Short Circuit

My desktop monitor blew-up Friday night. 🙁 That’s the second monitor to do that to me. The first time it happened I was in Island Park, Idaho and the temperatures were reaching about 20 degrees below freezing. I made the mistake of turning the propane heat on one morning before the computer. When I finally did turn the computer on, BOOM!, the condensation caused a major short inside the monitor and sent a bunch of smoke out. This time, it was way different. While it is getting cold enough to cause some condensation when I turn my propane heater, the monitor had been on for a while. This time it shorted out on a reboot. Weird, it was second hand, and when I looked inside today, I could see that whoever owned before me had spilled some type of dark pop, like a cola or root beer in it. I think it may have fried a few parts enough to expose some wires, which finally just shorted out completely on Friday and burned a few additional component.

So, I’m back to my old stand-by, the first monitor that came with our families first ever PC. This thing was built to last! It’s a Hewlwtt Packard D1182A. It came with the Hewlett Packard Vectra 386. My display has gone from 17 inch 1024×768 to 640×480 on the 14 incher. 🙁 But, at least I have something.