[tlug] Dying Monitor?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

pjacobs@example.com writes:

 > I've got a Samsung SyncMaster 245B external monitor that
 > has started acting rather strangely. There are times when I power it on,
 > connect it to my laptop, and screen remains completely black. Then after
 > a while, seemingly out of the blue, the screen comes on.

Sounds like something warms up, metal expands, usable contact is made,
and power comes on.  Then something ("something" is NaN, so
"something" != "something" sometimes :-).[1]

 > The blue power light remains on throughout, so I'm thinking it's
 > not an issue with the power supply.

Could be a connection to a power supply.

 > Has anyone ever seen such behavior with external monitors?

Sure.  Not to mention internal ones, electric shavers, and margarita
mixers.

 > Is it anything perhaps easily repairable by either myself or
 > perhaps a shop, or something I can try?

You could take it to a shop, but intermittents like this one often can
be expensive to diagnose.  The usual way to diagnose issues like this
is to power up and start jiggling stuff to see if there's a faulty
contact or wire.  But monitors use a fair amount of power, even modern
flat panels, so my initial reaction would be "Kids, these stunts are
performed by professionals.  Don't try this at home!"  (Personally, I
don't do it on anything that uses more than one AAA battery. :-)

 > Is this my monitor's way of telling me it's dying a slow death?

That would be my guess, yes, but at least theoretically it might just
be a loose connection that you could screw down or resolder.

Footnotes: 
[1]  Following the IEEE 754 standard for floating point computation.