Hi all, Since things are quiet, I'll add my little stash of replies for this general interest thread. > Content: futurebasic_33289.eml > Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 09:36:01 -0800 > From: Richard Goodman <bhomme@...> > Subject: Re: X-FB Monitor acting flaky > ... > For those of you who have offered suggestions and anyone else > following this thread, here's an update. I have found that if > I religiously put the system to sleep every time I leave the > computer, the blackout problem is minimized... I use that approach with an old Apple 20in greyscale CRT monitor. It has now enjoyed 2 years "afterlife" and is still going. Those old monitors had unrivaled pixel precision. The problem was known to the manufacturer so to assure a rest period the display circuitry shut down in response to overheating -- until manual CRT restart. Those beasts originally cost several $K. The gaga status of the monitor is evident from a high pitch whistle (at horizontal scan frequency) --- at least to sensitive ears. Some day I'll get into the housing to vacuum out the decade of (thermal insulating!) dust that is causing the overheating... Richard> I have also written a Keyquencer macro allowing me to > shut down the computer from the keyboard in case I ever > have a situation where the monitor can't be brought back > to life. Interesting ploy. However, restarting the monitor does not restart the CPU box on macs with freestanding monitor. On the other hand, CRTs are NOT hot swappable and doing so can do damage soft and hard. Also, I am not a Keyquencer fan, so I wonder now whether the FKEY resources we could program in FBII are still operative. Even in OSX with classic mode on?? ----- On another tack came from Gnome on Tue, 31 Dec 2002 17:45:35 +0100 > ...[of course, this is less of a problem now with > usb and firewire stuff which can be hot-swapped > unlike the scsi and adb stuff that shouldn't ever!]... The only obstacle to hot swapping old SCSI devices seems to be recent Mac OS(>=8) software that refuses to completely purge traces of such a SCSI device once mounted. Hot introduction of a SCSI device has never been a problem. Then again, SCSI-3 is officially hot swappable and I bet that Apple half crippled the hot swappability of old SCSI when it came to support SCSI-3. But we now all prefer to use IDE-ATAxx in place of SCSI for $$ reasons!? Firewire prices are falling; I just picked up a new Yamaha FW RW-ROMburner for about $100 for my niece. It's rumoured to be IDE with a Firewire wrapper but I'm not sure. ----- > Content: futurebasic_33227.ezm > Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 08:44:13 -0500 > From: Ted Spencer <tedspencer@...> > Subject: Re: X-FB Monitor acting flaky > > ... > > Perhaps you ought not to try this at home, kids, because increasing the > anode voltage to a certain magic number - which is not too terribly far from > the factory-set voltage - will add a new feature to your monitor: it will > start generating X-rays. Perhaps not, precisely, what you wanted to stare at > all day... That is very plausible since an Xray quantum has a specific fairly high eneggy compared with the light quanta that the CRT is designed to emit. But the facts are more messy (and disturbing). I have heard that UV and soft Xrays are emitted by all CRTs especially color CRTs. It's a radiation problem that has always been taken very seriously by industry and governments. A typical color CRT contains many kilos special glass whose main purpose is to protect the user from such radiation. Does anyone have good URLs "quantifying" this problem? LCD monitors involve no radiationn hazard!? ----- Pete wrote Fri, 27 Dec 2002 11:39:35 +1100 concerning CRT discharges > Don't do it. It's VERY DANGEROUS. If you do do it, always, always, always > keep one hand in your pocket. It is current flow across the heart that > kills you. This explains the schoolyard jingle for moments of ultimate truth: << Cross your heart and point to heaven! >>:*| Cheers Laurent S.