Quite a while back, I seemed to be a bit of a //c magnet. By now, I've got three //cs and a //c+. It seemed to me that in order to complete the //c experience, I should get one of the little 9" monitors designed for the //c (model G090H). I found one on eBay, represented by the two photos from the auction below:
Didn't cost much, I bought it, it arrived. Here's the box it arrived in:
And here's the shape it arrived in, given that the person who shipped it seemed to think that shopping bags would protect the heavy monitor and very heavy stand. To be fair, I knew before opening the box that it was not going to end well, given all of the rattling around I could hear.
For a brief little while, I discussed collecting the insurance (which had been taken out) with the seller, but first of all, getting the insurance payment is a big hassle (and it has to be initiated by the seller), and as far as I can tell the best I was going to get was something like $20 anyway. So, that was abandoned (particularly because the seller stopped responding to email, but I was just as happy to give up on it). I didn't plug this monitor in, though, because I really didn't know how bad the damage was and I wanted to look inside first and shake out all the loose bits. It stayed in its box for probably two months.
Meanwhile, I got another one. This one was much less yellow, although it too had a little crack. I'm starting to think that these things are really quite fragile. But overall, it looked nice.
However, when I plugged it in to try it, the picture was very, very dim. Very dim. Unusably dim. As far as I can tell, this is not really solvable except by replacing the tube. Great. So, now I had one busted up monitor that may or may not work at all, and one nice one that didn't really work adequately. I do actually have a third one on its way to me now, but I nevertheless decided today to deal with what I already had. The plan was to figure out how bad the damage is to the first one, and then to switch the cases, since at least if the first one worked at all, it couldn't be worse.
So, I pulled them apart, shook out all the loose plastic bits from the broken one, and tested them out.
Happily, the one with the broken case worked just fine (pictured above). Nice and bright. So, I went ahead and cleaned up the unbroken case and put the guts from the broken one into it. I didn't take a picture, but it looks just fine, and a little bit cleaner. Nice and white still too.
I tested the other one as well, and, surprisingly, it didn't seem dim anymore. I'm starting to suspect that I gave up on it too soon, that in fact it was ok, I was just fiddling with the knobs in the back and neglecting the knob on the side. But, whatever, it was interesting opening them up, and I got to clean out the inside of the case as well in the process. So, then I turned my attention to piecing the smashed up case back together. I didn't have all of the pieces, or at least I didn't know where they all were, but it appears that I had all of the major ones. With a bit of superglue, I managed to get it all back in basically working order. It's not perfect, but it's not bad. Interestingly, the superglue seems to immediately remove the yellow coloring, so at the cracks I do have little areas of white plastic now. Maybe I'll do a full retr0brite treatment at some point.
Once reassembled, it looks relatively presentable. If you look closely, you can see the cracks, but it's workable. Also, this was the CRT that I thought was dim. At least now, it's not.
So, good. I'll soon have three of these little monitors, and at least the two that I already have work fine and have been cleaned up and made presentable. I still, all told, have fewer monitors than computers, but I don't think I need all of the //cs to be out and functioning. These monitors are little and they're monochrome, but their size and the convenience of the stands make it probably worth having all three.
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