Prices & Rants(was: Future Computing Trends. Still is, I gu

From: jpero_at_cgo.wave.ca <(jpero_at_cgo.wave.ca)>
Date: Sun Feb 22 17:04:51 1998

> I apologize for any weird layout, but this IS Lynx...(as always
for me)
This seems to come out fine. :)

> I had a drive problem once. It was intermittent, and I never could
> understand what was wrong. Eventually, I swapped the cable and the
> drive, and it works now. The only FDD I've bought was a 3.5" TEAC
> for $70 at the world's worst store- CompUSA. It actually has a metal
> frame!
Ok, these Mitsumi 3.5" and some junky 5.25" drives I had and
experienced were between '90 and '94 of their design before they took
quality seriously recently but their cd roms these days have gone
downhill.

> >The one advantage of Teac drives is that you can get the service/repair
> >manual. I have it for several versions of the FD55 (5.25" drive) and
snip!

> Punched card, IBM ,circa 1928.
Heheeeehehehe.. that would be great if we still used punched tapes
with super dense holes in 16bit format across...dreaming on...

snip!
> My Fan howls when I boot, then stops after a few minutes.
> I read an article once on how to replace a PSU fan with a silent
> external one.
Oh, I forgot to add: ATX PSU fan blowing in, blowing hot air on
CPU. How silly! I always tell my friends to flip their ATX PSU fan
around to blowing outside.

Snip!
> >circuit board and soldering wires all over the place. Amazingly there
> was
> >a schematic printed on the box that the keyboard came in (which I'd cut
> >out and filed), but (I guess) not too suprisingly it was incorrect!.
That is what I liked to work with on those keyboards with PCB's. :)

> I keep bumping into kb's that have plastic film instead of PCBs.
> The problem is that sometimes, the film will bend down, and not detect
> the key, so I have to bash it. (Which I do enough anyway, given my OS)
This is sign of dirt (wear maybe) but IBM keyboards from '87 onwards
use plastic film without problems. Only problem was when liquid
spills.

> >And don't get me started on monitors. Is it too much to ask for a
> monitor
No. I wont say this anyway. Too gone already with many
guys even Mag on quality. Every one I known are now like playing
guessing game with them.

> Well, now that we have LCDs, it should get better, though LCD can be
> crap too. Don't have to worry about focus, transformers, etc. But I'm
> sure that they'll figure out something to screw up.
True but much have done already to the LCD, there is not much to
improve upon. I think. The only one stil good is TFT and color
plamsa technolgies.

> >worse than the 17 year old Barco I happen to have...
> Out of ten new Performas, about half have darker monitors. We don't
> know why. It seems that the monitor is the second least reliable part
> of the computer, after the rest of it :)
All tube based monitors besides TV's (not referring to the glass FET)
is notorious for quality diffculties.

> In old machines, everything was hackable anyway, so that any bugs
> in hardware or software could be easily fixed by the likes of us.
> In modern machines, its too complicated to fix anyway, and one would
> never have the time to fix all of the bugs, and for me, hardware is a
> minor problem (since it never breaks for me anyway, even when I try)
I wished I could do that on the stuff but these modern stuff is hard
enough to fix thanks to the advancements besides the oldies stuff
we're collecting.

Jason D.
email: jpero_at_cgo.wave.ca
Pero, Jason D.
Received on Sun Feb 22 1998 - 17:04:51 GMT