Last week I made a post asking if I should buy an old vintage monitor.
Well, I went back to the recycled goods store this week and it was still there, so $30 later I have it, and it seems to just work*
There’s very little about this monitor on the internet, so I’m thinking of documenting as much as I can about it, especially as it’s Osborne branded so there could be some interesting history behind it.
* The power button is stuck on, and it does an occasional unsettling arc sound and the image slightly distorts for a millisecond. I believe the latter is fairly common among old CRTs but I don’t know much more than that.
Just keep in mind that pulling the anode cap of a crt is genuinely lethal electricity. Like you can get zapped pretty bad by a power supply cap (you should get in the habit of discharging these too) but generally unless they’re seriously big caps you won’t die. A crt can kill your tho so make sure you discharge it correctly. That’s why I say watch a video on how to do it, there are plenty of them and it’s much better to see what to do than follow a text description. Keep in mind that sometimes you have to discharge 2-3x (not usually but sometimes, and never hurts to be safe). You’ll see a spark and hear a pop. You can get a tool to discharge but an insulated screwdriver is all I ever used
Macs of that era are a pain. Good luck. Check capacitors of course, replace battery, reset pmu. That era of mac you can get a service manual which is nice, get a meter and you can trace reference voltages thru power supply and logic board. Flyback is notorious in those imacs so look at that (same as above, check for burn, crack, loose, smell). 68kmla.org has a lot of great repair info on that era