[HELP!] Sony GDM-F400T9 issues.. random sparks, diagonal lines when the unit is cold at power-on for

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I think that my Sony GDM-F400T9 is damaged.
Now, the issues appeared late 2002, around December if I remember correctly.
By that time my first P4 2.26B CPU started failing badly (retail CPU running at stock speed with its
original fan) and after another 4-5 months it stopped working and was melted with the fan, it made a
unique body with the fan.. pretty weird but it happened, and not just once.
That time the ASUS P4B533 motherboard didn't get affected by CPU malfunction at all, nor any of the
other hardware components failed due to, so none of them could have been the cause of CPU
malfunction itself.
The case is a SuperMicro SC750A2 with 3 additional 8x8 case fans and 1 additional 9x9 fan.
When that CPU failed I decided to change motherboard, RAM, PSU anyway for safety, although they were
fully working, in fact I sold motherboard and RAM since they had no issues at all, absolutely never
affected by the CPU melt-down.
My current hardware is : ASUS P4PE with latest Bios, M-Tec PC2700 512MB DDR, ANTEC TruePower550W PSU
I had to wait 2 months to get a replacement P4 2.40B CPU.. and after the last very hot summer (and I
keep my PC powered on for 12-18 hours a day) this replacement Retail Intel P4 CPU failed as well,
melting down just like the other one.
Now, the shop owner refuses to change it another time or send it to Intel, also he tried to remove
serial codes from the box claiming that that was to notify its distributor that turned out to be
different from the one I bought it from (since his shop is part of a chain)... all of that is very
fishy already and I suspect something not-so-right going on here.. I'm going to request Intel direct
assistance on the matter and let them investigate further anyway.

Now, why am I writing to this forum ?

Well, simply because my Sony GDM-F400T9 19" FD Trinitron monitor seems to have been affected by the
electric discharges caused by the CPU. (and not the other way around, that's impossible, my graphic
card never got damaged so no current flowing back thru the VGA 15-pin cable going on there).

Whenever each CPU started melting I got an electric discharge on the monitor, which was connected on
the same multi-plug, with an high-pitched spark and a strong elecrtric sound while the monitor
looked like either exploding or shutting down for 1-3secs.

Since with the first P4 2.26B I didn't know what was going on I kept using it for months with those
random sparks caused by the failing CPU once in a while, especially when playing 3D intensive games
which sometimes caused the system to hang all of a sudden, but what's weird was that I never ever
lost a single bit of data nor got a data corruption anywhere until the last spark-of-death when the
CPU clearly stopped working and the whole XP registry got corrupted and failed miserabily.

Last Sunday night I got another sparks of those with the replacement P4 2.40B CPU.. I wouldn't
believe what was going on for the second time, so I opened the case and tried to remove the CPU
heatsink and fan BUT just like last time it was melted with the fan itself into a single body, the
P4 heat-spreader metal litterally melted down with the an metal, which means that a very high-temp
was reached, something that shouldn't never ever happen especially due to the fact that it has been
always running at stock speeds, factory defaults, no overclocking and with its original fan.

Since the first P4 2.26B failing my Sony GDM-F400T9 clearly got damaged.. whenever I power it on I
can see black being green, a grey brightness all over the screen until it gets warm and diagonal
green lines on the screen .. and this lasts for over 30 seconds until it's well warmed up.

Also, using another PC plugged on the same multi-plug yesterday I got a spark-like effect, I removed
the P4 2.80C HT original heatsink and checked that it wasn't melting down as well, everything was
ok, so it clearly means that the monitor PSU is failing and got affected by that kinda sparks caused
by the first failing CPU.. no ?

Also, when I enter diagnostic mode at power-up the power-on green and power-saving orange leds keep
flashing on the multi-color led, doesn't it mean that there's some damage being detected there ?

Now I'm using the P4 2.80C HT (which uses an ANTEC TruePower550W as well, but that's not the
culprit, I had a Fortron-Sparkle 300W PSU with the old P4 2.26B CPU ..so...) plugged on another plug
which is an extension of the plug where the monitor is still connected too and I got no sparks from
the monitor in the last 24 hours.
This P4 2.80C comes from the same shop anyway, so if it fails too maybe the shop is the only
culprit..

Could anyone tell me if my monitor is effectively damaged like ti seems and how much would it cost
to repair it ? The 3-year warranty it's over now.
I'm from Italy, by the way and the shop where I bought the CPUs is www.nexths.it

 

[Mike Myers]

Could anyone tell me if my monitor is effectively damaged like ti seems and how much would it cost
to repair it ? The 3-year warranty it's over now.

I don't think it was anything to do with the CPU, my F400 has had alot of the
ame features yours has. Mine is now effectively useless because of the
horizontal sync problem I am getting...