Something happened to the big monitor, the Sylvania F92. We got it free from Al and Nadine, knowing full well it had some problems. It sometimes doesn't turn fully ON. You know how monitors have this "sleep" mode where the screen turns black even though it has power? Well, this one sometimes turns ON but never really wakes UP, so the little light that normally shines green, stays amber. And the screen stays black. Blank. Whatever.
Over the course of experimentation, we found out that we could get it to turn on consistently - completely on, display and all - by turning the monitor on first, waiting for the "sizzle" when the high-voltage transformer is energized, then quickly turning on the computer. It doesn't work the other way around; that is, if you turn on the computer before you turn on the monitor, or turn them both on at the same time, the monitor light will remain amber and the display will remain blank.
Until this week.
Suddenly, for no reason I can fathom, the Magic Method didn't work. The monitor just wouldn't come on. And, naturally, it happened on a day when the kids had friends over to play computer games. I was angry, frustrated, and extremely short-tempered, being put on the spot about it. It's like all computers, they only fail when you really need them to work.
Has anyone ever had a PC that worked 100% of the time? That's never happened in this house, not when I keep buying them piece by piece. Because I can't conceptualize of handing over $500 (or more) for a complete system. I'm too much of a cheapskate. And an engineer.
Anyway, I took the monitor apart to see if there was anything I could do to get it going again. And found out that the silly thing has a microcontroller and a serial EEPROM and a lot of voltage-control chips. So I'm thinking that the problem is that the microcontroller is trying to boot up, and it won't activate the high-voltage circuitry until it finishes, and for some reason, it's not finishing.
In other words, a software problem.
Typical. Guess we'll be doubling-up on monitors for awhile. No telling how long it'll be out.
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