The tales of a Samsung 305T

To begin with, the Samsung 305T is a fantastic screen, especially at the time it was introduced. It was just about the only competitor to Apple’s 30″ ACD and if you looked around a bit you could get it for quite a few bucks less than Apple’s version. It also beats Apple’s 30″ ACD hands down when it comes to specs.

However there are a few buts…

One of the first buts was actually not related to the 305T at all, it was related to my new MacBook Pro and the new adapter that Apple made me buy to connect that screen. After months of effort Apple finally gave in and gave me a newer revision MacBook Pro that fixed the problem (the original one was the first dual-graphics unit).

After that my screen worked rather flawlessly until, for some reason, it blew up. Poof it went and that was it (we’re now about 2 years since my purchase). I called Samsung, the verified it was still under warranty and in for RMA it went. It took them about 2 months to get that screen back to me, not the most speedy repair… But, it worked.

Until, about a year later I started getting really weird issues. Sometimes I had green overlays on my screen or just random flickering which looked like one of the two DVI channels was foobar. Out of sheer laziness at the time and no wanting to go through the RMA again I shelved the screen for a while (forgetting I am almost near the end of the 3 years warranty).

After a while I move to my new home and during that move I decide to try the good ol’ 305T again. Turns out, it worked. No issues, whatsoever, until the dreaded green overlays came back a few weeks later. This time I did call Samsung but the courteously told me I was no longer covered and that I could either pay a big fee for them to fix it or just bugger off.

Didn’t sit well with me but I let it be until my significant other suggested I just tear the screen apart, see if there isn’t anything I can fix. Now, I’m not very good at this sort of thing (I own a MacBook for a reason) so I called in help from a friend.

Turns out, there are a few known bugs about the 305T’s hardware. One which causes the power supply to blow up (hmmm, doesn’t that sound familiar) and a few others that give you black screens or the weird flickering and green overlays I was having. All of them can be fixed one way or another, the fix for mine was to cook a specific logic board in a pre-heated over at 190 degrees Celsius for 7m and 20 seconds. This all we found out after some Google’ing and once we got a hold of a copy of Samsung’s Service Manual we had a go.

And guess what, we fixed it. Unscrewing some parts, solder cooking the logic board per the above instructions, letting it cool down, mounting it back in the casing and reconnecting everything and now it just works. No flickers, no green overlays or other weird stuff. Clear, crisp display that is decently auto-detected by my OS.

Now, I’m very glad we managed to fix it this way but most non-geek people won’t. They’ll either pay the fee or be stuck with a very expensive broken screen after 3 years of warranty because Samsung chose to include some rather cheap and faulty hardware in such an expensive product.