Need help from the CRT club

General Off-Topic
#1

So I just scored a 19" Dell PC CRT monitor. Flat screen, 2004.

I’ve had several second-hand Dell monitors over the years and I think every single one had bad color.

On this one, it seems like every color temperature looks too blue, even the sRGB mode. I can only get a barely tolerable picture by maxing out all the color channels, which doesn’t seem right.

It seems like red in particular is much too weak. If I crank up red brightness and lower red contrast a bit, it sort of works, but it’s not great.

What’s the likely issue, here?

Additionally, there’s an occasional horizontal line that appears in the center of the screen for a split second, almost like a tear. This is accompanied by some rapid contracting(?)/expanding of the image that lasts for just a split second, like it’s having trouble maintaining a stable image size. What could cause this?

What do you think, is this one a dud?

#2

removing that board behind the tube (takes a bit of force, not too much though), cleaning the pins and connecting it again fix many of these old monitors problems, they usually corrode in there

1 Like
#3

So now I have two of these old Dell Monitors, both 19", both circa 2005. One is a Trinitron!

The non-Trinitron has the issues I explained above: random contracting/expanding of the image accompanied by a horizontal line through the screen for a split second. It’s also too dim; in particular, red looks weak. The Trinitron is just too dim, period.

Since these monitors aren’t that old, I’m hoping that a simple cleaning and recap kit might fix the problems.

To clean, you don’t even need to disconnect the PCB, you can just do the following. Before reassembly, might as well also do a recap since it only costs $15, at most.

#4

Dang, 19" is a great score. Recap should do wonders.