spastic Apple 17" Studio Display (B&W CRT)

[Franklinstein]

As is typical with these displays, mine has developed the click-zoom failure (where a slight audible 'click' is followed by the display quickly zooming in before returning to normal). Trying to figure out what to do with this thing. It's on the verge of being unusable, so it's time to do something.

Fixing it entails resoldering cold solder joints or totally replacing the flyback transformer and/or other components in the HV circuit. Could be simple and cheap, could be expensive and a monster pain in the arse.

It's just a stupid Mitsubishi DiamondTron 17" display (the Mitsu-branded displays also exhibit these problems), but it matches my B&W G3, which is really the only reason to keep it. It does have a nice picture when it's not freaking out, though.

Thoughts?

 

[register]

The click zoom disease seems to be the same as with the 1710 displays. This might be fixed easily, but I think those tubes consume too much electric energy, are too heavy and use too much space on the desktop.

For external displays I preferred to replace it with a nice TFT display. For vintage Macs the EIZO L365 is great. Brilliant picture, the case design fits well to a platinum Mac. The multy sync capability allows for most of available resolutions (native 1024 x 768). It sports both digital and analogue video inputs as well as a set of stereo speakers. The VGA to Mac D sub 15 pin cable from an old Mac 15" CRT display makes an ideal connector to the Mac's video output.

Conclusion: If a day of work to fix the thing is cheaper for you than to buy a new one AND you do not care about the power consumption (CRT 100...500 Watts, TFT less 50 Watts), give it a try. Otherwise obtain a more recent diplay and dump the old one.

 

[Cory5412]

On the topic of displays, if the 17" CRT is on it's way out, I'd recommend you go ahead and let it go, recycle it, and pick up a newer LCD.

If we're recommending LCDs, I personally love the Dell UltraSharp series. 1708fp is a really nice 17" panel, height-adjustable stand, the ability to rotate the display to portrait, and a few other nice things including DVI or VGA input, and a USB2 hub.

 

[steve30]

Click-zoom.

Thats sounds rather similar to what my new Sony display does. It usually does this after it has flickered a bit and gone blurred. I've had trouble finding information about it. I'm guessing that these problems would be caused by the same things on different monitors. If anyone has any suggestions as to what causes this I would be grateful to hear.

It tends to do it randomly so can easily go a week or maybe two without any problems, then will do it several times in the same week.

 

[Franklinstein]

On these monitors the problem is typically cold solder joints or failing HV circuitry, usually the flyback transformer.

I put mine in storage a week ago when I got an ADC 17" CRT display to replace it with (I lose 2", but it frickin' works). I may try to fix it in the future.