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No more CRT Arcade monitors? :(
Silverwind:
I'm using a betson imperial 27" arcade monitor... crossing my fingers hoping it doesn't go out.
I think Betson still has them listed?
http://www.betson.com/products/parts/IMP-44-4070-RT
Mine was REAL cheap to ship too.... I drove to their warehouse and picked it up!
SavannahLion:
--- Quote from: MonMotha on December 22, 2010, 04:41:31 pm ---If you want to see something unreal, crank a good CRT up to 160Hz refresh. Motion is so smooth it seems wrong. Even the "600Hz sub field drive" plasmas and "240Hz" LCDs can't touch it, mostly because that's all done with fake upconversion whereas an analog video path CRT being refreshed at 160Hz is actually being fed 160 frames per second.
--- End quote ---
OMG thank you! I swear I was the only one that knew this. It's nice to know I'm not the only one that knows this.
Of course, it's interesting to note this was when (during the pre-LCD era) gamers were arguing the merits of 30FPS, 60FPS, and higher having any visual difference. It's also nice to know that that argument has been vindicated to a degree that gives me a delicious enjoyment of the irony.
As for the caps. I'm too tired to go looking for the reference. But even if the caps were spec'ed, there's still the risk you're dealing with the caps made with the unstable (read: stolen) dielectric formula. Or is there more to the crap components than just bad gel?
How does a resister be out of spec besides resistance?
Osirus23:
--- Quote from: keefyboy on December 21, 2010, 08:59:51 am ---People have (IMO) gotten stupid, and now most monitors are 16:9. OK for watching some movies, really crap for business use. But OOOOOOHHH, WIIIDESCREEN! :timebomb:
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I rather enjoy the ability to have 2 documents open side by side in Word, and using Aero snap in Windows 7 is awesome.
I stick with 4:3 CRTs for cabs but for any other use you couldn't pay me to go back to them.
MonMotha:
There were definitely some problems with caps back in the early 2000s. Apparently it was a problem with industrial espionage gone awry. The story I've heard is that some cheap cap manufacturer in either China or Malaysia stole the dielectric formula from an established manufacturer (I believe Japanese) but either forgot a component or omitted it to save cost. The caps worked OK initially without this component of the dielectric, but they degraded very quickly. To make matters worse, several other cap manufacturers apparently adopted this "cheaper" formulation after seeing that it apparently worked. This resulted in problems being pretty widespread until everybody figured things out again.
Of course, this only applies to caps that are properly spec'd in the first place. Capacitance and temperature rating are far from the only specifications on a capacitor. ESR, ESL, design lifetime, rated temperature, dissipation factor, etc. all matter, too. What inevitably happens is that the engineer in charge of the design spec's a part, then it gets substituted by some bean counter to "cost reduce" things based only on the "major" specs of capacitance, voltage rating, and case size. In some cases, a special capacitor is needed to meet safety requirements (e.g. X or Y rated). These are usually marked "engineering approval required for substitution", but sometimes people don't pay attention. Fires sometimes result.
And, well, sometimes the engineer in charge on the design doesn't get the cap spec'd right in the first place :)
As to resistors, they too have several parameters that matter other than resistance and rated power handling. The most frequently cited is tolerance. A common "secondary" characteristic is the inductance of the resistor, but other things matter. In some situations, the behavior of the resistor when presented with a sudden current surge matters (extremely short-term overage of the power handling of the device - not enough to actually heat it up, but lots of current). Thick film resistors will often pop open, while film resistors usually survive. Sometimes, there's a safety aspect, too. In some cases, it could be catastrophic for a resistor to fail as a short, while failing as an open is at least safe, even if it causes the device to work (or, occasionally, vice-versa). Again, improper substitutions can result in fire or similar unsafe situations. There are also things like temperature coefficient, and I'm sure plenty of others not coming to mind, now.
Isn't electronic design fun?
SavannahLion:
Intriguing.... without doing further research (yet) on the topic you presented, I do have this immediate question:
--- Quote ---Thick film resistors will often pop open, while film resistors usually survive.
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How does that work? What part of the manufacturing process causes that to occur?
Or better yet, how would you even know which type is which short of looking at the specs? eg, if I were to replace a blown resistor besides the obvious values, how does one determine that attribute?
--- Quote from: MonMotha on December 23, 2010, 01:53:39 am ---And, well, sometimes the engineer in charge on the design doesn't get the cap spec'd right in the first place :)
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Or the engineer in charge gets fired or relocated and the project gets assigned to someone else (if at all).
Don't ask.
--- Quote ---Isn't electronic design fun?
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It is actually. I just wish I had more time to do it.