5150/5151 Video Card??

[Fred Cisin]

On Mon, 15 Aug 2016, tony duell wrote:
> In any case it rarely costs you the monitor if you get it wrong. A 
> horizontal output transistor, sure. But they are not that expensive.

Yes, readily repairable, and therefore "cost a monitor" is an 
exaggeration.
But, somebody who is still unaware of the problem, and blithely plugs 
anything in that will fit, without knowing what kind of card they are 
connecting to, might not have the basic expertise to fix it.

For example, at the college, they purchased replacements and dumpstered 
every monitor that failed.
(I am referring to the local community college, but I know of examples of 
the same at UC Berkeley!)


I am pleased to hear that aftermarket competitors made appropriate 
changes to protect against that vulnerability.


I just looked at Wikipedia, and found some amazing errors, such as 
statement that IBM mono came along much later than CGA, caling it MDA 
instead of MDP, that Hercules innovatively had a "Centronics port" (sic) 
because that was much faster than the serial printing with the IBM mono, 
that PCs HAD TO HAVE both displays, because "no business software would 
work on CGA", no mention of the "Hercules clones" that Jenkins had 
tantrums about, etc.  I edited a few of them, but there is just too much 
misinformation.