On Mon, 2007-08-13 at 08:24 -0400, Ethan Dicks wrote: Just about any CCTV monitor, basically. Gordon

Have you tried taking the monitor apart and separating the faceplate from the tube? That faceplate is bonded on with a PVA compound - that's what the mold eats. I have never done this with a terminal tube, but on the old round-tube color TV's, you can take the tube, heat the face with a heat gun, and separate the safety glass from the picture tube. After that, you need to clean out the PVA compound/gunk and stick the faceplate back on - packing tape around the edges works well. Now, this method works on the old TV's because the safety glass was just a piece of glass glued to the tube. Is the VR201's faceplate glass, or is it plastic? Also, some types of TV tubes (Zenith, especially) don't take to the heat gun method. I have no idea about the VR201, but it might be worth investigating and taking the tube out. Sometimes if the mold is really, really bad, it will have eaten away almost everything holding on the faceplate, and it will come off easily. -Ian

On old color TV tubes, there was a "safety glass" glued to the face of the tube. Really glued on good. It was there so that if the tube imploded (this was before integral implosion protection and rimbands on tubes) then the glass wouldn't go flying forward, and into people staring into the tube. Modern tubes employ a tight metal band around the outside of the tube, so that if it implodes, it'll crush in on itself more, and is much, much less likely to launch glass forward. On terminals, early ones, there was a similar protective coating. Sometimes it's glass, but I know that at least one I have (an old Teleray) it definitely seems to be made of plastic. Although I'm not certain. It's bonded to the face of the tube. You can remove it without destroying the tube, but it's tricky to remove it without destroying the faceplate too. A heat gun will, on some tubes, soften the glue and allow it to be removed. Gentle prodding on the edge with a sliver of wood helps - you want to introduce air bubbles under the faceplate to break the vaccuum-y bond. Solvents aren't really good for this, I've only heard of success with heat. And some kinds of tubes don't even respond to the heat well (Zenith color TV tubes), and require the faceplate to be cut off with a hot wire (think nichrome wire and a car battery) Now, I've never removed the faceplate from a terminal tube before - but I would imagine that things that apply to television tubes would also apply to small terminal tubes. And in some cases, the mold may have already done the work for you. I know of one guy that had a TV tube where the mold had eaten almost all the bonding agent, and the warmth from the sunlight was enough to get the faceplate off. The tube is perfectly stable even without the faceplate, it's primarily there to prevent flying glass in the _event_ of implosion, not to prevent implosion itself. Once the faceplate has been removed and cleaned, and the tube face is cleaned, it's common to stick the faceplate back on using some packing tape around the edge. -Ian