How CRT and LCD monitors work

Disassembling a LCD monitor

To give you a further insight into the technology inside flat screens, we thought we'd take one apart and see what was inside. Many thanks to the guys at Viewsonic for giving us a dead unit from their stock to mutilate.

Here's the stock unit: a standard 17" monitor, 1280x1024 resolution. The back is held on with a couple of screws in the stand, a couple at the bottom of the monitor and then plastic bezel clips between the front and back plastic halves.

With the back off, you can see the display controller. The circuitry here has cables going off it to the power unit, to the cathodes that light the display and to the actual electrodes controlling the liquid crystals.

Here you can see the power circuitry on the left, and the circuit that handles the front panel buttons on the right.

With a couple more screws removed on the side, this back panel circuitry is removed and we are left with the actual flat panel. Are we going to stop here? Of course not.