17 Aug
2014
17 Aug
'14
3:31 p.m.
I am a huge DEC admirer though they definitely made some questionable
engineering decisions in some products... How about those DECstation 2100
and 3100s that wouldn't pass POST unless a mouse was connected!! Arg.
Best,
Sean
On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 5:41 PM, Robert Jarratt <robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com
wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:
cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Tony Duell
Sent: 17 August 2014 21:39
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: VT240 Monitor Error - 9
input
port.
According to the pocket reference it means that
the "monitor present"
signal has not been seen.
OK, found it.. There's a pin on the DA15 connctor that is wired to an It is grounded by the monitor/monitor cable.
Is it jsut me, or is this the mst stupid feature imaginable? You
gneerally
know if
the monitor isn't there, and to reprot the
fact by displayign an error
message
on the monitor is pointless. But worse than that,
the VT240 has a
composite
video output on a BNC socket (it carries the same
signal as the
monochrome
vidoe output on the DA15). aas there's a 4p4c
fro the keyboard o nthe
VT240
main box too, you could run it with any composite
monitor -- but you'd
get
this
error unless you plugged a
DA15 socket in wit ha suitable shorting link.
And yet you say that even with this error the termianl works perfectly.
So what's the point of it?
I suspect when I clean up/test my VT240 I'll solder a little jumper rie
on
the
logic board to disable this 'feature'...
-tony
I can only agree, that this seems a pretty pointless feature. To make it
asymmetrical is even more silly in my view. Why should it have to matter
which way round the cable is when both ends are identical?
I should try it with a composite monitor sometime, just for the heck of it.
Someone has hand-marked a 1 over the 0 in VT240, so I think this may be
colour-capable. Did the base unit differ between monochrome and colour, or
is it just the monitor that makes the difference?
Regards
Rob