Repairing a broken LED monitor

Hello!

I have a broken low-end Samsung LED LCD monitor that someone else had given up on (SyncMaster SA300 LS24A300BS, the last two letters seem to specify the build quality...). The problem with the monitor is that when no VGA/DVI cable is connected, it seems to work fine (backlighting glows, and the standard "no signal" message is shown on the screen, forever. As soon as I plug in a DVI or VGA cable, the screen goes black (no backlighting). With DVI it just goes black but power light keeps shining, with VGA the power light starts flashing to indicate some error until I "restart" the monitor. I've been trying to check for video by looking closely (to see if it's only the backlighting that stops) but can't see anything but black.

The mainboard is this one: http://www.shopjimmy.com/samsung-bn94-04264a-main-board-for-ls24a300bs-za.htm
By my awesome power of deduction, I have concluded that the mainboard is broken. The mainboard takes DC 14V (from an external PSU), VGA and DVI, and is connected internally to the another board attached to the panel itself (disconnecting this board completely makes the screen go bright white, but it still goes black when a cable is attached), the backlighting (powered directly from the mainboard), and to the panel of buttons on the edge of the screen.

I'm trying to find a replacement board (that with shipping to EU is not more than half of what the monitor cost new) but seems to be out of luck, also I have nothing to lose by at least trying to repair the board I have. Any idea what might be wrong with it? There is no visible damage to the board (no leaking caps etc). The standard thing to do on broken LCD monitors seems to be to replace the caps, but there are only 4 caps in the entire monitor and I'm not sure if broken caps could cause this behaviour? I'm just assuming that the VERY tiny 24W PSU is alright, as the screen works alright forever when displaying the "no signal" screen.

Thanks!

 

Stupid stupid stupid me
There is a firmware update available on the samsung website. I actually tried that, but failed ("all monitors are up-to-date"), probably because I used VGA or the laptop was incompatible. Ran the firmware update on a different PC with DVI and that fixed the problem.

Unfortunatelly I ordered a new mainboard, I'll try to cancel that order but if that fails, I guess I have a spare mainboard (BN96-18431A) to sell

 

I haven't had good luck with Samsung monitors either. I bought a monitor/TV combo thingy in 2006. It says on the box and even on the back of the unit itself that it supports HDCP, but it does not. The picture was okay for the time, but the scaler was absolutely horrible.

This unit actually had a SCART input. It's the only TV I've seen in the US with a SCART input. Didn't stop it from being crap, though. When I finally got a new TV, I sold the Samsung, and it stopped working entirely shortly thereafter. Utter shite. Maybe they've improved since then, but they lost me as a customer.

 

Maybe I shouldn't judge Samsung by this model, after all it is a low-end model, and I found it in this broken condition in a pile of other broken/old crap someone left in the basement. And from the build-date, it seems the thing is still under warranty (with the receipt). But still... They managed to build a "time-bombing" firmware, in a monitor with no features whatsoever! That is spectacular. Based on the fact that is seems used more than average, and being maybe 6 months from end of warranty, its almost tempting to think this problem is by design to occur about the time when people expect things to break. After all, being LED, this thing has very few capacitors they could go cheap on...

Apart from that, the build-quality is shit (e.g., not held together with scews), the foot is shit (it can tilt a bit, that's it, and I can feel the plastics become looser everytime I do it), and the thing has no features at all (well, very low power consumption and pretty thin very light-weight). For free it's great, but I'll never recommend anyone paying full prize for any Samsung monitor after touching this shit, that's for sure.

I've also had a Galaxy Spica android phone. That was the last time I actually bought anything from Samsung... My god that was a horrible phone. My experience in general is that while there is often something in every product that is quite good, there is always also something else that is absolutely horrible. In one thing it's an overly complicated UI. On another thing it's the hardware quality in general. On a third thing the software is riddled with annoying bugs. etc... Always something will disappoint.

But who knows, maybe they make good ships? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Heavy_Industries

 

Samsung televisions are very good. Their monitors are... OK.

With the televisions, the last two letters are used for price fixing. Currys will get the BS model, whereas Argos will get the BA model. The BA model will have a silver stripe on the base, the BS will have a red stripe. When you try and get Currys to price match, they'll tell you it's a different TV.

 

Hmm, the full name of this monitor was "LS24A300BS/EN". When I was looking for a spare mainboard, as far as I can tell there are no "non-BS" models but there were a "BS/ZA" model, and supposedly the same mainboard was compatible with both EN and ZA. Also the available languages on the OSD were global, so probably these "/XX" letters were used just like on tele's, some superficial token difference...

 

Monitors are shit, the design in the firmware is completely stupid. If the monitor isn't in it's optimum resolution, it will shut off. I have a SyncMaster, but a 2233sw. Got it for free, but honestly they are shit. Avoid them.

 

I have 2x SM2232BW's and they are fantastic.

You cant say "I have 1 model of a samsung monitor and I dont like X about it - SO AVOID THEM ALL, THEY ARE ALL SHIT"

 

If you manage to write a firmware with a bug that stops the monitor from working, you have one bloody serious QA problem. That's enough for me to stay away from Samsung monitors...

When IBM made a hard drive (good ol' 40gb deskstars) with a design fault that made them all eventually die, should we still have gone "hey that's just one model, they're not all bad" instead of recommending people to stay the f*ck away from IBM hard drives?

 

Yeah well, I've heard and listened to others with other models and the same issue arises. Most of the firmwares are similar across most models. The menus are confusing too, they are pretty bad.

 

uh, yes...

Deskstar is the bad model, so dont buy deskstars (and even then, it was only for a certain period of time - latter ones were fine). If only one model has the issue, avoiding all the other models that are fine is stupid.

 

(Sorry for nitpicking, but DeskStar was the name of the entire desktop series, of which only a few models were the infamous "DeathStar")

However, how did we know back then which DeskStar models were reliable? How are we to know today with Samsung monitors? Are we supposed to always buy 2+ years old hardware just to make sure the specific model is reliable or not, or accept that 1 in every X products we buy will break due to design flaws, instead of simply choose another manufacturer which clearly has a better QA process and manage to avoid repeatedly selling broken products?

 

"I have an x year old Acer Monitor and the caps whine when its turned off - AVOID THEM ALL, THEY ARE SHIT"

 

We are not talking about reliability in the monitors above, you are changing the subject to fit your opinion.

The monitors needed a firmware update - this tends to get noticed pretty quickly, often in reviews.

I did my research on my monitors, they got glowing reviews and they work perfectly... and they are samsung.


You cant just tar all models with the same brush because you had an issue with one, thats just silly and is my point before you attempted to twist it. But yes, you are nitpicking over something that happened 12 years ago. It was the GXP series that had the issue (I did say latter ones of that model was fine, which you chose to ignore in the quote), so avoid the GXP series. Simples.

 

The monitor was built in late 2010 - early 2011. The firmware update was released in September 2012.

Also, to quote myself:

"Apart from that, the build-quality is shit (e.g., not held together with scews), the foot is shit (it can tilt a bit, that's it, and I can feel the plastics become looser everytime I do it), and the thing has no features at all (well, very low power consumption and pretty thin very light-weight). For free it's great, but I'll never recommend anyone paying full prize for any Samsung monitor after touching this shit, that's for sure."

And I forgot to mention that the OSD is horribly annoying to use. I.e, I'm not only complaining about the firmware, if it was otherwise a great display I probably would have forgiven it (hey, I've got a great 80gb Intel SSD that could sometimes be reduced to 8 MEGAbyte if not for a firmware update... otoh, name one SSD maker that haven't had firmware issues ).

I didn't ignore it, I responded by asking: how did we know back then which DeskStar models were reliable or not? "Ok so the model they released last year concistently failed after ~12 months, I'm sure the model they released this year is going to be a lot better, they can't be all bad, right?"

 

Something about YMMV....

I could say that Nintendo was crap and to avoid them when I bought my first Gamecube (brand new) to go with just released Metroid Prime. The game disc wouldn't spin at all. A brand spanking new GC that won't work? OMG Nintendo is bad!!!!1!!11ONE! But I didn't go off like that.

I took it back, the knowledgeable men at Funcoland (back when they were cool and worthwhile, not when they were taken over by Gamestop and became dumb store run by idiots) and they were able to verify the GC I got was a dud.

Did I demand a refund because of it? No, I wanted replacement and the second one I got worked fine and still is working after so many years.

Now and then a lemon slips through quality check. You got something that didn't work, odd it's a lemon and not the norm. There's a few exception to this rule such as the infamous Deathstar fiasco. IBM made good quality hard drives before the Deathstar, and after selling off the name to Hitachi, the drive quality went back up to industry average.

 

I do realize that occational manufacturing defects are something we have to accept unless we want everything to be really, really, expensive. However, when it's a design flaw like early Xbox 360, Deathstar or Samsung monitors with crashing firmware - that is, models with 100% failure rate - it's no longer an anecdote. Staying away from 360 is hard since I want to play games on it and there's no competitors to choose from (for playing 360 games that is), however there are plenty of manufacturers who manage to build hard drives and monitors every day, that makes just as good products performance-wise, but that so far *hasn't* had any fatal design faults. Maybe they have been lucky, then it's my loss for missing a good product/price, but what if they actually do have better QA? Why would I keep giving my money to a company which is likely to have worse QA?

And of course, it's not like I've been spending the last 10 years staying away from everything IBM/Hitachi. But the few years after the DeathStar I weren't concidering an IBM drive, and the next years I'm not concidering Samsung monitors.

 

Personally, I set up my monitors once and that's it - no need to use the OSD again. I had an Eizo that had a terrible OSD, but it was a great pro monitor.

I'd rather judge a company on their customer service and how well they respond to issues than there having been a firmware problem. Unfortunately, Samsung are notorious for developing terrible interface software for their phones and not giving a damn when customers complain.... so that's not really a plus for them! Still, their televisions are nice. When they work.

It's probably better to get a monitor from a company with a good reputation, though!

 

All the previous models were fine. Any other manufacturer who had all working drives would be in exactly the same position - they all worked fine, until they had a bad one.

You would imagine having a bad design would give them insight into not doing it again, other companies not so much. You had just as much chance with someone else as you did with IBM - proven by the fact it didnt happen again!

If they consistently, year on year, model on model - sure. But as I said all alone, you cant judge them all from a bad model. Lots and lots of them? sure. But thats not what we are talking about here.

 

yay, someone who understands.