The mysterious death of the cursed monitor

Posted October 31, 2008 at 02:44 PM by Christian Milsom

Section: Peripherals, Displays/Projectors

Since it is Halloween, Gadgetell is taking a look at some the tech horror stories our writers have experienced.  Here is one tale.

This is a true story of my encounter with a monitor of the worst kind.  I have always relied on CRTs for two main reason; the first is the consistently good picture quality it provides and the second was that I couldn’t bear to pay for a new one.  However, one day it occurred to me that two monitors are better than one, so after investigating my graphics card I borrowed a VGA-to-DVI adapter from a friend (it was a very nice lilac color!).

So, I squeezed two clunky 15” CRTs onto my desk, the table creaking in protest and that is where the problems started.  Firstly, the cable, non detachable, could not reach the PC.  Fifteen minutes, later I moved the PC, connected the two monitors up, and switched it on. 

So far, so good.  I logged in, started up Control Panel, and selected the new monitor as monitor two.  The screen sprang to life and starts flashing bright white at me: on, off, on, off.  I frantically turned it off, and back on again, and fortunately, I got a picture.  OK, everything was back to normal.

Satisfied, I continued trying to get Counter Strike to work on both screens, frustrated by the lack of clear instructions on the Vista help.  I finally found the correct settings to let me extend the screen as oppose to mirroring it, and I pressed select and it started to refresh.  Only it didn’t, it froze, flickered and then switched off completely.  Thoroughly annoyed, I unplugged it and turned it back on again, and it worked.  “Probably loose at the card,“ I told myself, not knowing it was about to get worse.

It all went smoothly from then, I got a good 30 minutes of playing time in before it went horribly wrong.  Suddenly, the monitor emitted a massive bang, flashing white light as it did.  I turned to see and saw plumes of black smoke coming out of the top.  I cursed loudly as I dove under the desk to rip the power lead out along with the connector, but not too quickly to notice that the latter is baking hot. 

Jumping up to check the damage I knocked the desk, and watched as the monitor fell to the side and started to teeter on the edge smoke still coming out of the top.  I moved to get it and predictably it fell, landing corner-side on my toe, crushing it under it’s 1990s weight. 

The falling monitor resulted in a broken toe and a trip to the hospital, but inspection on the monitor found nothing wrong apart from a small crack where it had fallen on me.  The monitor has now been banished to the darkest corner of the room where its stares out with its singular, black, evil eye.