Monitor Question

[windozeuser]

Today in school I hit a small jackpot. The "dumb" school admin tested a bunch of monitors and declared them "dead". The story goes something like this:

The school in the summer time took out like 10 ViewSonic E90FMB 19 inch Flatscreen CRT monitors to clean in the summer. They set them on a concrete floor and never cleaned them for like 3 months. Then they declared all of them dead cause they wouldn't work. So I went down and got all of them, and I was thinking what could cause 2 year old monitors to fail in the masses. So I was thinking that the concrete floor put moisture in the monitors. I got my heat gun and dryed the inside of them. I got 5 out of 10 to work. I brought 3 home today they work perfect.

My Question is was it mositure and why does concrete do that to electronics? Also, why didn't it cause the monitors to completely fry and did it shorten the life of the monitors? These monitors are only a couple years old, and I'm running all of them right now with my old linux boxes THEY LOOK GREAT!.

As for the monitors that I couldn't revive I plan to strip them for parts.

 

[dknguyen]

Components have a humidity rating (makes sense for things like sonar transducers but I don't know exactly why for ICs! but it doesn't have to do with shorting them...not as much as you might think anyway since you need certain solutes in the water for the water to be conductive.). Empirically, it would seem it was the moisture since it worked after you took a blow dryer to it. It could have to do more with the moisture affecting the tube and electron gun more than the actual ICs.

 

[philba]

I would guess the switches got condensation in them. Cold floor, humid air, cycle that 90 times.

I'd bet if they rest were kept in a warm and low humidity environment for a week or two they would also work..