4 Samsung Syncmasters 205bw, 3 great, 1 Yellowish/Dark

K

kittmaster

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 27, 2004
Messages
316
I've owned 2 of these from the day they were on the shelf, they are my daily office monitors running off a pair of GTX 550 Ti's. 2 via DVI-D and 2 via HDMI. My two originals are very crisp, bright, and the "whites" and color vibrancy still like out of the box.

I recently added 2 more of the same exact models, one matches my two originals but the other is I want to describe it as "yellowish" or darker. I've defaulted all the monitors to their default values by pressing menu to get a menu and holding the enter key which restores to out of the box settings. The 3 match, the 1 doesn't. Both of the "new" monitors are running via the HDMI's (which I'm using a DVD-D to HDMI adapter to plug into the DVI-D of both new monitors).

I previously had two mismatched regular TVs as monitors via the HDMI and both even at odd resolutions where both vibrant and neither had the yellow tint/dark thing going on....which tells me the drivers and vid cards should be ok since it was just a monitor swap.

Visually there is nothing wrong with the yellowish monitor, it tracks ok, I really have nothing to bitch about.....just that it appears "darker" or more yellow and I'm not sure how to resolve it.

If they were different models I could see it.....but I have 4 identical monitors.

Any thoughts on what I should do to correct it? Never ran into this issue before and I'm scratching my head. Age could be thing, but there is nothing wrong that I can see.

I've tried driving the blue channel up a bit....but that makes it wonky and still not a "brilliant" white when I use something like microsoft word and span a single white sheet across 4 monitors.

Ugg....1st world problems.
 
The real question is where did you find more 2006 monitors? Thats a stretch of time even for a LCD. Considering brand new current monitors of the same brand and batch even have differences in color, I'd be surprised if monitors that old had any commonality with color settings.
 
ePay....used of course...but still functional. I just thought it was odd since 3 are near identical (to me) and 1 odd duck.
 
Try swapping cables. I've had cables go bad before that caused a change in color.
 
wra18th said:
Try swapping cables. I've had cables go bad before that caused a change in color.
Click to expand...

I tried the HDMI cable from my Bedroom 50" which is known good.....same result. Tried swapping from Vid Card A to B, same result.

I did find one thing funny, when the computer went to sleep .... I woke it with the mouse......that monitor came back as mostly "red" with the desktop image that is assigned to it.....I had to cycle the power to get it to restore the proper RGB...I'm wondering if the power caps are on their way out.....it has a high power use time in the service menu.....showing almost 24k hours. My other "newer" monitor hours are like 10K ...
 
Last edited:
Many monitors of this era used different panels for the same model depending on the mfg date/place, the best way to match would be to use a calorimeter to set all of them to the same white point first.
 
kittmaster said:
I tried the HDMI cable from my Bedroom 50" which is known good.....same result. Tried swapping from Vid Card A to B, same result.

I did find one thing funny, when the computer went to sleep .... I woke it with the mouse......that monitor came back as mostly "red" with the desktop image that is assigned to it.....I had to cycle the power to get it to restore the proper RGB...I'm wondering if the power caps are on their way out.....it has a high power use time in the service menu.....showing almost 24k hours. My other "newer" monitor hours are like 10K ...
Click to expand...
I think you found the answer. And those caps do go bad for sure.
 
undertaker2k8 said:
Many monitors of this era used different panels for the same model depending on the mfg date/place, the best way to match would be to use a calorimeter to set all of them to the same white point first.
Click to expand...

Any recommendations on a unit that would do a decent job for a hobby budget?
 
Small update, I opened up the unit with the help of a great video on YT:



I knew what I was in for, but was nice to have an "easy" way to open the unit without damaging it cosmetically as I couldn't find any screws!!!

With that, 2 of the inverter caps were swollen > 1000uF @25VDC, and 1 470uF@25VDC was also swollen. The other 2 which are on the radar for replacement were not swollen.....however, I replaced all 5 to be sure.

Reassembled the unit, the screen is a bit brighter and less "yellow" but just "barely" a bit less brighter than my other 3.....so mock improvement....

Of course.....curiosity got to me....wanted to verify the backlights which are CCFL. Well, turns out there isn't a single video on the planet that shows how to review the backlight themselves.......sooooooo... I took the risk of taking the panel apart again....slowly and methodically.....turns out it isn't that bad.....this model has triple CCFL tubes that run along the top and bottom of the unit....I played the game of twister and was able to see that all 6 tubes where actively lit.....so they weren't damaged....but then it dawned on me....these tubes have almost 24K hours on them.....they say they can go 50k....but that is for the replacements people are hocking....I have no idea what the OEM lifetime is......but at 24K hours....this thing was on for almost 11 years.....I reassembled the unit since I don't have any replacements on hand.....my guess is that I need to replace the CCFLs which now I know how to access them without damaging the panel etc etc.

The real problem is finding the replacements....Samsung was useless...and when I contacted the repair places they told me to go to......even they said......Samsung doesn't list CCFL replacements even for today's panels. OoooooKay...well I found Plazmo and after a bunch of research....I have a 20.1" panel...found this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/3036510246...mtId,recoId=recoId,recoPos=recoPos,chnl=mkcid

After scrubbing Plazmo's site and others like it....this is the only 3 tube @20.1" with these exact connectors on it....but it says they are for an LG panel...for $50 I may just risk buying them.....my gut says that it will drop right in and restore the panel to day one condition.

So if/when I get to that point....I'll update this thread again.
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top