18 Nov
1997
18 Nov
'97
10:56 p.m.
On Tue, 18 Nov 1997 jpero(a)cgo.wave.ca wrote:
[...]
They're still going. Their modern stuff is not _as good_, but it's still
very well built. Oh, and the electronic design is up to the same high
standards.
I don't know if they ever built NTSC televisions (they're based in
Belgium), but I _know_ their RGB monitors can work at USA scan rates
(well, the TV-rate ones, anyway - they make a lot of different models,
including IIRC VGA, etc), and I would think their professional video
monitors certainly come in NTSC versions.
Be warned that they're not cheap. And their spares (while available) are
also very expensive.
I was not claiming that all modern cases were bad or anything like that.
It's just that these quick-release clips are often nothing of the sort
(_some_ are good), and you spend longer fiddling with those than it would
have taken to undo a couple of screws.
A Barco TV was
nearly as good. Pop the back (4 screws), and there was a
motherboard mounted vertically around the CRT neck. Pull out any of the
plug-in cards, hinge the motherboard down, and plug it into pins on the
solder side of the motherboard. You can now trivially test it.
Is that Barco
company gone belly up or still existing making new
monitors and TV's? And also that shows good design! :) I've never
understood this love of screwdriver-less cases. If I'm going to
be fixing a computer I'm going to have a soldering station, scope, logic
analyser, cutters, etc with me. So having a screwdriver set is no big deal
either.
Oh, Tony, we have to deal 5 or 12 computers a day when things get work on it seperate from case. The low quality cases
is so sharp
that you can shave with it and also very wobbly without the cover. (I
could crush the frame with hands. and I'm not that strong-armed like
the weight lifter!) Also some have so bad metal and rough machined
Oh, agreed. I've seen some really bad build quality in no-name PCs - and I
don't like it. I also like well-engineered cases - ones that I could stand
on if necessary, ones that don't remove the skin from my hands when I
reach in to flip a DIP switch or pull a card, etc.
-tony