Posting in Ayn Rands as usual, hopefully I can get some useful input.

I’ve got a relatively new (only 10 years old – really, for me, that’s “new”Log in to see images! Compaq monitor that’s got a frustrating problem.

When I first got it, as part of a computer system to refurb and clean up (the PC as old as the monitor as well – that’s another story), it didn’t seem to work at all. But if I turned the brightness and contrast all the way up, I could vaguely see some text on the screen. Not “the screen”, but a small part of what should be the center of the screen, blown up to the full screen. For example, on the Windows 98 boot screen, all I saw was the Windows logo that’s in middle of the screen, taking up the whole screen, and very very dim.

Then it started fading out, very slowly… so slowly, I didn’t even notice it was fading. Until now – I can’t see any picture on the screen AT ALL. Maybe if I shut off the lights and see it in the pitch dark. But it’s ****ing dead.

What the hell? The CRT tube itself obviously didn’t die… I doubt it would be “zoomed” like that. I don’t get it. Is it the power supply part of the board that’s to blame?

Armed with only a simple multimeter (and a wattmeter), what can I do to try and diagnose this? Google is very unhelpful as usual with any sort of advanced-knowledge searches, always trying to dumb my search down to “what is a monitor” or “plug it in”.

Or maybe the tube did die. Then I’m ****ed.