OMG, where’s Speedwell? She’d be so happy and pat me on the back tonight. I had a problem with my monitor and I fixed it. Worst kind of problem you can have, an intermittent, where you touch the PC board anywhere and the thing goes berserk. The vertical was collapsing to about 1/4 size, driving me nuts, making the ‘puter useless.
It has been doing this for several weeks, but I could whack it on the side and it would straighten up – for a while. But if I dared breathe too hard at the dang thing it would go nutzo again, and it finally got to where it would not work at all.
I had to go to Macon, GA, about a 2-hr drive, today, actually we went and spent the night last night, as I was scheduled for a cervical myelogram at a hospital there today. I’ve had 7 c-spine surgeries, and things have been well with my neck for a couple of years, but a few weeks ago my left hand went numb and my left shoulder started hurting so bad I wanted to snatch my scapula out and beat that sucker flat. (Oh, scapulas are flat anyway. Disregard.) OK, I got back from the myelogram test today and found the computer monitor toes-up. Nothing for it, but to tear it open and see if I could find the problem.
I didn’t feel too hot, just off that diagnostic test, and this thing made me feel worse. But I started putzing around on the circuit board and luck would have it – I touched a particular IC and yikes, the picture came back! Oh, was I happy! This could have dragged on for days; intermittent problems are sometimes so hard to find. My old AFSC was Acft Elect Nav Sys Tech, (328X1) and over the years I had so many intermittent writeups I can’t count them. But you couldn’t just sign it off and let it go, the system (usually the radar) would just fail again, and your ass would be on the line, if you know what I mean. SMSG’s, Capt’s, Lt.Col’s, all would be on your case, so I just got to where I would NOT sign off a writeup until I found and fixed something that was broke. You wanna know, MY birds flew code 1, no writeups, more often than not.
OK, I got out the old soldering iron, and just soldered around the IC, and glory, when I powered it up, it worked, and I couldn’t make it quit. Case closed, monitor fixed, I guess the happy herky bird fixer/’puter engineer will sign the writeup off and go to bed.
‘Nite, all!
Joe
P.S. Myelogram results 11/16. I’ll let ya know.