Case designs (was: New Definiton REQUIRED)

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_odin.phy.bris.ac.uk>
Date: Tue Nov 18 03:04:01 1997

On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, William Donzelli wrote:

> I have what must be the most butt ugly terminal ever made, an old IBM
> thing from the last of the 360 days. It looks like a mishapen lump of
> white metal, with a keyboard that can be best described as "thick" The CRT
> is a strange aspect ratio, something like 1:2. It, however, must be
> the nicest thing in the world to fix (it seems to work, so I have not had

Nicest thing to work on that I ever saw was a Barco monitor. Access was
from 3 points - undo 2 screws and lift off the top/sides, undo 3
quarter-turn clips and remove the back panel, and unlock a drawer under
the CRT at the front and slide it out.

The drawer contains the 2 timebase generators and the convergence panel.
All the controls you need to tweak while watching the screen are at the
front. And as the boards are side-by-side, it's trivial to connect a
'scope probe to them.

The video amplifiers and sync cards are in a cardcage across the back. The
PSU cardcage (and mains transformer) mounts on top of them on the right
hand side. On the left hand side are the horizontal output module and the
EHT supply.

Now, cards in cardcages are in general difficult to work on. But Barco
provide an extender board in the video cardcage (in a spare slot) so you
can work on them

A Barco TV was nearly as good. Pop the back (4 screws), and there was a
motherboard mounted vertically around the CRT neck. Pull out any of the
plug-in cards, hinge the motherboard down, and plug it into pins on the
solder side of the motherboard. You can now trivially test it.


> Actually (and I know I am going to get a rotten tomato thrown at me for
> this one), most modern computers (except the PeeCee) are much nicer to
> work on than those from 10 or 20 years ago. The attention to details seems

I've never understood this love of screwdriver-less cases. If I'm going to
be fixing a computer I'm going to have a soldering station, scope, logic
analyser, cutters, etc with me. So having a screwdriver set is no big deal
either.

-tony
Received on Tue Nov 18 1997 - 03:04:01 GMT