Are office people really that, umm shall we say...slow?

From: Dan Kolb <dankolb_at_ox.compsoc.net>
Date: Sat Oct 20 15:50:15 2001

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Saturday 20 Oct 2001 19:59 pm, Tony Duell wrote:
> Connector are cheaper than cables. And they're easier to get. Often the
> monitor end of the cable terminates in some strange PCB connectors, of
> which there are dozens of varients, many of them almost impossible to
> find...

Thanks :-) I didn't know that. To be quite honest, I can't recall ever having
the need to open up monitors before - so far all the one's I've got have
worked fine - it's only the newest one that the cable broke in. Is it just
me, or does new technology seem much less reliable than old(er) stuff?

> When I was an undergraduate (admittedly at the other university), I found
> a toolkit to be essential. It's amazing how often you need to fix things.
> I had most common hand tools, a soldering station, solder sucker,
> multimeter, etc in my room. Even a small 'scope. And I needed them...

To be quite honest, for the very few times I'd need one (possibly once or
twice a year) it's not worth for me to take all the equipment up from home -
it's far easier just to take the faulty item back home and fix it there. I'm
sure you can forgive me not having equipment here (actually, I do have a
soldering iron now, but that's it) :-)

> The vidoe lines have 75 )hm termination resistors, so you can measure the
> reisstance between the video cable and its screen. If it tests open
> there's a break in the cable. You can normally detect the protection
> diodes on digital lines too with an ohmmeter. So you can, in fact, check
> for broken wires from the plug end of the cable only.

Thank you. I'll give that a try.

> > The subject was about 'office people'. Most(?) IT people wouldn't know
> > how to solder a monitor connector, or possibly wouldn't be allowed to by
> > either
> As I said in another message, such IT people get no respect from me...

I agree. A competent IT guy should be able to fix items like broken
connectors with little effort. And, of course, should be able to build a
computer out of parts (that is, graphics card, CD-ROM, rather than the
individual chips :-) - I'm sure there are people who don't know how to do
that.

> > their company or Health and Safety (no, I don't know much about
> > Health&Safety
> Then you smuggle in one of those gas-powered soldering irons and fix it
> when the powers-that-be are not watching :-)

Yup :) Although most people who know me know that I have a very low regard
(none, really) for Health and Safety laws - I watch out where I put stuff,
other people should too (okay, probably not the best thing to admit on a
public forum :-)

Dan
- --
dankolb_at_ox.compsoc.net
 
- --I reserve the right to be completely wrong about any comments or
  opinions expressed; don't trust everything you read above--

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 6.5.8

iQA/AwUBO9Hjh5dDUnce+EgsEQLImgCg35dE4t1fI0oZYldRcZpZGpPFUrUAn0PU
q8JZ05LgDE+TVaNwqh6deHYh
=EzNu
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Received on Sat Oct 20 2001 - 15:50:15 BST