Friday, May 30, 2014

Witch Ahead

Do you know what these tiny things are?  They're the capacitors of a big screen tv.  If they go bad, you get a flickering screen of death and eventually it won't turn on at all...  

 

We were given this big screen tv by a co-worker of Robb's that got fed up with the "Blair Witch Project" style flashing and had bought a new one.  Since these have no trade in value, he was going to pitch it.  After some research on the world wide interweb, Robb found that the problem was probably these little doodads and he brought the tv home.  It sat in one person's bedroom for many months with the promise that we'd order the capacitors and fix it for her.  It eventually died.  And we didn't remember to order the capacitors until this past week.  They took a while to get here but finally arrived late yesterday via UPS.  

The new ones were too big.  Almost twice the size and thickness of these...  I decided what's the worst that could happen??  It was already broken.   I had to do some creative tilting with the new capacitors.  
Sorry I didn't get a pic of THAT!  It looks hokey.

https://plus.google.com/photos/116081622401127094970/albums/5830735147994187425?authkey=CIX_3su80LSRxgE

I got our trustworthy 50 year old soldering gun and got to it!!!  When I first started working at the job where Robb works, way back 25 years ago, I was given the job of learning how to solder computer cables.  It was the way things were done back then!  Well, the soldering iron isn't as trustworthy or hot as it used to be.  I was lucky to get it to melt the old solder at all...  It worked intermittently, so I "simply" "patiently" "may have sworn once" and let it heat up the old solder and I used that same solder to weld the new ones in.   
Held my breath as we plugged it in and voila!!!


The tv works now!!!

WHO'S the MAN!!!  Well, I am... sort of...

Have a great weekend full of things that work!

7 comments:

Southern Gal said...

That's interesting to know! Good for you.

Michelle said...

I am impressed! You ARE the MAN!

Sonya Ann said...

I am so impressed just like Michelle. I would have burned my fingers, cussed and then slammed my fist down on it. Yes, that really would have happened.

Out My window said...

Good for you. My monkey wings kept un lighting at the last show. You should have seen me connecting the wire cable with hair elastic's every time they went off. Parents thought I was amazing. So my engineering degree isn't an entire loss. I remember these boards and I have fixed TV's with parts ordered.

mamahasspoken said...

WOW I'm impressed! I wouldn't have had any idea what to do or even if I did, how to do it.

Willow said...

Good grief Inspector gadget ~ seems Leon isn't the only genius in the household :))

The Old Parsonage said...

you are the wo-man and my hero!

:)

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails