I have this lovely 32 inch LG 4K Monitor that drives my daily coding routine for this past year. About a little more than 1 year, actually. The difference between coding 1080p (prev resolution) was like day and night. To be simplified, it’s like working on a small table vs having a single table that is three times of its size. Not that it is impossible to work without spacious table, but rather in a more enjoyable session and would usually lead into a lesser stress.

I would say this monitor is the best investment I did on 2022.

Until out of the blue, the monitor stops turning on 😔

Just doing a casual dust cleaning on my table, and plug away all the power cord for safety. Plug back all the power cord after cleaning and the monitor won’t turn on. Checked my Display Port cable, switching it to my spare HDMI cable but nothing. Actually I knew the monitor will turn on even without input stream. At least the power LED will turn on and I can traverse inside the monitor’s setting menu. But nothing. The monitor just stays black.

I’m absolutely sure the monitor has never been physically damaged, so my hard guess is that there is probably something wrong with the switching adapter.
I hope it’s only a faulty adapter or I need to spend on another monitor 😞

Thankfully there is Official LG Service Center around 5km away from my place. Knowing how big the panel is, I decided to only bring the adapter first and talk to the CS.

To the first destination we go! 🚗

The staff was super friendly and informative. I told them about how monitor ended up dead. They checked the adapter with multimeter and concluded that I have faulty adapter!

Super-super happy at the moment! Not because my guess was right but rather that I still have that little chance of a fine panel, so the damage was not that expensive.

They suggest to change the adapter, and thus these options:

  1. LG provided a spare part warranty, which I can get any faulty part for free (and which then I realized it was off already since it has only 1-year period after purchase
  2. Buy from them, which is priced around IDR 1.1 juta or around USD 78

Taking option 2, they realized that my adapter with such high wattage are quite hard to find ind my place and currently out of stock, even at Jakarta’s Service Center! (where it’s supposed to be the most comprehensive spare part storage in my region)

So my only option at the moment was to give a down payment in advance, and they will let me know when the item is back in stock. Current estimation they gave is 2-4 months (!) since it needs to be ordered from outside the country. Gotta love my current geopolitical condition! 😀

Waiting months for my adapter would be counter-productive, so I looked up for any alternative way of buying this adapter.

I have no background in electronics, so my first logical step would be to note the specification:
Model ACC-LATP1
Input 100-240V ~ 50/60 Hz
Max 3.0 A
Output 19.5V, 10.8 A, 210.6W

If I can find the exact model then it’s the best. But if I can’t, then my guess is that if I can found any switching adapter that match such requirements then it should also work.

I found that the exact adapter is sold on Amazon with fair pricing. This is clearly the best case item. But again, with my geopolitical condition it would take ~1 month to arrived here depending on my previous Amazon orders lately.

On my regional e-commerce site, I hardly ever find the exact same adapter nor any with met specifications, until I found this used Dell switching adapter. It is only priced third of the original adapter, and I can get it in the next day.
The specifications seems to be matched. But what is that 7.4*5.0 mm anyway? 🤷

Upon the adapter arrived, I found out that the end plug didn’t match 🙃

Turns out the 7.4*5.0mm denotes the specification of its end plug, in which I don’t even put any care when doing research.

The end plug of the original adapter is specified as 6.5*4.4mm. duh.
Rahmat the master electrical technician /s



But I won’t stop here!

Both of the adapters have the exact same specification. So my guess is that maybe we can switch the end plug? The end plug from the original adapter will be switched into the newly bought one. The OG adapter is dead anyway.

Without any credible skill on cutting-reconnecting electrical cable, I asked my friend for a regional electrical shop, and they recommend me WOOW Electronic Shop.

And to the second destination we go! 🚗

Strange name I would say, and honestly I underestimated them at first. But after some research - oh boy I found that this is the highly reputable electronic component shop available in Surakarta! The most astonishing I’ve found there is that all the technicians are young girls! Talking about gender equality, sadly the double standards for gender still majorly applied to my region. So seeing a woman doing a job that usually handled by man is so rare that I find this to be very impressive, especially when I hear them shouting to each other about technical stuff that I don’t even understand. It’s amazing!

A girl approached me, I told them I need the cable to be switched. Without attempting to do any physical damage to the adapter itself, she starts by cutting the newly bought adapter, only to find that the adapter has 3 cables inside, and told me that it is more complicated than the usual electricity. She doesn’t sure if the extra cable (beside positive and negative) is needed when doing the jointing process, as the OG adapter only has 2 cables.
Dell adapter with 3 cables inside.
My hard guess is probably positive, negative, and data/ground (?)
But how do we joint 3 cables-to-2 cables anyway?

Better safe than sorry, she refuse to continue the cable jointing process and gave me a contact to her friend. A man named “Mas Pras”, which she recommended for a highly technical problems.

I contacted mas Pras via WhatsApp, and he told me that he opens a small workshop on his house.

And to the third destination we go! 🚗 (aren’t we loving this!)



Like the shop before, I approached him with underestimation - only to be surprised with how much skilled he is.

He started by grinding the OG adapter to forcefully pry open the adapter, as it is hold by dried glue I suppose. I assume the OG adapter is designed to never be opened. Once it’s forcefully opened, its outer plastic is broken forever.

His goals were to:

  1. Find the faulty source of the OG adapter
  2. Get the whole end plug cable intact without any cut in the cable
  3. Swap the original end plug to the new adapter
Original adapter being pried with grinder
Inside of the original adapter
Intact end plug from the original adapter without any damage! ❤️

He claims to found the faulty component (just to be informative - but nothing can be done to the OG adapter now as it is basically dead and broken).
God knows what this component is

The Dell adapter is super lucky, as it has 4 screws to hold, and is spared for being pried with grinder! 😆

So basically he swaps the Dell end plug with the original end plug. And now I have a new adapter that has proper end plug for my monitor!



I raced towards my home and quickly turn on my monitor with the new adapter.
It turned on! 💕💕💕
The new Dell adapter is working with the swapped end plug from the original adapter

Super happy with current condition. I know this is just a quick fix, and I’m not sure how far the new adapter can go - or how far the monitor can handle the new adapter.

Mas Pras says that the new adapter outputs 20V instead of 19.5V, and adds that it is within the margin of error - the voltage will go down when load is being introduced 🤞

Maybe the new adapter it is hurting the monitor without me knowing it?

In any way, I can utilize my lovely monitor until the original replacement arrives!

Or should I cancel the OG replacement after all? heheh