I called around to various TV repair shops and was generally told they couldn't do it, or that it'd be prohibitively expensive. Finally, an electronics surplus store in my area referred me to a gentleman of the old-school AV hippy variety who knew how to repair all sorts of old equipment. He was able to construct a tool to ground the machine while working on it and we did the repair successfully together. It was an adventure!

i'm here to say that that kind of behavior doesn't foster self improvement and learning.

here's what I suggest : learn about the job, learn about the hazards, take the precautions, get the equipment, don't let your guard down, and then do the work by-the-book.

you'll learn something in the process, both about the thing itself and the concept of maintaining a 'safety culture' around work that requires it. You won't get hurt, because you're going to follow the right safety precautions and work procedures.

Now, if you want to throw your hands up and just say "i'm not willing to put the hours in to ... " , then by all means, don't take the risk -- have it done. If you're in this for the pursuit of knowledge/skill/craft/gratifications then just pursue it as you would anything that is potentially dangerous and take the right steps.

You wouldn't tell someone to stay off a motorcycle, it's an enjoyable past-time -- you would remind them to follow safe driving procedure and to wear protective equipment.

As the author says CRTs are dangerous. Even when they're off they can still carry insanely high voltages. The flyback transformer is one of the more dangerous components of them.

I'm great at electronics repair and I tend to avoid them. Luckily these days that's easy :)

If you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't attempt it. Just get a more technical friend to do it.

If you do know what you're doing you probably wouldn't need this guide in the first place :)

This explains my methodology for a lot of things in life

I think Apple should have recalled these.

Lots of detail and explanations. P.S. I'm not affiliated with anything, I just genuinely think this is one of the best (educational) channels out there on this.

This desoldering component technique video is well worth your time. Of all the basic electronics skills, doing this has always been challenging, particularly on older equipment where the copper traces will tend to peel up.

Having that happen is not the end of the world because a simple bodge wire is not hard to do in most cases.

But, there are times when a failure like that can really matter!

A flyback with the high voltages can be one of those times when you just want a clean replacement.

This guy shows you how to use wire to desolder many component pins at one time.

(Irrespective of the answer to this, there is no chance at all that I would ever mess with crt circuitry. But I am curious.)

Eventually I learned to ground the whole thing with a cooper cable and a resistor.

I still remember that One Monitor, flyback transformer I could hear from my office cube, in another wing, one floor down.

Hire a professional.

To fix a quarter-century-old monitor that was nothing special when it was new.

Why? I mean, I wouldn't bother fixing the thing anyway, but hiring somebody is going to cost you more than a much better brand new monitor.

I never got zapped which is a good thing since yes, that can be unpleasant and - depending on when and where it happens - dangerous. Discharge those tubes and cascades before you fiddle with them, use a screwdriver connected to a ground wire which is connected to the metal tube frame. If you want to do it 'professionally' you'll want to put a HT resistor in that wire, otherwise just zap the thing by sticking the screwdriver under the plastic cap on the high tension connector at the tube.

We do have the mantra in the styropyro discord "Do not the MOT" (Microwave Oven Transformer) but we all know it's harmless without power on it.

I.e., you select the discharge mode, put the probes on a capacitor, and watch the voltage go down, while an internal current limiter makes sure that it happens at a safe rate.

The flyback transformer can fucking kill you, and anyone who needs this webpage or is interested in the instructions (ie someone not working professionally in electronics repair and aware of such hazards) is less likely to know that.

Many people don't have reason to prefer a CRT, and that's fine too. Lots of non-CRT options out there to use.

The replacement parts have a footprint, and a newer monitor might use so much less power in operation that it’s more efficient to make and use it than to continue to use the older CRT.

I really wish there were an easy way to work out if this was where the ‘efficiency crossover happens in X years of use’ point was. For example, I have a perfectly usable Thunderbolt 1 [edit: Thunderbolt 1 dock] that meets my needs. But it uses 5-10W of power more than a new Thunderbolt 3 or 4 one would. Should I continue to use it or switch to a newer one?