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Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen

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Re: Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen

#51

Post by samschooler »

blueflow wrote: post #14

I once had the problem that running make with too many parallel jobs (-j) would change my keyboard layout. The machine was some laptop mainboard glued to the backside of my monitor, and the USB socket came out at the top of the mainboard. On its way down, the USB cable for the keyboard passed across the whole mainboard. On high load, the mainboard created enough interference to cause the connection to reset, re-hotpl…

Less technical, but: My wifi goes out when it rains.

My wifi is on the same breaker as the outdoor outlets so any issues with water intrusion affects the wifi.

Re: Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen

#52

Post by systems_glitch »

mlyle wrote: post #30
yborg wrote: post #23

One of my first jobs 30+ years ago was ESD testing automotive and consumer electronics. I would spend a week with a discharge gun methodically running different discharge energies and waveforms both directly onto the devices as well as onto radiators at various distances from the device under test, as well as any cabling/harnessing that attached to the device. Then the design team would figure out the reason for any…

Cars are a terrible ESD and EMC environment and safety critical at the same time. Computer equipment usually does pretty well, especially after installation (when there's good ground path everywhere and it's in a chassis). Between ferrite beads and TVS, there's a pretty good amount of protection, and I've seen pretty few ESD anomalies-- a reset or two when touching connectors long ago is about the extent of it. RFI a…

That was my experience with the first spark gap switched Tesla coil I built. Running it in the basement would make stuff freak out on the upper floor.

Re: Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen

#53

Post by formerly_proven »

etiam wrote: post #3

Remotely related, my screen makes a noise, somewhere between static and a whine, while displaying certain text files. Minimizing or closing the editor stops the noise, getting the text back on display restores the noise. I suppose it's some sort of resonance phenomenon.

I'm pretty sure this is some kind of electrostriction-like effect because these noises come from the panel itself.

Re: Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen

#54

Post by samstave »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #31

You folks are all lucky. I have the same chair, but the ESD problem didn't manifest as screen flicker - it manifested as my work laptop bluescreening about a minute after me getting up from the chair. I wouldn't have guessed the cause of not for some random HN comment some half a year ago. The solution for now is that I don't use external screens with my laptop. One of these days I'll find a better-isolated display c…

I have several of these AOC USB external monitors and they are great:

and their USB cable that comes with them has a ferrite node.

https://www.amazon.com/AOC-E1659FWU-16IN-Powered-Monitor/dp/...

Re: Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen

#55

Post by blueflow »

tetris11 wrote: post #44
blueflow wrote: post #14

I once had the problem that running make with too many parallel jobs (-j) would change my keyboard layout. The machine was some laptop mainboard glued to the backside of my monitor, and the USB socket came out at the top of the mainboard. On its way down, the USB cable for the keyboard passed across the whole mainboard. On high load, the mainboard created enough interference to cause the connection to reset, re-hotpl…

I currently have an RPi4 mounted to the back of my TV for easy Kodi streaming, but I never considered using the business end of a laptop. I'm sure I have a decade old laptop with a broken screen sitting at the bottom of a shelf somewhere...

Its the stuff what happens when you think 'what can i do with the hardware that i have' instead of 'which hardware to buy'.

Re: Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen

#56

Post by copperx »

etiam wrote: post #3

Remotely related, my screen makes a noise, somewhere between static and a whine, while displaying certain text files. Minimizing or closing the editor stops the noise, getting the text back on display restores the noise. I suppose it's some sort of resonance phenomenon.

This was common in the CRT days. Monitors had a high pitched when you were on a GUI, but got quieter when you switched to the TTY.

Re: Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen

#58

Post by tambourine_man »

lucb1e wrote: post #47

An electric lighter does this to my mouse when I zap specific objects with it, such as a screwdriver. I tried distances up to about 1.5 meters away from the mouse. The only reason I initially noticed is because I saw the red light turn off that was coming faintly through the holes I drilled in the top to let a heating element that I had built in heat my hand better. (Spoiler: the holes didn't do anything, but I did n…

You have to scream back at them:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4

Re: Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen

#59

Post by kimixa »

I had an issue where one of my computer screens flickered then went black for 10 seconds or so before returning a couple of times a day seemingly randomly.

I then got a headphone amp on my desk, and noticed the same thing happened every time I switched it on - it had a pretty chunky switch with a satisfying click, but I guess it also kicked out enough ESD to trigger the monitor? Armed with this theory, I replaced the bargin basement displayport cable I was using and now no longer have any screen flickering issues. I don't really know if it's better shielded or something, or I just happen to have moved things around to avoid the majority of the problem.

I wonder how many things we blame on bad hardware/software are actually part of the environment - I know hyperscalers have talked about how ECC failure events are more common than "conventional wisdom", which likely means on non-ECC consumer platforms they are getting relatively regular silent memory corruption events.

Re: Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen

#60

Post by Paul-Craft »

gumby wrote: post #29
Paul-Craft wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps a silly question, but does turning it off and back on again also resolve the problem? I can occasionally hear such noises from monitors, and have always thought it was some kind of interaction with the phase of the AC power and some kind of internal physics of the monitor. Generally, turning it off and back on again fixes it for me.

In the old CRT days that could be plausible, but in these days of lcds and switching power supplies it seems less likely. But as this article describes, you never know!

Indeed, do you never know.

I don't honestly think turning it off and back on would do anything, either. I also don't have one of those chairs, nor do I want to buy one and use it to test the theory. But, turning it off and back on again is a simple and easy thing to do that should be reasonably safe for the equipment. There is, after all, a reason why power cycling equipment is often a first step to diagnosing and/or fixing weird problems. :)

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