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From: andie@cvl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: monochrome monitors
Message-ID: <342@cvl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Jun-83 15:42:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: cvl.342
Posted: Thu Jun  2 15:42:56 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Jun-83 01:43:11 EDT
Organization: U. of Md. Computer Vision Lab
Lines: 39

A warning to owners of IBM monochrome monitors:

Recently my monitor, approximately 1 1/2 years old, began flickering
and eventually went dead.  I took it to ComputerLand, and was told
that the flyback transformer had gone bad; this had caused the
board in the monitor to go bad as well.  According to them, it
wasn't really worth fixing, as it would cost ~$200.  Having seen
a letter here from someone with the same problem, I checked around,
and found still another victim of this defect.  So, armed with this
information, I called IBM in Boca Raton.  The person I talked to
had never heard of this happening before, and called it "an isolated
incident".  When I complained that it seemed strange that a defect
in one part could cause the unit to effectively self-destruct,
he replied "well, it worked for 18 months, didn't it?", to which
I replied that I didn't want to buy a new monitor every 18 months.
He then said I could have gotten a service contract.  I did have
a year warranty on it, but somehow I didn't expect it to totally
die at so young an age.  He finally said he would talk to the
engineers, and that was that.

	Since it evidently takes a while for this to happen,
I expect a significant number of monitors will fail in the
next few months.  I for one am not going to get another
monochrome (I have a color monitor, fortunately) until this
problem is fixed.  If anyone else has had this problem, call
IBM and tell them.  Maybe we can get them to give us a rebate
or to at least fix the problem in later monitors if enough
people harass them.  And, if your monitor starts flickering,
get it fixed IMMEDIATELY!  You may be able to save your
monitor's board (and thus some money) that way.


				Diane Donaldson
				seismo!rlgvax!cvl!andie

P.S.  Although I don't have IBM's number with me now, I'll
post it later.  If you call them they take your number and
call you back, so the long distance charges shouldn't be too
outrageous.