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The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)

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Re: The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)

#41

Post by QuercusMax »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #38
colechristensen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Probably not enough to cause lasting damage unless you are extremely unlucky about where the discharge went You don't have to be that unlucky. Discharge across your heart can stop it, no problem. It is not at all difficult for that energy to route through your chest. You were lucky.

Not just heart-stopping-dangers! I had a dishwasher whose wiring was damaged by a rat. I unplugged the dishwasher, and started working on the wires - maybe 1mm thickness. Next thing I know, I've punched myself in the face and knocked myself to the floor from something discharging, and need an ice pack on my lip.

I had a dishwasher whose wiring wasn't installed properly, and it eventually caught fire. Seeing smoke and flames come out of a running dishwasher is something I won't soon forget!

Re: The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)

#42

Post by theamk »

autoexec wrote: post #28
theamk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember LCDs needing any "push" in the customer segment, and they certainly co-existed for a while, until people stopped buying CRTs. Initially they were wildly expensive, so all we could do is to sit and watch; but the moment they got affordable, people just started buying them. I remember swapping my CRT for a (smaller) LCD.. the extra space on my desk was so nice! And in a few years, I bought an LCDs disp…

The sales pitch was that "HD" was all anyone was supposed to care about. What we got in exchange for HD and some extra desk space was terrible color accuracy, worse contrast and grey blacks, low refresh rates, high latency/input lag, motion blur, dead/stuck pixels, poor viewing angles, fixed resolutions, backlight bleed, and DRM. We also lost the degauss button. Kids today will never know how fun that was. Some of th…

Wait what, "HD"? Sales pitch where? I don't think I ever watched traditional ads for monitors, it was always catalogs (with dry specs) and computer magazines / friends (which always mentioned latency). And if there were any resolution-related acronyms, it would be SVGA, XGA and other weird things no one took seriously.

Here is a period shopping catalog: https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper_2000-07/page/n5... (page 5). Note you had a choice PerfectFlat E2 CRT panel (1280x1024, 17" viewable) and ViewPanel LCD (with same spec). At that time (2000's), LCDs were 2x-3x times more expensive than CRTs, so most people would still go with CRTs.

HD is a relatively new term which I think appeared when LCD came for consumer TVs? By that time, LCD monitors has long ago became prevalent with the PCs.

Re: The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)

#43

Post by EvanAnderson »

didntcheck wrote: post #34
kjkjadksj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I turned on a crt recently and it was so noisy I could hear it outside, through the walls. My cat ran and hid. Did we really all collectively just tolerate that noise back then, or do these things decay over time somehow and get louder?

It it was that loud then I'd expect something was wrong with it. I can no longer hear those frequencies, but I could when I was a kid, and I don't remember it being annoying at all. Just one of those things you only really notice after it stops, like when the fridge stops humming. Our cat also didn't react at all from my memory

I tried to show off an Apple II to my then 5 y/o daughter using a CRT monitor. She the sound (presumably somewhere around 15Khz) and was really annoyed by it and clasped her hands to her ears. My wife and I were completely oblivious.

We didn't see if she could acclimate to it. The monitor works okay but it's early 1990s stock so, presumably, something might be wrong w/ it, too.

I definitely remember hearing CRTs as a kid and adults telling me I was making it up.

Re: The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)

#44

Post by NikkiA »

autoexec wrote: post #35
didntcheck wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I just had poor ones, but my memory of CRTs was inferior blacks in practice due to the much higher reflectiveness of the glass surface. So while technically it was a perfect black in terms of direct emissions, it didn't help much when I could see the room behind me reflected in that "black" patch. In a dark arcade it's fine of course, but most of my monitor use is in a well-lit room. And I still dislike gloss…

It's true that there were CRTs that performed worse than others and that glare was an issue. CRTs could develop some weird image issues when they started failing too so for a lot of people used to old CRTs that needed repair getting a new LCD probably did seem like an upgrade. Very few people who'd been using a well functioning Sony Trinitron would have felt that way though.

As someone that had a 22" Sony trinitron monitor on my (sagging) desk in the late 90s, no, I was glad to switch to LCD.

Re: The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)

#45

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #40
sowbug wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add a bit more color here: most flexor muscles in your body are a lot stronger than the corresponding extensors, so when an external command comes in telling both to contract, for example from electricity in the thing you're working on, gripping wins. You can't let go. Great for grabbing a branch as you fall out of a tree. Not so great for repairing a power line. Late edit: I've heard you can use this factoid…

The bit about holding an alligator's mouth closed is correct and I remember Step Two from an alligator wrestling demonstration: flip it over. They lose consciousness if you can hold them in an inverted position.

So do chickens, but they're a lot easier to wrestle.

Re: The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)

#46

Post by xythobuz »

I just want to mention Oscilloscope Music [1]. You can find other artists on YouTube. It can be played on analog oscilloscopes with an XY mode. I also recently made a little player with a Raspberry Pi [2].

[1]: https://oscilloscopemusic.com/

[2]: https://www.xythobuz.de/osci_music_player.html

Re: The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)

#47

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

autoexec wrote: post #35
didntcheck wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I just had poor ones, but my memory of CRTs was inferior blacks in practice due to the much higher reflectiveness of the glass surface. So while technically it was a perfect black in terms of direct emissions, it didn't help much when I could see the room behind me reflected in that "black" patch. In a dark arcade it's fine of course, but most of my monitor use is in a well-lit room. And I still dislike gloss…

It's true that there were CRTs that performed worse than others and that glare was an issue. CRTs could develop some weird image issues when they started failing too so for a lot of people used to old CRTs that needed repair getting a new LCD probably did seem like an upgrade. Very few people who'd been using a well functioning Sony Trinitron would have felt that way though.

There's a Sony Wega that's been sitting outside my back door for 10 years because it could only handle a toddler pouring apple juice inside it twice. Should probably make a trip to hazmat drop off one of these years.

Anyway, no. The reason said toddler was able to damage it was because I replaced that sucker with an LCD TV the instant they didn't cost an arm and a leg and moved the CRT into the basement for the kids to watch.

Re: The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)

#48

Post by xcv123 »

autoexec wrote: post #28
theamk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember LCDs needing any "push" in the customer segment, and they certainly co-existed for a while, until people stopped buying CRTs. Initially they were wildly expensive, so all we could do is to sit and watch; but the moment they got affordable, people just started buying them. I remember swapping my CRT for a (smaller) LCD.. the extra space on my desk was so nice! And in a few years, I bought an LCDs disp…

The sales pitch was that "HD" was all anyone was supposed to care about. What we got in exchange for HD and some extra desk space was terrible color accuracy, worse contrast and grey blacks, low refresh rates, high latency/input lag, motion blur, dead/stuck pixels, poor viewing angles, fixed resolutions, backlight bleed, and DRM. We also lost the degauss button. Kids today will never know how fun that was. Some of th…

I remember the constant eye strain from years of CRT monitor use. Blurry and flickery pieces of shit. I dumped mine in the trash and never looked back. Good riddance.

> it'd be nice if in 2024 we had screens at least as capable as what we had several decades ago

You don't know what you're talking about. Try using a high end LCD that was manufactured in the past 10 years. The screens today are way better than the shit we were forced to use in the 90s.

https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/

Re: The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)

#49

Post by vikingerik »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #43
didntcheck wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It it was that loud then I'd expect something was wrong with it. I can no longer hear those frequencies, but I could when I was a kid, and I don't remember it being annoying at all. Just one of those things you only really notice after it stops, like when the fridge stops humming. Our cat also didn't react at all from my memory

I tried to show off an Apple II to my then 5 y/o daughter using a CRT monitor. She the sound (presumably somewhere around 15Khz) and was really annoyed by it and clasped her hands to her ears. My wife and I were completely oblivious. We didn't see if she could acclimate to it. The monitor works okay but it's early 1990s stock so, presumably, something might be wrong w/ it, too. I definitely remember hearing CRTs as a…

The horizontal refresh rate (scanlines per second, how often the beam retraces horizontally) of NTSC video is indeed 15750 Hz, and PAL is 15625. Just about every CRT will emit some amount of audio at that frequency, and yes that's just at the upper end of the audible range for some (mostly young) humans.

Re: The Secret Life of XY Monitors (2001)

#50

Post by dmoy »

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #5
colechristensen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Probably not enough to cause lasting damage unless you are extremely unlucky about where the discharge went You don't have to be that unlucky. Discharge across your heart can stop it, no problem. It is not at all difficult for that energy to route through your chest. You were lucky.

Well... one difference between a stun gun and CRT tube is that in a stun gun you usually have both terminals relatively close to each other. Little chance of the main pulse going deep across the chest. On the other hand working with the CRT you are likely using both hands and that makes the signal go through your upper chest, by default. So yeah, there is something to it. One thing I learned as amateur EE is to alway…

> One thing I learned as amateur EE is to always use just one hand to probe the device under test if there is any high voltage or AC involved.

I remember in some EE course, the prof randomly stopped in the middle of a lecture and said roughly

"Ok now that you all know this theory, I need to remind you that you should not go do your own home electrical work, because you will get ahead of yourself and die from some kind of electric shock"

The implication being:

1. You're trained, but for EE not electrician work

2. You'll think you know what to do, even if you don't it'll cloud your judgement

3. As an EE you will make enough to pay a real electrician to do your electrical work

Needless to say in the real high power EE courses (t lines, grid, etc), this wasn't even mentioned, because it was just implicitly known that all that stuff was in the realm of "Don't physically touch this stuff in the real world ever because it will kill you and it will hurt the whole time you're dying".

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