RF Shielding History: When the FCC Cracked Down on Computers
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: RF Shielding History: When the FCC Cracked Down on Computers
#2I wish the FCC would go back to doing their job re: radio interference and unintentional emissions. The entire concept of a computer case 'window' is about equally as anti-social and rude as littering in a public park. But it's so pervasive and socially accepted when I bring it up the only responses I receive are all quite hostile. Even worse are the computer builds that don't have any metal case at all. They're broadcasting that And really, it's not the consumer's place to be aware of these things. It's the regulators'. And they've dropped the ball.
Re: RF Shielding History: When the FCC Cracked Down on Computers
#3I'd heard, probably in a Centre for Computing History [0] interview or similar that these regulations contributed to the BBC Micro never getting a good foothold in the USA and losing to Apple.
It had an amazing selection of ports, all unshielded and designed for flat ribbon cables. But that wouldn't fly in the USA.
Re: RF Shielding History: When the FCC Cracked Down on Computers
#4Tangentially related: once I bought a no name Amazon HDMI switch that would cause FM interference but only when the screen was mostly white: https://youtu.be/n2DPLEvwO-k
Another reason to use dark mode I guess
Re: RF Shielding History: When the FCC Cracked Down on Computers
#5Ahh, alternative futures...
If the FCC hadn't been so strict I think there's a good chance we'd be using computers with a lineage going back to Atari versus IBM today.
Commodore ate Atari's lunch with the C64 and pricing, but Atari could have launched the 400/800 at lower price points with more lax emission standards. They would have had lower peripheral price points, too, since the SIO bus and "smart peripheral" design was also an emissions strategy.
On the home computer front the Atari 8-bits beat the pants off of the PET for graphics and sound capabilities. More success in the late 70s might have enabled Atari to build down to a price point that would have prevented the C64 from even happening.
On the business side Atari R&D had interesting stuff going on (a Unix workstation, Transputer machines). Alan Kay even worked there! They were thinking about business computing. If the 8-bits had had more success I think more interesting future products could have been brought to market on the revenue they generated.
Re: RF Shielding History: When the FCC Cracked Down on Computers
#6For those of you who watch Adrian Black on YouTube, you might remember him angrily tearing out RF shielding from the older computers.
On the other hand, I have been struggling to get my IP KVM at home working and it turned out that the cause of its failure was some cheap PoE extractors that spew noise across the spectrum, especially interfering with VGA sync.
Modern equipment, assuming you aren't buying bargain-basement AliExpress junk (which I do, from time to time) is surprisingly good at RF rejection.
And, amusingly, this just popped up on Twitter: https://x.com/hakluke/status/1980479234159398989
Re: RF Shielding History: When the FCC Cracked Down on Computers
#7Back in the mid-century, we used to put an AM radio anywhere on the same desk next to the TRS-80 and the revealed cacophany was endlessly fascinating. As I recall, radio tuning was unnecessary.
Re: RF Shielding History: When the FCC Cracked Down on Computers
#8Ahh, alternative futures... If the FCC hadn't been so strict I think there's a good chance we'd be using computers with a lineage going back to Atari versus IBM today. Commodore ate Atari's lunch with the C64 and pricing, but Atari could have launched the 400/800 at lower price points with more lax emission standards. They would have had lower peripheral price points, too, since the SIO bus and "smart peripheral" des…
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Re: RF Shielding History: When the FCC Cracked Down on Computers
#9Tangentially related: once I bought a no name Amazon HDMI switch that would cause FM interference but only when the screen was mostly white: https://youtu.be/n2DPLEvwO-k Another reason to use dark mode I guess
What's interesting is that HDMI is supposed to have a scrambling system that prevents any repeating pattern from causing EMI. I wonder if there was an unshielded, unscrambled raw data path somewhere in the switch.
Re: RF Shielding History: When the FCC Cracked Down on Computers
#10I remember being confused as a kid about the "this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation" labels.
I kept reading "must accept" as a technical requirement, somehow like "must not be shielded against" or "must not use technical means to protect against", rather than what I now think is the intended legal sense "does not have any legal recourse against".
It's weird that they phrased it in terms of how the device itself must "accept" the interference, rather than the owner accepting it.