Pretty interesting day for me today. Managed to hack my monitor and fix the too bright monitor screen issue it was facing.
I got this Dell P1110 21’ CRT screen from somebody, for free and noticed that it has issues of really bright screen, even at brightness turned down to 0, I could see the black screens as bright grey. Basically it was awfully bright. Most older CRT’s from Sony, Dell I googled have the problem of “excessive bright monitor screen” or “monitor too bright” issues. Although I had a spare 15” crt working properly nothing beats this big beast. Its huge and heavy too!! So I googled up for “Dell P1110 too bright” term and found this link : http://icrontic.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19549 after spending few hours trying to figure out what was happening in the thread, I managed to hack or re-program it to have lower brightness.Re-writing this tutorial to save user some time of going over the entier thread at the forums. Basically you need 2 things (I used the software method rather than the resistor mod method, as I did not have to open the monitor at all and saved me headache and labor):
1. Rs232 to TTL Converter Cable/ Jig , I will explain how I made my own jig for $0 !!
2. Windas Software which I got from http://www.geocities.com/gregua/windas/install.html
Let’s first make the RS 232 to TTL Converter Cable/Jig or ECS as referred to later on in the tutorial.. Without this you would not be able to use the software!! So either make the jig of get a jig from someplace like ebay.
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