#Brown spot on monitor:^(
19 messages in this thread
Hello,
I've got an anoying problem, I just noticed a 'brown spot' in the lower
left hand corner of my Seiko 1440 monitor. I was hoping there was some
kind of deguassing circuitry built in and would do away with it when I
turned it on this morning, no go. Could direct sunlight cause such a
thing? I just set up the computer here and had the blinds closed but a
spot of light might have snuck through. Any ideas? Thanks.
-Sean
The degaussing circuit in your monitor is proably on a timer or thermal
switch. Try turning it off for more than a few minutes, and when you turn
it on you should hear an extra low thumping noise as the auto-degausser
kicks in for a second.
Most monitors do have built in degaussers, esp brand names like Seiko.
Erik Flom
Thanks for the reply, Erik. I left the monitor off overnight and turned
it on again this morning and it still had the spot, bummer! I wonder if
they ever have the degauss circuitry connected to a counter on the on/off
switch? I wish I had my manual handy. Does the brown spot sound like it
needs degaussing to you? In lieu of an auto-degausser I wonder if it can
be done manually with a copper coil (externally)?
-Sean
Sean;
First, it is not likely that external light has harmed your monitor.
As far as I know, all manufactures and models of color monitors degauss
when powered up cold (some do so even if shut off and immediately turned
back on — which is NOT a good idea to do to any electronic equipment and
most especially not to a monitor).
Unfortunately there are lots of esoteric things that can happen to
monitors. Significant differential heating of the face of the CRT can
warp the shadow mask permanently but that would usually be described as a
dark spot rather than giving it a color such as you describe.
Really intense sunlight can damage the phosphors (and will do so in such a
fashion as to cause a color shift) but I have never heard of such a thing
happening in a relatively short period of time.
It is also possible that your monitor's degauss circuitry is not working.
If you have access to an external degausser (and some knowledge as to how
to use it properly) you might want to give that a try.
-bill
Bill,
Thanks for the comprehensive response. For some reason the spot looks
smaller today, could be my imagination. I don't have external degauss
equipment. I'll try to find my owners manual and give Seiko a call to see
what they've got to say about the possibility of the degauss circuitry not
working. Thanks again.
-Sean
I had a problem with a Samsung VGA monitor I bought awhile back. It seemed
that whenever it was oriented a certain way, I'd get a discoloration in
one corner – I'd rotate it down 10 degrees, and the prolem would go away.
(Eventually, I moved and it went away for good! :^)
But seriously, I don't know what the problem was in my case or yours.
Have you tried moving or swiveling the monitor (Also, did you move the
monitor recently to cause this? Are there any speakers, other magnets,
near the side of your monitor? Etc?)
Erik Flom
More tips! Thanks, Erik, keep 'em coming. I recently moved the monitor
from England to CA and it looked fine for a couple of days. The other day
though, we were doing some rearranging of furniture and it might have
happened after we moved things around. It was moved gently though. I
tried swivelling it and picked it up and put it down and did a little
percussion calibration <g>, but none of it seemed to change the spot. I
thought of the magnet deal, but the only one I have nearby is a cheap
battery powered speaker, sans battery. Thanks again for your help, I'll
keep pluggin'. BTW, are you going to WOCA?
-Sean
Sean;
Erik has an excellent suggestion. An intense magnetic field can disturb
the monitor in just a single small region of the screen (though usually
brown is not the color effect). In any event a continous external field
might show a change if the monitor is repositioned (possibly not
immediately).
When something has magnitized the monitor internals (a one shot thing) you
can also get a distortion that will fade with time as the degauss circuit
slowly removes the effect over multiple operations. The automatic degauss
is not particularly strong… it's just persistant.
-bill
Bill,
As far as I know the monitor hasn't been exposed to any large magnetic
fields. It might be my imagination, but the spot seems to be shrinking.
I wish I had recorded it's initial size. It removed some of my stress to
know that the degauss circuitry isn't nessasarily supposed to take care of
things the first time around. Thanks for the help.
-Sean
Sean;
Good, I hope that it clears up completely for you.
-bill
Thanks, Bill.
-Sean
I won't be at WOCA, but I'll be watching CIS for status reports! :^)
Have you tried moving the speaker? (It's not the batteries, rather the
large magnet in the coil of the speaker that you need to worry about.)
Good Luck,
Erik Flom
Hello Erik,
Not knowing much about speakers, I just assumed that the magnets in
them were powered by the non-existant batteries. That's what I get for
thinking I know something (I wonder how many other 'facts' like that are
stuck in my head?)! Holy Cow! I just picked up that speaker and moved it
closer and the spot goes away when I hold the speaker right next to the
spot! Maybe the deguasser is 'figuring' that field into it and changing a
sign somewhere. I'll try turning it off and on again and see if it helps
with the speaker being further away…it's not gone yet, but definately
looks better. Thanks a bunch, I was starting to get depressed.
Moving on…having never been to a computer show of any kind it will be
interesting to see if I pick up any tidbits at all worth while. Going
tomorrow and if I see anything worth repeating I'll relay it. Talk to you
later.
-Sean
Glad you found the problem!
Have fun at the show! (This LightRave people are talking about is kind of
interesting, try to find out what NewTek thinks….)
Thanks,
Erik Flom
I wish I would have gotten your message before I left today to go to WOCA,
Erik. This was the only day I was going to go. I *really* wish I had
brought some notetaking utensils! The bits of news that stuck (and
they're going to be biased to my A2000, sorry not very relevent for the
AGA folks) in my head were: Commodore is going to release ADos 3.x for
non-AGA machines, although it's not going to be called 3.x (says Lew
Eggbrecht (sp?)). There's going to be a CD32 compatable internal CD-ROM
drive for the A4000 and I think he said there is going to be an external
one for the A1200. [Is any of this news yet? I'm not sure how out of it I
am.] The full screen NTSC video that was being played on the CD32 (with
the MPEG module) was pretty incredible. I wouldn't consider myself a
videophile but it looked as good as any VHS I've ever seen.
(I think) they said that a AAA prototype should be running by late next
year if there aren't any screwups between here and there. They're CMOS
and it was said that a laptop could possibly be made using them. When
asked if they were going to liscense out the ECS chip set to third parties
the response was they were looking into products that wouldn't compete
with the Amiga.
I didn't ask anyone about LightRave (and didn't see anything) because
a)I don't know anything about it and,
b)I didn't get your message to ask until I got home 8(,
sorry. I did see a pretty neat demo of the Toaster 4000 by a guy who
works for 'Amblin Imaging. I think he's the head animator on the SeaQuest
show. He says they're using around 50 Toaster stations (two per animator)
and are really looking forward to getting their Screamer (which he said
would do the same work as 20-30 Toasters). I hope I'm getting these facts
straight as video isn't really my thing and so probably didn't give it the
attention it deserved. He said there are going to be around 70 scenes of
Toaster animation in the pilot of the show which is on tomorrow night.
I'm pretty much broke so the only thing I bought was PageStream 2.2 for
$70. I thought it was a pretty good deal and being on a budget I figured
I could live without the cutting edge. Sorry this is so sketchy, but so
is my memory. If you (or anyone else) care to pick my brains feel free.
<g>
-Sean
I was there too, and you seem pretty accurate to me. The only quibble I
have is on the AAA chips, Eggebrecht stated the first iteration is running
as of last week, and blitting 25 bit images around the screen. The second
iteration (with the bug fixes) should be done first quarter of next year.
He then stated that it would be "possible" to ship a machine based on this
chipset by late third quarter of next year. He said lots of other
interesting things, like that CBM would give out no-cost licenses to make
things they wanted available but couldn't spare the time to make, like the
Multi-serial board and the networking card. The CD32 apparently sucked up
all the engineering for a long time, so the DSP has been delayed until
first quarter next year, and RTG until the release of the AAA machines.
The 4000T should be released by the end of November. BTW, current
production of the CD32 is 22,000 per week (!) which represents only a two
month ramp-up from 0. It looks like the Philippines plant is really
getting their act together. They said that the machines are being shipped
as fast as they can make them, and the U.S. launch will be "soft" and
restricted to major markets at first due to a lack of machines. The CD32,
IMHO, is a truely cool machine. There, more than anyone wanted to know.
<G>
//
-Karl \X/ Amiga and Autopilot: The *only* way to fly!
Thanks for filling in some holes, Karl. It's amazing the things that I
forget. I wish I had seen some CISers there, bummer. I looked for people
with scotch tape on the forehead or the dollar bill bow ties, none of the
above. Maybe nobody recognized me because I was using duct tape instead
of scotch. <G>
-Sean
Hey Sean; Appreciate the report. As one that is about 3,000 miles away,
any word is useful.
-bill
Glad to be of some service, but like I said I really wish I had taken
notes.
-Sean