Old CRT monitor started smoking, turned out to be a cap I ignored for 2 years

I had this Sony Trinitron from 1999 sitting in my basement. Used it for retro gaming every weekend. Started hearing this faint buzzing last December but I figured it was fine. Then last Tuesday it literally started smoking out the back. Took it to a repair guy and he pointed at a blown capacitor right on the power board. He said I could have fixed it for $3 and 20 minutes if I caught it earlier. Now the whole board is fried and I'm out a perfectly good monitor. Anyone else ignore a weird noise from old gear and regret it later?

2 comments

2 Comments

webb.christopher1d ago

oh come on man, you can't blame the capacitor for that. you heard buzzing for like eight months and did nothing. that's on you, not the monitor. i had a CRT that made a high pitched whine for years and it still works fine. sometimes gear just complains a little. you let that thing smoke up your basement and now you're acting like it was inevitable. it wasn't. you could have looked up the issue on a forum or just opened it up and poked around with a multimeter. instead you let it cook itself. that's 100% user error.

emeryn831d ago

Right? "Let it cook itself" is exactly what I was thinking. If you hear buzzing for that long and don't at least Google "CRT buzzing capacitor" or poke around the power board with a screwdriver, you're just asking for it to blow.