1966 Mag: Build NE-2 Neon Bulb Computer - scan available

Chuck Guzis wrote: Aside from the longevity, my big gripe there is the step backwards in the UI - lots of modern washers seem to just have a few little LEDs to give a basic indication of what they're up to. Back in the days of timers, you could see exactly what was going on and how long things had left to run - but now such functionality seems to be treated as a luxury item and only comes on the more expensive models. Mine's horrible - it spends about 50% of its life in a failure mode where response from the remote goes really sluggish and the sound cuts out with just the occasional faint buzzing noise. It's a mass of microprocessors and big custom chips inside though, so other than the obvious checks for bad joints and flakey caps there's been nothing I can do with it. It's times like that when I really start cursing the "progress" that computers have brought :-( Yeah, lots of them this side of the pond too. I still find a CRT far nicer to work with than an LCD though - probably because a CRT gives more of an aliasing effect that looks more "natural" than the crisp jaggedness of an LCD display. Although the modern way seems to be to have as crisp an LCD as possible, then compensate by requiring masses of video memory, a fast CPU, and aliasing everything in software ;) The display on the PC is sadly a 19" LCD since the 21" Iiyama I had went bang (LOPT death) - I'm keeping an eye out for another big CRT though (plus there was a nice wide expanse of space above the face of the CRT which was very useful for perching 'pending' papers on top of - my desk's a lot messier since the LCD came along :-) cheers Jules