times (every post!) before deciding what to do. Finally I decided that I would try the resister fix, and I did and am mostly satisfied. Anyways, figured I'd get on here to share my results/experience.
First, prior to the resister fix, I had my monitor set to:
0 Brightness
100 Contrast
RGB BIAS: 25, 15, 15
RGB Gain: 87, 84, 89
I have been using these settings for 2-years or so, to give a pretty good picture, although black was never truly black (as it is now after the fix), it was pretty good. I had found that setting the Brightness/RGB gain low, while the Contrast/RGB GAIN high, gave a pretty good picture. It always looked fine using Windows desktop, however movies/games often seemed washed out some. Usually, I could get a suitable picture by further adjusting in-game gamma/intensity/color settings, etc.
I should also note that prior to the fix, whenever I first turn on my monitor (from power off) it would be way too bright, however it would settle down and balance out after 15-30 minutes or warmup. This would not occur if the monitor was restored from sleep mode.
Anyways, after finding this thread, I decided I wanted to go for the resister fix. I ordered the 6.2MOhm 0.5W 5%-tolerance Carbon Film resister from oselectronics.com (along with a solder-iron, solder-iron stand, and solder, in order to meet the $10 minimum order). Shipping was $8 UPS Ground (which was the cheapest shipping). So, anyways I spent about $20 and my time on this project.
Final thing I did prior to the resister fix, was restore the monitor to default settings by going thru each OSD function and choosing reset (to reset each one).
At this point, my settings are:
Brightness 50
Contrast 80
Color-Temp 9300K (selected on EASY color menu).
Doing the surgery was quite painless, taking the shell off the monitor I found easy with a flat head screw-driver to pop the top-side plastic tabs. The most trouble I had was finding something small enough that I could maneuver into the small space on the underside of the circuit board so that I could cut the original 10MOhm resister loose. I soldered the new resister without solder, just heated the existing solder points on the top-side of the circuit board. Put it all back together and turn it on, looked great! Nice blacks, vibrant colors! However...
... as I mentioned above, before the fix my monitor would be really bright when I first turned it on from power off state. Then within 15-30 min. or so it would darken to a suitable level. Well after the fix, when I first turned on the monitor, it looked great, but over 15-30 minutes began to gradually darken, and darken, and darken until it was way too dark! So, then it looked horrible.
Prior to making any further changes, I tested ALL of the OSD control features to see that they worked properly, and then did. The brightness, contrast, RGB Bias/Gain and other controls working normally. But the picture was way too dark, and turning up the brightness beyond 50 made it brighter, but too washed-out looking. I pumped up the Contrast to 100, that helped some, but not enough. So...
I decided to use the Color Return feature on the EASY color menu, while the Temp was set to 9300K. It did its thing and immediately after, the picture definitely was more vibrant again, but just not quite enough. Using the EXPERT color menu, I adjusted each RGB GAIN/BIAS to 100. Increasing the BIAS to 100 on each color helped a lot. Finally, my picture is awesome. I sits right between 2 Viewsonic G90f monitors, one on each side in a tri-monitor setup . Those viewsonics always looked way better than my Dell before the fix, but now I must say the Dell is far more vibrant.
The only drawback, after doing the color return function above, MY OSD CONTROLS are EFFFED UP! The brightness/contrast controls are pretty much out of wack, and the RGB BIAS/Gain do also seem out of wack a bit somehow. But, all in all its looks good (definitely way better than before and worth the resister fix) and I'm using settings:
Brightness 50
Contrast 100
RGB GAIN/BIAS ALL 100
I think I should have used the 6.8MOhm resistor, but oselectronics.com did not list that one on their site, which is why I used the 6.2. I would suggest for anyone going to try this fix, to use a 6.8MOhm resister *if* your monitor already has a relatively decent pic with Brightness/RGB-BIAS set really low and Contrast/RGB-Gain set really high. If ur using those settings, and ur pic is still way too bright/washed-out, then use a lower-resistance.
Good luck, and THANKS TO EVERYONE who POSTED HERE! God Bless.
Hi,
I'm new to this forum. I have a Dell P992, and have the same brightness problem. After opening the case, I realized the circuit board was nothing like the P1110, etc. I downloaded the schematics and mine doesn't even HAVE R457 or R459! And I have no clue how to determine which one I might tweak to reduce the brightness. Also, I'm a bit concerned about the issues raised by some of the folks here that have swapped resistors.
So I bought the interface offered by Xweebie and all I can say is, it's worth every penny!! Not only is my monitor back to normal, I can now use the interface and software to save all of my monitor settings, including the geometry and color settings.
Once you submit your DAS file to Xweebie, he sends back eight files, each with a different setting for the field that controls the G2 voltage. This way you can choose the one that puts your brightness in the desired range. Like some others in this thread, my brightness problem evolved gradually, so it may be necessary down the road to load a different file if an analog component is drifting out of spec. All I have to do is hook up the interface and load a file with a lower setting.
OTOH, it's been reported that this particular EEPROM is known to have problems losing it's settings. This doesn't seem consistent with a gradual change, but I'm certainly no expert on such things.
BTW, the eight data files will come back to you with all settings just as they were, except for the one that controls the G2 voltage. If you suspect your EEPROM, you might want to restore all the factory defaults before creating the DAS file. I'm not sure if Xweebie has information as to what all the default settings are supposed to be, but if he does, he might be able to do a comparison. Just a thought.
Note to other P992 owners: the plastic cover on the four-pin port has tabs that prevent it from being removed without first removing the monitor case. So DON'T try to pry or force it, or you'll end up cracking your case (the tabs are definitely not sacrificial). That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen!
I found this forum through Google and this thread helped me... THANKS!
I have an IBM P260 (Sony manufactured like others here). The instructions and photos helped me fix the brightness problem quickly. I couldn't find exactly the recommended resistors but found an assortment package at Radio Shack for $6... so put six 1 Mohm ones in series and removed the existing 10 Mohm one... a bit ugly but works perfectly.
By the way, the IBM has 4 screws and no clips (mentioned as difficult to undo without breaking in some messages)... so it was easier to remove the enclosure.
Thanks again for all the help (I love web resources like this)!!!
Great forum with a lot of helpful information.... Thanks
I have an HP A4576A (Sony 21N3 chassis) which has had problems with horizontal jitter. I have the WinDas software and was wondering if anyone out ther has had any luck finding the dll's that it requires. I believe that I have the correct IrDA_Dispatch.dll but have not been able to find the correct TRANSDLL.dll for it. I have been able to run the DAS 4.0 and 5.7 and connect to this monitor with the cable I made. I believe WinDas has factory settings included which I would like to load into the monitor.
My DELL P1110 developed a funny habit. It refuses to display any input signals. When I connected it to my notebook, the front LED flickering brown: 'long-short', all the buttons became useless. When I changed the computer, it did the same. With no signal cable connected, it showed the usual message.
It also has the "too bright" problem. But before I try the "Magic Resistor" I need to make it show something.
This was when I MPUed the monitor thinking I would get default settings, I got them, but default settings don't look very good. I now have made a howto to help newbs, like I was when I wrote this, avoid common pitfalls like this.
I recently tried the windas + ECS cable fix for my DELL P991, I got the software on ablserv.com to work by changing where the code branches near the annoying "No key found in LPT1" and "Check Configuration." messages. However , the File->MPU function loaded faulty settings into my monitors EEPROM and I hadn't made a backup .dat file. Now my monitor is barely usable, the color temp settings and color return do nothing, the brightness controll is faulty , the default mode settings are weird, and the auto size/center doesn't function correctly. I can provide my .dat file if necessary
So, after days of no success, I come back here and beg. Could anyone lend me a hand? All I really need is a correct .dat file, for some reason (I think related to the security key) windas is loading in garbage rather than default settings read from the .mdl files.(I think?)
I've got a sony g500 with the usual story - extremely bright even at 0 brightness, green tint (fixed through colour controls), blurry image and you can see lots of thin horizontal bright lines on an angle all the way down the screen (scan lines?). Near the end of the 3 year warranty I sent it back for repair. Although the image looked a bit better, you could still see the scan lines.
In the 2 years since its repair the monitor has slowly degraded back to this shocking condition. Whatever they did during the repair, including the DAS alignments didn't do a great job and was not a permanent solution, so I'm looking at trying the resistor mod.
The service sheet says they did the following:
"Repaired DJ's on main chassis. Performed DAS alignments."
From reading this thread I know what the DAS alignments are, but does anyone know what the DJ's they repaired are?
I've got a pair of Sony GDM-C520 monitors with the the following problems...
One of the is way too bright, even with the brightness control all the way to zero, and it has horizontal greenish scanning lines going from top to bottom, side to side. This one has a strong blue background. The colors looked washed out at start, but when the picture tube warms up, the colors depth goes back to normal, and it looks decent.
The other unit had its tube replaced with a new one, but it has a strong green brackground which makes it impossible to set colors, specially blacks.
For the first unit, I located the G2 and removed the A2 board (C block) which plugs to the back of the picture tube, and found three resistors R151, R251, and R351, all with the same value 4.6-4.7 MOhms. Are these the resistors that needs to be replaced?
I do not have WinDAS, and I tried to downloaded from a website, but it will not install.
For the second unit... Any suggestions of what to do to fix the green glow problem would be greatly appreciated!
Hey guys , I gave the repair from Xweebie a try and had very good results.
Back in 2000 I got a 24" Widescreen Sony monitor and ended up returning it under warranty some two years later due to the brightness creeping up so much that I could see retrace lines across the screen. Fast forward to 2005 and the refurbished replacement they sent me had been suffering a similar fate for over a year. While no retrace lines were visible it was getting too bright at the lowest settings to tolerate. Sony wanted hundreds of dollars for a flat rate fix on this out of warranty unit.
Now this monitor is about 90lbs and a real pain to transport and from reading this forum it seemed like there had to be a better way. I thought about the resistor mod but didn't want to mess around inside the monitor not knowing if it is even the same as other models.
So anyhow, here is a little visual rundown of how I got it fixed. After getting the adapter in the mail and a few tries at getting it plugged in good (small / deep opening at the monitor connection point is a little tricky to get the fingers in there but may vary by the model of monitor. A few emails back and fourth and the same evening I was back in business with beautiful blacks and great contrast again.
I've just brought home a Dell Branded P1110 from work on test and found it has the brightness issue, which I have no problem about fixing, but it also has another niggle.
Depending on the brightness level, particularly when there is mainly just white on the screen, the size of the picture will increase and decrease, it can go outside the bounds of the screen when the screen is particularly bright.
Will the resistor mod also cure the size changing?
I don't want to say I'll buy it, do the resistor mod and find the size is still changing.
This is a good link to the windas and wincats programs, the only problem is you need to bypass the copyright protection. Fourtunately this is an easy task given you know how to use a debuger. Maybe someone would post a binary patch to the forum to disable the security.Though the program uses sophisticated hardware copy protection ( a dongle you attach to LPT1), the guts of the program are not encrypted and can be run without the dongle. Just find the branch before it pushes the string "config error" onto the stack, take the other path and enjoy
Once the program works you get to make TONS of adjustments, all are explained by the program.
Whatever you do, DO NOT set default settings (File->MPU), the defaults will appear to have killed your monitor. If you do happen to reset your whole EEPROM (as I did, lol, oops!) all you have to do is go to (Adjustment->Procedure) and do all the steps in order, takes a few hours and almost everything can be eyeballed except for white balancne.You can adjust your centering, Auto-centering, and geometry for low and high frequencies much better than the factory defaults.
White balance takes many passes to get right so this is the main reason to avoid MPUing the monitor, unless you have a color calibrator/ colorimeter/ spectrophotometer etc. (~60$ on ebay for the cheap ones like colorvision's spyder). In that case, It's probably a good idea to redo the white balance in hardware, rather than with .icc color profiles for software.G2 adjustment is part of the white balance, so it's best you (File->save) your .dat first, then (help->expert) to find out which part of the .dat is G2 then lower it a bit and load it back into your monitor to avoid having to eyeball the white balance. I think though, that if your whitebalance is correct, and all you touch is the G2 you may not have to adjust it through the .dat file and your whitebalance settings will remain, but save your .dat before you make any changes just to be safe.
I don't know if .dats are the same for every monitor, maybe they are the same for every batch, or, at the worst, they are all hand adjusted by QC guys at the factory, but how much can change between one monitor and the next? I do known that different models are incompatible with eachother, even ones that are very simmiliar in spec (like P991 and P992). Maybe if the monitors share the same chasis files could be swapped, such as between the compaq and dell versions of the same monitor from sony.
Another plus of using this software is that it allows you to make your convergence ABSOLUTELY PERFECT! Even in the CORNERS! NO TRADE OFFS! Seriously, I couldn't believe it, I had always thought flat CRTs were doomed to crumby convergence, not true at all. The dead on convergence doesn't just help with edges of color but also improves the clarity/focus of sigle pixels at high resolutions ( If you ever see the b&w xroot window mesh in X11 you will know what I mean by convergence affecting the resolution of single pixels). The downside is it takes a little bit of time to adjust it perfect, but the program has you go through a series of steps so you could get reasonable results in a casual 20 minutes or less .
So yeah, once you download the software and disable the protection, build the link interface mentioned earlier in the thread by EPS300i and atomist, or just download the dos DAS software posted earlier, it has the schematic atomist posted. Regarding the max232 chip, it just functions as a voltage converter between TTL levels and RS232 levels, there are many different cheaper brands that do the same function just search max232 on ebay, some guys even give you the capacitors while some chips don't need external capacitors. ALL you need is the chip, and wires, breadboard/proto typing board can make connecting it easier.
I think some people have found a way to load in the *.dat files saved from yoru monitors eeprom with some other software mentioned in the thread. If you take a look inside the .dat s they are very simple. and better yet, the windas program explains each parameter in the .dat files (Help->expert)
Ok, I think I am having too much fun raving about this great approach to reviving these excellent monitors, I just had to let people know that the resistor fix is FLAWED. Everybody who's bothered to check the resistors value (simple to do yourtself with a multimeter and the color code on the resistor) has noticed that it is not defective(read the rest of the thread).The other rumour of EEPROM failure is also a bit flawed, because, if bits were to drop out of your settings things would go wild all at once, not gradually. My current theory is that as your monitor ages, G2 is increased to compensate for the monitor becoming more and more dim. This fits with reports of the problem becoming worse with time. No, I haven't found proof of this by way of a time value in the EEPROM or an analysis of the code in the EEPROM.(btw, the data you download into the .dats is given to you by the MPU which reads it off the EEPROM , you are not actually dumping the eeprom (atleast not all of it), or, perhaps you are, and the MPU's code is stored on another EEPROM, but that would be stupid design.)
About the screen changing size depending on how many bright pixels are on the screen: this is normal, all monitors do it, atleast to some extent. They have a test with a blinking white box on a black screen to illustrate the effect "clamp test" . There is a circuit in the monitor called ABL or Automatic brightness limiter, there is also an ACL Automatic Contrast Limiter. The ABL does something to clamp the max voltage from the FBT (Fly back transformer, which makes me thing there must be another transformer as 'flyback' is when the beam is quickly horizontaly swept back after drawing a line of the picture) and to raise the black level voltage in order to keep the same average voltage across one field (frame, as in 60hz for 60 frames a second, or fields a second).I don't really understand it all, but it has something to do with the screen changing size with respect to brightness on the screen.
I'd apreciate it if some one could shed some light about these things. Yes yes, ok, I'll read the service manual, sorry. You can find the service manuals online, either at the site where that DOS Das was, or on P2P.
Yeah, and did I mention it works on almost all sony monitors with an MPU?
Ok, enough, thanks to all for this thread, sure helped me, hope that it's more helpfull to the next generation of you now.
[BIG]
You DO NOT need a signal generator or two computers to adjust your monitor! My howto and posts below explain how you can use a single computer to adjust and re-upload your monitors saved settings.[/BIG]
You can use a signal generator or my setup below to make realtime adjustments to your monitor while displaying diagnostic patterns. This is BY NO MEANS NECESSARY and only makes convergence, geometry and delicate white balance adjustments easier. These adjustments are normally not necessary unless you replace the CRT or erase all your settings ( like I did before I knew to make a backup). Someday a bootable CD should be available to display diagnostic patterns and adjustment procedures on one computer regardless of OS, even though most people would have little use for it, as G2 can be lowered easy with the method mentioned in a later post.
========Optional to use two computers, One computer suffices for nearly all Procedures!!===========
Comp A
One computer runs the Windas program and is connected via the max232 chip to the monitor thourgh the RS232 serial port. It's video card is connected to it's own monitor, so hopefully you have a laptop to serve as this computer.
Comp B or signal generator
Another computer or a signal generator (unlikely you have a video signal generator, for some reason I can't find any deals on them, so it's easier to just use a computer, it does exactly the same thing if you have a normal video card that does true-color (almost all since 1998?), guys on ebay sell software for your computer to act as a signal generator, costs too much, lol.)
Set the widas program to "manual SG" , when it has a command for the SG, you do it manualy on your computer. You put the modelines into whatever you use to set a graphics mode, in my case, I use linux/Xorg, so I put in my modelines for the DAS modes, and used xrandr to set the resolution as required. To make a crosshatch etc., I just wrote my self simple programs using a graphics library. I can post my program and the modelines if anyone is interested.
The tricky part is figuring out how to make a so many IRE white. IRE is some unit of the percentage of max NTSC broadcast voltage. 7.5 is broadcast black. I've read on sites that a white of 255 is 109 IRE, I white of 235 is 100 IRE, I white (or should I say black/gray? lol) of 7.5 is 16. Best to measure this yourself, or look it up somewhere for yourself... the scale seems have gamma correction to keep the computer 0-255 setting linear with observed brightness. If any one has better info on this, let me know.
Thanks again, and please contribute ANYTHING you know, correct me, etc. I'm all ears about this stutff.
just bought the cable from Xweebie, and to sum it up,
after some small tests, i emailed him and he gave me a custom G2 level and now the monitor is unbeleivable
an example of how dark it is, when you use the "blank screen" screensaver you cant even tell the monitors on
yet using the brightness\contrast controls set to 40 and 80 it performs UNBELEIVABLE in displaymate
now if i could only get my $700 1 year old 22" mitsubishi monitor "also crt" to have as good of a blacklevel
just bought the cable from Xweebie, and to sum it up,
after some small tests, i emailed him and he gave me a custom G2 level and now the monitor is unbeleivable
an example of how dark it is, when you use the "blank screen" screensaver you cant even tell the monitors on
yet using the brightness\contrast controls set to 40 and 80 it performs UNBELEIVABLE in displaymate
now if i could only get my $700 1 year old 22" mitsubishi monitor "also crt" to have as good of a blacklevel
Hey Mr Tube, congrats on your results. I have a question for you: which monitor are you using, the Dell P1110 or another model using the same chassis? I have the Dell monitor and I would prefer to go the route you did rather than the resistor mod, if possible.
Hey Mr Tube, congrats on your results. I have a question for you: which monitor are you using, the Dell P1110 or another model using the same chassis? I have the Dell monitor and I would prefer to go the route you did rather than the resistor mod, if possible.
22SAS
my cable\software came from xweebie at the URL on the pictures others posted of the cable..
and yes, its a dell p1100
Comments
Thanks for posting this link! I have a Dell P1110, which was exhibiting this OTT brightness problem. Found your post & the associated link... I just replaced the resistor with a 4M7ohm one, and everything's perfect! I even managed to not electrocute myself....
Gone from 0 brightness 100 contrast & way too bright to 35 bright 100 contrast & its just spot on.
Thanks!
Is that normal behaviour?
Try Jameco Electronics, if you are in the US.
My problem has not been helped though just yet... I have the HP P1130 and exactly the same brightness problem as everyone describes.
- I cannot access the service menu currently (although my only video input available is a 60Hz laptop which might be the issue)
- The flyback transformer only has two controls, for horizontal and vertical convergance
- I can't find anywhere in the UK where I can purchase a 5MOhm resistor just yet
- More to the point, the P1130 does not have a PCB directly at the rear of the monitor to find the resistor that needs replacing on! It does have a PCB at its base, but this looks like a right pig to take off - let me guess, time to get brutish?
Any advice or comments would be welcome...
Cheers!
Maplin stock 4.7MΩ and 5.6MΩ resistors. They cost around 6p each.
Sorry, I can't help with the monitor, it's a different model to mine.
I would like to resolve it myself if possible before resorting to paing somebody else to do it...
(FYI, Took the monitor apart some more - is definitely virtually nothing like the P1110)
Cheers...
Sun GDM-5410 and HP p1120 , both have brightness problems.
I have a temporary fix, which kinda sucks but is allowing me to use it until i either find a place to buy resistors, or buy a new monitor.
The temp fix im using: Go into the EXPERT COLOR menu, turn your RGB Gain's up to 100, and the RGB Bias's at 0. This seems to level out the color quite a bit.
Does anyone know of any online site that sells resistors of this size? Or could someone mail me a few 10MOhm resistors? (i'll even paypal you the shipping charge if needed)
please let me know
davidsmith (at) cogeco . ca
(remove spaces and replace at with @)
thanks guys, someone please help!
This link seems to have all (or most) of the DAS software along with wincats and windas.
http://www.ablserv.com/files/
Thanks for this thread, after the resisstor fix, now I can enjoy a Crisp and Clear non hazy P1110.
Am using 6.8Mohm 1/5w, its just that what temp monitor are u guys using?
7500, 9500.... mine when set to 9500 temp gonna get dim unusable view (after 2-4 hours) 7500 its much better i think gonna try it if its work...
Thanks for saving couple of bucks from repairman...
I would like to resolve it myself if possible before resorting to paing somebody else to do it...
(FYI, Took the monitor apart some more - is definitely virtually nothing like the P1110)
Cheers...
=========================
I have the exact same model you have P1130 with same brightness problem and tried to replace the resistor but once open the casing of the monitor, wow its totally different. anyone can help me on this??? oh boy.
You probably don't want to kill yourself doing this, so first off, be sure to know and follow standard safety when working inside monitors.
One way to do this fix:
Trace back from pin 10 on the crt. This should lead to R064 (220K), then on to a white single or dual pin connector (labeled G2?). Trace from the connector to R936, a 2.2M resistor. One end of that resistor connects to Q905 and the other end to a diode and C919. At the end that connects to Q905, you can connect a resistor from that point to ground. Ground can be found on the lead of C919 that does NOT connect to the diode. The resistor value will have to be determined experimentally but a good place to start might be 4.7 M 1W. If you have a resistor switchbox you can just dial the value in until you get it. When mounting the resistor, don't scrunch it down on the board, try to stand it off a bit. I do not have one of these monitors so these instructions are based on my schematics. If things mentioned here do not match, do not attempt the fix without verifying the connection points. If this fix is done incorrectly, resistor R916 or other component may fail and G2 will be lost (blank screen).
Back in 2000 I got a 24" Widescreen Sony monitor and ended up returning it under warranty some two years later due to the brightness creeping up so much that I could see retrace lines across the screen. Fast forward to 2005 and the refurbished replacement they sent me had been suffering a similar fate for over a year. While no retrace lines were visible it was getting too bright at the lowest settings to tolerate. Sony wanted hundreds of dollars for a flat rate fix on this out of warranty unit.
Now this monitor is about 90lbs and a real pain to transport and from reading this forum it seemed like there had to be a better way. I thought about the resistor mod but didn't want to mess around inside the monitor not knowing if it is even the same as other models.
So anyhow, here is a little visual rundown of how I got it fixed. After getting the adapter in the mail and a few tries at getting it plugged in good (small / deep opening at the monitor connection point is a little tricky to get the fingers in there but may vary by the model of monitor. A few emails back and fourth and the same evening I was back in business with beautiful blacks and great contrast again.
This approach is highly recommended!!
First, prior to the resister fix, I had my monitor set to:
0 Brightness
100 Contrast
RGB BIAS: 25, 15, 15
RGB Gain: 87, 84, 89
I have been using these settings for 2-years or so, to give a pretty good picture, although black was never truly black (as it is now after the fix), it was pretty good. I had found that setting the Brightness/RGB gain low, while the Contrast/RGB GAIN high, gave a pretty good picture. It always looked fine using Windows desktop, however movies/games often seemed washed out some. Usually, I could get a suitable picture by further adjusting in-game gamma/intensity/color settings, etc.
I should also note that prior to the fix, whenever I first turn on my monitor (from power off) it would be way too bright, however it would settle down and balance out after 15-30 minutes or warmup. This would not occur if the monitor was restored from sleep mode.
Anyways, after finding this thread, I decided I wanted to go for the resister fix. I ordered the 6.2MOhm 0.5W 5%-tolerance Carbon Film resister from oselectronics.com (along with a solder-iron, solder-iron stand, and solder, in order to meet the $10 minimum order). Shipping was $8 UPS Ground (which was the cheapest shipping). So, anyways I spent about $20 and my time on this project.
Final thing I did prior to the resister fix, was restore the monitor to default settings by going thru each OSD function and choosing reset (to reset each one).
At this point, my settings are:
Brightness 50
Contrast 80
Color-Temp 9300K (selected on EASY color menu).
Doing the surgery was quite painless, taking the shell off the monitor I found easy with a flat head screw-driver to pop the top-side plastic tabs. The most trouble I had was finding something small enough that I could maneuver into the small space on the underside of the circuit board so that I could cut the original 10MOhm resister loose. I soldered the new resister without solder, just heated the existing solder points on the top-side of the circuit board. Put it all back together and turn it on, looked great! Nice blacks, vibrant colors! However...
... as I mentioned above, before the fix my monitor would be really bright when I first turned it on from power off state. Then within 15-30 min. or so it would darken to a suitable level. Well after the fix, when I first turned on the monitor, it looked great, but over 15-30 minutes began to gradually darken, and darken, and darken until it was way too dark! So, then it looked horrible.
Prior to making any further changes, I tested ALL of the OSD control features to see that they worked properly, and then did. The brightness, contrast, RGB Bias/Gain and other controls working normally. But the picture was way too dark, and turning up the brightness beyond 50 made it brighter, but too washed-out looking. I pumped up the Contrast to 100, that helped some, but not enough. So...
I decided to use the Color Return feature on the EASY color menu, while the Temp was set to 9300K. It did its thing and immediately after, the picture definitely was more vibrant again, but just not quite enough. Using the EXPERT color menu, I adjusted each RGB GAIN/BIAS to 100. Increasing the BIAS to 100 on each color helped a lot. Finally, my picture is awesome. I sits right between 2 Viewsonic G90f monitors, one on each side in a tri-monitor setup
The only drawback, after doing the color return function above, MY OSD CONTROLS are EFFFED UP! The brightness/contrast controls are pretty much out of wack, and the RGB BIAS/Gain do also seem out of wack a bit somehow. But, all in all its looks good (definitely way better than before and worth the resister fix) and I'm using settings:
Brightness 50
Contrast 100
RGB GAIN/BIAS ALL 100
I think I should have used the 6.8MOhm resistor, but oselectronics.com did not list that one on their site, which is why I used the 6.2. I would suggest for anyone going to try this fix, to use a 6.8MOhm resister *if* your monitor already has a relatively decent pic with Brightness/RGB-BIAS set really low and Contrast/RGB-Gain set really high. If ur using those settings, and ur pic is still way too bright/washed-out, then use a lower-resistance.
Good luck, and THANKS TO EVERYONE who POSTED HERE! God Bless.
I'm new to this forum. I have a Dell P992, and have the same brightness problem. After opening the case, I realized the circuit board was nothing like the P1110, etc. I downloaded the schematics and mine doesn't even HAVE R457 or R459! And I have no clue how to determine which one I might tweak to reduce the brightness. Also, I'm a bit concerned about the issues raised by some of the folks here that have swapped resistors.
So I bought the interface offered by Xweebie and all I can say is, it's worth every penny!! Not only is my monitor back to normal, I can now use the interface and software to save all of my monitor settings, including the geometry and color settings.
Once you submit your DAS file to Xweebie, he sends back eight files, each with a different setting for the field that controls the G2 voltage. This way you can choose the one that puts your brightness in the desired range. Like some others in this thread, my brightness problem evolved gradually, so it may be necessary down the road to load a different file if an analog component is drifting out of spec. All I have to do is hook up the interface and load a file with a lower setting.
OTOH, it's been reported that this particular EEPROM is known to have problems losing it's settings. This doesn't seem consistent with a gradual change, but I'm certainly no expert on such things.
BTW, the eight data files will come back to you with all settings just as they were, except for the one that controls the G2 voltage. If you suspect your EEPROM, you might want to restore all the factory defaults before creating the DAS file. I'm not sure if Xweebie has information as to what all the default settings are supposed to be, but if he does, he might be able to do a comparison. Just a thought.
Note to other P992 owners: the plastic cover on the four-pin port has tabs that prevent it from being removed without first removing the monitor case. So DON'T try to pry or force it, or you'll end up cracking your case (the tabs are definitely not sacrificial). That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen!
David
I have an IBM P260 (Sony manufactured like others here). The instructions and photos helped me fix the brightness problem quickly. I couldn't find exactly the recommended resistors but found an assortment package at Radio Shack for $6... so put six 1 Mohm ones in series and removed the existing 10 Mohm one... a bit ugly but works perfectly.
By the way, the IBM has 4 screws and no clips (mentioned as difficult to undo without breaking in some messages)... so it was easier to remove the enclosure.
Thanks again for all the help (I love web resources like this)!!!
Take care.
I have an HP A4576A (Sony 21N3 chassis) which has had problems with horizontal jitter. I have the WinDas software and was wondering if anyone out ther has had any luck finding the dll's that it requires. I believe that I have the correct IrDA_Dispatch.dll but have not been able to find the correct TRANSDLL.dll for it. I have been able to run the DAS 4.0 and 5.7 and connect to this monitor with the cable I made. I believe WinDas has factory settings included which I would like to load into the monitor.
Thanks again,
My DELL P1110 developed a funny habit. It refuses to display any input signals. When I connected it to my notebook, the front LED flickering brown: 'long-short', all the buttons became useless. When I changed the computer, it did the same. With no signal cable connected, it showed the usual message.
It also has the "too bright" problem. But before I try the "Magic Resistor" I need to make it show something.
Help!
Many thanks!
I have a Sony CPD-G520 21" monitor with convergence problem. Has anyone the DAS or WINDAS software that connect to them?
Thanks!
edson.
http://www.geocities.com/gregua/windas/
Good luck! Never give up, never surrender!
In the 2 years since its repair the monitor has slowly degraded back to this shocking condition. Whatever they did during the repair, including the DAS alignments didn't do a great job and was not a permanent solution, so I'm looking at trying the resistor mod.
The service sheet says they did the following:
"Repaired DJ's on main chassis. Performed DAS alignments."
From reading this thread I know what the DAS alignments are, but does anyone know what the DJ's they repaired are?
One of the is way too bright, even with the brightness control all the way to zero, and it has horizontal greenish scanning lines going from top to bottom, side to side. This one has a strong blue background. The colors looked washed out at start, but when the picture tube warms up, the colors depth goes back to normal, and it looks decent.
The other unit had its tube replaced with a new one, but it has a strong green brackground which makes it impossible to set colors, specially blacks.
For the first unit, I located the G2 and removed the A2 board (C block) which plugs to the back of the picture tube, and found three resistors R151, R251, and R351, all with the same value 4.6-4.7 MOhms. Are these the resistors that needs to be replaced?
I do not have WinDAS, and I tried to downloaded from a website, but it will not install.
For the second unit... Any suggestions of what to do to fix the green glow problem would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks so much in advaced!
LAG, Jr.
Please let me know...
Many thanks in advance...
Luis G.
I've just brought home a Dell Branded P1110 from work on test and found it has the brightness issue, which I have no problem about fixing, but it also has another niggle.
Depending on the brightness level, particularly when there is mainly just white on the screen, the size of the picture will increase and decrease, it can go outside the bounds of the screen when the screen is particularly bright.
Will the resistor mod also cure the size changing?
I don't want to say I'll buy it, do the resistor mod and find the size is still changing.
Thanks in advance
Sam
This is a good link to the windas and wincats programs, the only problem is you need to bypass the copyright protection. Fourtunately this is an easy task given you know how to use a debuger. Maybe someone would post a binary patch to the forum to disable the security.Though the program uses sophisticated hardware copy protection ( a dongle you attach to LPT1), the guts of the program are not encrypted and can be run without the dongle. Just find the branch before it pushes the string "config error" onto the stack, take the other path and enjoy
Once the program works you get to make TONS of adjustments, all are explained by the program.
Whatever you do, DO NOT set default settings (File->MPU), the defaults will appear to have killed your monitor. If you do happen to reset your whole EEPROM (as I did, lol, oops!) all you have to do is go to (Adjustment->Procedure) and do all the steps in order, takes a few hours and almost everything can be eyeballed except for white balancne.You can adjust your centering, Auto-centering, and geometry for low and high frequencies much better than the factory defaults.
White balance takes many passes to get right so this is the main reason to avoid MPUing the monitor, unless you have a color calibrator/ colorimeter/ spectrophotometer etc. (~60$ on ebay for the cheap ones like colorvision's spyder). In that case, It's probably a good idea to redo the white balance in hardware, rather than with .icc color profiles for software.G2 adjustment is part of the white balance, so it's best you (File->save) your .dat first, then (help->expert) to find out which part of the .dat is G2 then lower it a bit and load it back into your monitor to avoid having to eyeball the white balance. I think though, that if your whitebalance is correct, and all you touch is the G2 you may not have to adjust it through the .dat file and your whitebalance settings will remain, but save your .dat before you make any changes just to be safe.
I don't know if .dats are the same for every monitor, maybe they are the same for every batch, or, at the worst, they are all hand adjusted by QC guys at the factory, but how much can change between one monitor and the next? I do known that different models are incompatible with eachother, even ones that are very simmiliar in spec (like P991 and P992). Maybe if the monitors share the same chasis files could be swapped, such as between the compaq and dell versions of the same monitor from sony.
Another plus of using this software is that it allows you to make your convergence ABSOLUTELY PERFECT! Even in the CORNERS! NO TRADE OFFS! Seriously, I couldn't believe it, I had always thought flat CRTs were doomed to crumby convergence, not true at all. The dead on convergence doesn't just help with edges of color but also improves the clarity/focus of sigle pixels at high resolutions ( If you ever see the b&w xroot window mesh in X11 you will know what I mean by convergence affecting the resolution of single pixels). The downside is it takes a little bit of time to adjust it perfect, but the program has you go through a series of steps so you could get reasonable results in a casual 20 minutes or less .
So yeah, once you download the software and disable the protection, build the link interface mentioned earlier in the thread by EPS300i and atomist, or just download the dos DAS software posted earlier, it has the schematic atomist posted. Regarding the max232 chip, it just functions as a voltage converter between TTL levels and RS232 levels, there are many different cheaper brands that do the same function just search max232 on ebay, some guys even give you the capacitors while some chips don't need external capacitors. ALL you need is the chip, and wires, breadboard/proto typing board can make connecting it easier.
I think some people have found a way to load in the *.dat files saved from yoru monitors eeprom with some other software mentioned in the thread. If you take a look inside the .dat s they are very simple. and better yet, the windas program explains each parameter in the .dat files (Help->expert)
Ok, I think I am having too much fun raving about this great approach to reviving these excellent monitors, I just had to let people know that the resistor fix is FLAWED. Everybody who's bothered to check the resistors value (simple to do yourtself with a multimeter and the color code on the resistor) has noticed that it is not defective(read the rest of the thread).The other rumour of EEPROM failure is also a bit flawed, because, if bits were to drop out of your settings things would go wild all at once, not gradually. My current theory is that as your monitor ages, G2 is increased to compensate for the monitor becoming more and more dim. This fits with reports of the problem becoming worse with time. No, I haven't found proof of this by way of a time value in the EEPROM or an analysis of the code in the EEPROM.(btw, the data you download into the .dats is given to you by the MPU which reads it off the EEPROM , you are not actually dumping the eeprom (atleast not all of it), or, perhaps you are, and the MPU's code is stored on another EEPROM, but that would be stupid design.)
About the screen changing size depending on how many bright pixels are on the screen: this is normal, all monitors do it, atleast to some extent. They have a test with a blinking white box on a black screen to illustrate the effect "clamp test" . There is a circuit in the monitor called ABL or Automatic brightness limiter, there is also an ACL Automatic Contrast Limiter. The ABL does something to clamp the max voltage from the FBT (Fly back transformer, which makes me thing there must be another transformer as 'flyback' is when the beam is quickly horizontaly swept back after drawing a line of the picture) and to raise the black level voltage in order to keep the same average voltage across one field (frame, as in 60hz for 60 frames a second, or fields a second).I don't really understand it all, but it has something to do with the screen changing size with respect to brightness on the screen.
I'd apreciate it if some one could shed some light about these things. Yes yes, ok, I'll read the service manual, sorry. You can find the service manuals online, either at the site where that DOS Das was, or on P2P.
Yeah, and did I mention it works on almost all sony monitors with an MPU?
Ok, enough, thanks to all for this thread, sure helped me, hope that it's more helpfull to the next generation of you now.
[BIG]
You DO NOT need a signal generator or two computers to adjust your monitor! My howto and posts below explain how you can use a single computer to adjust and re-upload your monitors saved settings.[/BIG]
You can use a signal generator or my setup below to make realtime adjustments to your monitor while displaying diagnostic patterns. This is BY NO MEANS NECESSARY and only makes convergence, geometry and delicate white balance adjustments easier. These adjustments are normally not necessary unless you replace the CRT or erase all your settings ( like I did before I knew to make a backup). Someday a bootable CD should be available to display diagnostic patterns and adjustment procedures on one computer regardless of OS, even though most people would have little use for it, as G2 can be lowered easy with the method mentioned in a later post.
========Optional to use two computers, One computer suffices for nearly all Procedures!!===========
Comp A
One computer runs the Windas program and is connected via the max232 chip to the monitor thourgh the RS232 serial port. It's video card is connected to it's own monitor, so hopefully you have a laptop to serve as this computer.
Comp B or signal generator
Another computer or a signal generator (unlikely you have a video signal generator, for some reason I can't find any deals on them, so it's easier to just use a computer, it does exactly the same thing if you have a normal video card that does true-color (almost all since 1998?), guys on ebay sell software for your computer to act as a signal generator, costs too much, lol.)
Set the widas program to "manual SG" , when it has a command for the SG, you do it manualy on your computer. You put the modelines into whatever you use to set a graphics mode, in my case, I use linux/Xorg, so I put in my modelines for the DAS modes, and used xrandr to set the resolution as required. To make a crosshatch etc., I just wrote my self simple programs using a graphics library. I can post my program and the modelines if anyone is interested.
The tricky part is figuring out how to make a so many IRE white. IRE is some unit of the percentage of max NTSC broadcast voltage. 7.5 is broadcast black. I've read on sites that a white of 255 is 109 IRE, I white of 235 is 100 IRE, I white (or should I say black/gray? lol) of 7.5 is 16. Best to measure this yourself, or look it up somewhere for yourself... the scale seems have gamma correction to keep the computer 0-255 setting linear with observed brightness. If any one has better info on this, let me know.
Thanks again, and please contribute ANYTHING you know, correct me, etc. I'm all ears about this stutff.
after some small tests, i emailed him and he gave me a custom G2 level and now the monitor is unbeleivable
an example of how dark it is, when you use the "blank screen" screensaver you cant even tell the monitors on
yet using the brightness\contrast controls set to 40 and 80 it performs UNBELEIVABLE in displaymate
now if i could only get my $700 1 year old 22" mitsubishi monitor "also crt" to have as good of a blacklevel
Hey Mr Tube, congrats on your results. I have a question for you: which monitor are you using, the Dell P1110 or another model using the same chassis? I have the Dell monitor and I would prefer to go the route you did rather than the resistor mod, if possible.
22SAS
my cable\software came from xweebie at the URL on the pictures others posted of the cable..
and yes, its a dell p1100