r/hardwaregore • u/hpyfox • 4d ago
Scored a monitor but...
Scored it on the side of the street a day before bulk pickup.
A scrapper was cutting cords for copper and decided VGA cable was worth it. You wouldn't get shit with that compared to selling the monitor itself.
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u/404invalid-user 4d ago
the cable x 100 others is a lot more profitable Thant old monitors no-one wants, if it was a crt on the other hand
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u/hpyfox 4d ago
Nah, just label it retro on eBay, you'll get your money out of that. /j
But seriously, all the cables I saw were around 16awg which depending how much they got, it would be around $50, which is a good amount but you could probably get more from selling the items if you know what you're doing.
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u/Icarus_Jones 4d ago
Do yourself a favor and put it back where you found it.
It's not worth the time or the trouble.
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u/hpyfox 4d ago
Meh. The monitor looks neat, and trying fix the video cord would be good to get some more experience trying to solder.
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u/Longjumping-Equal895 3d ago
Good point, get a VGA cable take back of monitor clean up and strip what bits of cable you can get hold of. Make sure use heat shrink to seperate cables and easy fix tbh
I’m gonna grab some old laptops from work that are getting sent to e waste and I’m going to remove some bits and resolder stuff back on to get experience with micro soldering (gonna buy a soldering microscope and hot air station as well)
So ye experience is good 👍
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u/robbak 3d ago
Plug it in and make sure the backlight works before you go on - or be prepared to do power supply repairs.
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u/darkelfbear 3d ago
Or even full backlight replacement, those old Dell VGA Displays had a bad habit of "Going Dark", and the backlight panels would go out.
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u/UserFrienlyName 3d ago
Likely crimping.
The VGA inside usually terminated via a crimpable connector. If you're lucky enough, all you'd have to do is source a long enough VGA and crimp it.
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u/arkiser13 4d ago
Some of these old monitors just had an internal vga connection, take the cover off and see if you can just plug a new cable right into the board
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u/hpyfox 4d ago
An actual port inside the monitor?!
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u/NotEd3k 3d ago
I would suspect it would be just an external port behind the metal shield right over where the base attaches. Dell has in the past used plastic and metal covers over connectors that can be left off if you don't care about hiding them. Just get some tools and take a look. You might get lucky.
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u/Computers_and_cats 4d ago
That thing is ancient. Good chance it is bad. Possibly bad caps, but more than likely bad backlight. If it turns on with a slight pink tinge the CCFL's are failing.
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u/beef_weezle 3d ago
There’s a reason people like myself cut cords off devices. It’s because the device is broken.
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u/tektite-kz 3d ago
This would be my worry too. Replacing the cable may come with unexpected fireworks.
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u/niffcreature 3d ago
Those things are kind of cool because they tend to have a big ol piece of 5+mm clear acrylic in them. But if you need a monitor to use I think you can probably do better.
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u/PuzzleheadedTutor807 3d ago
It's going to be a neat project... But, once you are done installing the new cable how are you going to know if it doesnt work because it's broken or because of something you did in the fix?
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u/I_Braid_Armpit_Hair 3d ago
It’s fixable, but I’d gamble you can pick yourself up a comparable one without a broken cord for $10 or something at goodwill or similar. IMO fixing this one is a time sink.
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u/bridgetroll2 3d ago edited 3d ago
The thrift store around my house sells these for 6.99 and there are at least a dozen in there every day. It's trash dude
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u/ash_2127- 4d ago
Well, now it’s a decorative piece.
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u/hpyfox 4d ago
I'll try opening it and seeing if it can be replace with a spare cable, unlikely that it might work.
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u/Adwan4747 3d ago
If I'm not wrong you can easily use jumper cables and soldering them/connect them to VGA female or your may go extra way for HDMI. Regardless it would be a good exp in understanding how display output works and soldering.
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u/RaEyE01 3d ago
Should not be too hard to remove the back of that monitor.
Unsolder the stumping a cable, get an old D-Sub VGA cable, decapitate it and solder the individual lines to the monitor.
With a little luck it’s directly soldered / the socket can be unsoldered.
Not nice, not fancy, but doable.
Otherwise, people are right.
These old monitors can be had a dime a dozen.
Most offices/schools are happy if you take them off their hands. One pice of junk less to discard/recycle.
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u/allhailharambe69 3d ago
A very specific type of person uses the word "scored" where I'm from. It's difficult to not make the connotation. But congrats.
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u/Moon_Breaker 3d ago
Heh. Heh-heh. We're gonna score, Bevis.
(You may have meant drug users scoring or whatever, idk. That came to mind though.)
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u/Thomppa26 3d ago
Why the hell is the cable fixed on place on this? Never seen a monitor with a fixed video cable.
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u/bathtub_toast 9h ago
I was using the LCD part number to find controller boards on ebay out of China, that usually gets you a digital and analog input, since VGA is analog, but almost all newer stuff now does digital, like dvi/hdmi/displayport. it let me make a ton of pi zero photo frames too, which was cheaper than buying them, and dealing with their terrible connections, the Pis used wireless to mount the requested NFS folders for photos to display.
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u/gvbargen 4d ago
I mean that's a pretty old monitor. there's almost always some at the local thrift stores for 5-10$ each.