5 Dec
2005
5 Dec
'05
3:22 p.m.
It's VERY important to be careful inside the Mac
once the cover is
off. It's extremely easy to snap the glass nipple on the CRT and
ruin it. Apple in their infinite wisdom put a circuit board on
the back of the neck to act as a 'torque amplifier' for this
purpose. Just bumping the board wrong can let all the 'magic
vacuum' out of your CRT.
There are good eleetronic reasons for mounting the video output stage
close to the CRT base (basically to reduce the capacitance of the
connections to the CRT cathode). You'll find most high resolution
monitors have a PCB hung on the back of the CRT.
The Mac+, etc, just has a socket connector on the back of the CRT, all
the circuitry is on the analogue board (PSU and monitor circuity
basically). But there are connectors you have to unplug to remoe the
digital board (processor, mrmory, etc) which are a tight fit and so
positions that if you're pulling on them and they come loose suddenly,
you will hit the CRT neck. And yes, people (not me this time...) have
cracked CRTs doing just that.
But since the compact Mac was expressly designed to NOT be user
servicible, that meets the requirements of the time.
I am not going to enter into another flameware about Apple
designs....Suffice it to say, both mechanically and electronically, they
are well down my list.
-tony