20 Oct
2001
20 Oct
'01
8:50 a.m.
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On Saturday 20 Oct 2001 19:59 pm, Tony Duell wrote:
I agree. A competent IT guy should be able to fix items like broken
connectors with little effort. And, of course, should be able to build a
computer out of parts (that is, graphics card, CD-ROM, rather than the
individual chips :-) - I'm sure there are people who don't know how to do
that.
Yup :) Although most people who know me know that I have a very low regard
(none, really) for Health and Safety laws - I watch out where I put stuff,
other people should too (okay, probably not the best thing to admit on a
public forum :-)
Dan
- --
dankolb(a)ox.compsoc.net
- --I reserve the right to be completely wrong about any comments or
opinions expressed; don't trust everything you read above--
Connector are cheaper than cables. And they're
easier to get. Often the
monitor end of the cable terminates in some strange PCB connectors, of
which there are dozens of varients, many of them almost impossible to
find...
Thanks :-) I didn't know that. To be quite honest, I can't recall ever having
the need to open up monitors before - so far all the one's I've got have
worked fine - it's only the newest one that the cable broke in. Is it just
me, or does new technology seem much less reliable than old(er) stuff?
When I was an undergraduate (admittedly at the other
university), I found
a toolkit to be essential. It's amazing how often you need to fix things.
I had most common hand tools, a soldering station, solder sucker,
multimeter, etc in my room. Even a small 'scope. And I needed them...
To be quite honest, for the very few times I'd need one (possibly once or
twice a year) it's not worth for me to take all the equipment up from home -
it's far easier just to take the faulty item back home and fix it there. I'm
sure you can forgive me not having equipment here (actually, I do have a
soldering iron now, but that's it) :-)
The vidoe lines have 75 )hm termination resistors, so
you can measure the
reisstance between the video cable and its screen. If it tests open
there's a break in the cable. You can normally detect the protection
diodes on digital lines too with an ohmmeter. So you can, in fact, check
for broken wires from the plug end of the cable only.
Thank you. I'll give that a try.
The subject
was about 'office people'. Most(?) IT people wouldn't know
how to solder a monitor connector, or possibly wouldn't be allowed to by
either
As I said in another message, such IT people get no respect from me...
their company
or Health and Safety (no, I don't know much about
Health&Safety
Then you smuggle in one of those gas-powered soldering irons and
fix it
when the powers-that-be are not watching :-) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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