Meatball wrote on 2022-10-24, 00:11:
I completed data migration off of a Windows 7 i5-4790T 4GB built as a Media Center PC w/8TB of Software RAID 1 ---> Synology DS920+ w/4-core Celeron J4125, 8GB of RAM, & 14TB RAID 5 volume (w/hot spare) accelerated w/2TB of mirrored NVMe cache. A USB 3.0 external 8TB disk is connected for backups.
The older PC will be replaced soon with another Haswell-based PC I have lying around, but this one is an OEM: ThinkCentre M73 w/8GB of RAM & i7-4790. The Windows 8 Pro license will be updated to Windows 10 Pro. The M73 will be used for the occasional streaming movie the Wife and I watch every now and again connected to ye ole' plasma television (Yes! You'll have to pull this TV out of my cold dead hands.).
Season 5 of Cobra Kai will inaugurate the M73's return to service.
I used to repair flat panel stuff back in the day during CRT to LCD transition. Plamsa was not affordable at first then got little cheaper but not many people had plamsa since the most popular TVs was rear projection TVs which cost less than a grand, the last newer design towards the end of CRT era. Once LCD got cheaper, they dominate the landscape. People who wanted quality went with DLP projection but with color stripes if you pan your eyes too quickly as this is common on fast paced scenes but even the rear projection DLP went out of production quickly too. Improving LCD quality and reasonable cost killed off these including rear projection CRT TVs.
I have no good words about plamsas
Plamsa TV is a nightmare to repair. Not very much to repair and costly! If one of the line driver IC fails, game over as they are ultrasonic welded to the panel glass. If one of big IC dies (the giant dual row pins IC), mounted to large heatsink fails, you have to replace whole board since desoldering is impossible as it has very, very heavy tracks. Now at this age, and last plasma TV made was over a 12 years ago means parts is much harder to find, also not to mention the aging panel, they age quickly. The motherboard and power supply is very reliable. Usually some needs capacitors replaced.
Finally, plamsa panels has terrible issue is burn and panel do die with age showing comets and color flares, no way to avoid this, worse than Sony TV with their CRT killing automatic cathode kine adjustment.
Next time once plamsa get really old or failed for good, look at front DLP projection onto pull down screen (not to mention the color wheel thing except for 3x DLP and LED light sources without color wheel is costly but better than nothing), or newer 120Hz or 240Hz high end LCD TV. They really look good really especially on high end LCDs using LED backlight, and there are plenty of mid end LCDs with LED backlight out there with good specs. Just stick to good brands only. Like Samsung, LG etc. Actually LG has strong color pop.
Sorry I have to butcher; I do really do not recommend plasma even in good condition at all even back then when new due to these issues, I know this as they all will always eventually fail due to panel has very finite life.
Both of my TV and monitor are Samsung and utilize the LED backlight not CCFL, and they are doing great at 12 years mark but some especially cheap panels do develop faint halo near bezel depending on LCD panel used, best quality LCD panel usually don't.
Cheers,
Great Northern aka Canada.