Hi

After lurking at this forum for awhile I finaly got going on my own DIY projector. Seems like most built theirs back in 06, but still I like the idea and thought I would have a go at it.
So I got myself a monitor for starters, got hold of an used Dell 1503FP and started stripping this monitor. I did ran into some problems when stripping but no major problems. It's just that the monitor refuses to display any picture, while I tested it after completing the stripp.
I do get power and there is some sort of reaction on the monitor, it goes totaly black as it wants to power up and display all the glorious pictures. I feel like its something I'm missing, I've tried hooking it up to my comuter using vga and I've also tried using Dells self test for monitors but nothing.

I tested the monitor a bit in the stripp, before removing the backlight and holding bracket.
Some picture will ilustrate, and might help troubleshooting



The controller board, still mounted but showes all the cables and how it was mounted from stock.





In this state it still worked, last test before completing the strip.





And the monitor completly stripped.




So could anyone please help me figuring this one out?
Or have I manged to brick the monitor?

And I've tried searching before posting, but if I missed anything feel free to hotlink me in the correct direction.


Best Regards
Sjukstugan

EDIT: Have been trieng to figuring this one out on my own, I have been able to get the monitor working properly. It worked well for aprox 5 min, then I turned of the monitor, disconnected the power cord and the vga cord and got something to eat, after returning I thought I would fire up the monitor once more to comfirm the fix, but now I was back on square one, no pictur it just turns black (instead of see-through). I've also noted that the monitor also sometimes displays som vertical lines instead of being totaly black, it is though in fact sometimes totaly black. During my testings I haven't changed anything between tests (only treing to get some response out of the buttons on the monitor, and changing resolution on the comp for the monitor), and I have succesfully got picture 3 times when powering on the monitor. Anyone got any idea what's wrong?
Also I do appologise for my somewhat vague topic.

EDIT 2: Have tested the monitor a couple of times, just wanted to ad that I've now also gotten a black picture with some white dots. And I have also once got the correct picture, but with some vertical lines on it. I haven't been able to pinpoint what's making the monitor acting weird though so any help is welcome. I now suspect a glitchy conntact or a grounding error. I do though find it strange to be a clitchy contact as the monitor never changed the picture while it's turned on, not what I'm aware of anyhow. And I tried to ground the device properly, but no change still mostly black screen or vertical lines (when it gets the vertical lines it's still quite dark but there i some brighter parts making up quite wide lines). Is there anyhing I can have overlocked?

EDIT 3: Ok I think I got this one figured out, but I still don't got a real fix for it. The problem seems to have something to do whit those green stripes around the monitor that I supose sends the elctric current into the liquid crystals and makes em line up correctly. Anyhow when I move the one on the short side of the monitor it changes the display from perfrect picture to disorted picture to black picture. So it's defintly these that's causing the problem. I don't got any fix for this though, anyone with any good input?
The only fix I could think of is to mout the lcd so that these flaps are in perfect position and produces a good picture. But this solution will make the build very sensible, so I'm open for ideas.

Anyhow it's getting late so I'm going to get some sleep, these problems can wait until tommorow.

Some of these monitors require that the controller boards be grounded, like they were when they were mounted to the monitor chassis. You might try that...

I tried gorunding the controller board, but it didn't change the behaviour of the monitor.

I did though only ground the controller board, not those flaps on the side (what are those called anyway). But what I could make out of it they wasen't grounded from stock.
I'll try the monitor once again today, and do the grounding more properly, I tested the monitor quite late last night so it's possible I didn't ground it properly.

Thanks for the reply anyhow, and do you got any other solution besides checking grounding?

I've tested to ground the monitor as it was grounded before stripping the monitor, but still got same issue.

So I'm now directing my attention to the green flaps around the monitor. If I jiggle the green flap on the short side (the one not directly connected to the controller), it changes the picture. I'ts quite hard to get a proper picture though, so I suppose there is some sort of glitch in these. So does anyone know if this is even possible to fix?
Are there anyway at all to maybe replace these?
I suppose not, so am I better of just buying a new monitor and hope for better luck next time?


EDIT: Sorry, just realize I should just have edit my previous enry in this thread instead of creating a new reply. So I apologize for bumping my own thread, bad forum behavoiur from my part.

Meh, I'm not overly worried about it a tiny bit of double-posting.

If the contacts to those are loose then it may bhelp to try keeping them at the same angle as they were in the monitor case.

The contacts themselves are very delicate, and won't take much abuse before they rip. At that point, it's all over, I've never known one to be repaired at that state.

I also figured they would be quite delicate, and I've handled em with care. Anyhow I still get picture sometimes, so I'll leave it for now and push on with the other parts for my projector. Will place an order for a lens package and lamp set tommorow, and then I'll start constructing the box. And hopefully I'll get the monitor to work when evrything is in place, worst case senario I'll replace the lcd with another one. It's quite hard to get hold of 15" monitors today though, but on the plus side it's possible to get em quite cheap second hand.