Stacking Apple ][ stuff

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_panix.com>
Date: Mon Nov 5 23:43:12 2001

On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote:

> The monitor seems to interact with the drives when the monitor is turned on. It
> depends, I suppose, on the monitor, but I've got the IIe with the dual drive box
> between it and the color monitor and from time to time, e.g. when I turn on the
> monitor while the computer has been powered up but the monitor has been powered
> down, e.g. when I go upstairs to get a sandwich or answer the doorbell, the
> drive runs up and the diskette is partially unreadable afterward.


  Can you say: "Automatic Power-On Degaussing Coils?"

  Click - BRRMMMMMMMmmmmm..... goodbye disk data!



>
> I'm told by more experienced Apple owners that it's a good idea to (a) ground
> the disk drive boxes in the case of the old aluminum-cased Apple][ drives and
> (b) put a sheet of grounded ferrous metal between the monitor and drives. I
> don't know whether this helps, as I've simply stopped turning off the monitor
> when I go away.

  Aluminium = non-magnetic Iron = magnetic in terms of marginal
shielding from external fields.


>
> Apparently one of the guys got a metal bracket of the sort sometimes used to set
> a printer off the desk, and set his monitor on it in order to lift the thing up
> so he didn't have to crane his neck down to see the display, and his problems
> with the disk drives were diminished, which caused him to investigate.


  Magnetic fields diminish as the square of the distance from the
originating source.. so seperating the monitor will mitigate the problem,
depending on the intensity of the field and the seperation distance.



  Question: Were *all* of youse guys asleep in science and/or physics? ;}



  Cheers

Nikola Tesla
Received on Mon Nov 05 2001 - 23:43:12 GMT