Observations on a UPS - follow up to a previous post

A

Arfa Daily

kony said:
It is your goal to blur the information, which is what the
grease would do.

Pixel data is output by a computer to a video card. Since
human vision has far higher granularity, it is not expected
to look like reality except to the depth of granularity
possible by that pixel data, resolution. If the pixel data
is not preserved but rather smoothed to reduce your
perception of the pixels, it is also removing "data" from
the image, it is less accurate than the output was intended
to be. Monitor manufacturers strive to accurately reproduce
the image, not make it asthetically pleasing.

The goal is accuracy, not "lifelike". Lifelike and accuracy
can coexist but it will come from higher resolution, not
degradation of the signal upon output as you propose.

Yeah,OK. I give in. You are right. I couldn't be more wrong if I tried. 35
years down the pan. Just as an experiment, I wiped goose grease all over my
LCD monitor and guess what? YOU ARE RIGHT !!!! ( that's for excited
emphasis, I'm not shouting at you ). My picture is now so blurred that it
looks just like the real world when I don't have my specs on. Accuracy or
what ?!!! Have you thought of marketing this idea ? You could put it in tubs
and sell it on the net as "Kony's patent image enhancing compound (blended
with REAL snake oil )"

My next plan is to see if I can drop a couple of bits on the input to the
video card's DAC. That should increase the 'granularity' no end. This is
another idea that could be put forward to monitor manufacturers to help them
in their goal of making the reproduced image anything but lifelike, and
better yet - *less* aesthetically pleasing !!

Boy, you're a lad ! All these wickedly good ideas ! If you don't market them
yourself, *I'm* gonna, and get really rich. Then you'll be sorry ! ;-)

Arfa
 
K

kony

Yeah,OK. I give in. You are right. I couldn't be more wrong if I tried. 35
years down the pan. Just as an experiment, I wiped goose grease all over my
LCD monitor and guess what? YOU ARE RIGHT !!!!

The problem with goose grease is the high number of geese it
would take to treat all monitors. :)

( that's for excited
emphasis, I'm not shouting at you ).

Ok, I never did think capitalizing as shouting worked very
well anyway, since the person has to read the text either
way for it to matter.
My picture is now so blurred that it
looks just like the real world when I don't have my specs on. Accuracy or
what ?!!! Have you thought of marketing this idea ? You could put it in tubs
and sell it on the net as "Kony's patent image enhancing compound (blended
with REAL snake oil )"

I'm not the one who wants to end up with less than the
computer was designed to output. Yes the grease idea is
crazy and has no merit but it is the type of degradation
(albeit to a greater extent) causing your more lifelike
image. CRT manufacturers didn't aim for that, it was just
the result of the coating and thick glass. If LCD
manufacturers wanted this, they could put a thick diffuser
sheet on the front.

My next plan is to see if I can drop a couple of bits on the input to the
video card's DAC. That should increase the 'granularity' no end. This is
another idea that could be put forward to monitor manufacturers to help them
in their goal of making the reproduced image anything but lifelike, and
better yet - *less* aesthetically pleasing !!

Boy, you're a lad ! All these wickedly good ideas ! If you don't market them
yourself, *I'm* gonna, and get really rich. Then you'll be sorry ! ;-)

Ok!
 
G

Gene E. Bloch

More commonly, on usenet, leading and trailing asterisks indicate what
would be italicized for emphasis.

Although my newsreader displays *word* in bold and /word/ in italics
(if I let it).


Hmmm - I've never tried both, like this:
/*word*/ (looks like a comment to me!)
*/word/*

I'll look at them when the message up shows in the NG...
 
G

Gene E. Bloch

Although my newsreader displays *word* in bold and /word/ in italics (if I
let it).


Hmmm - I've never tried both, like this:
/*word*/ (looks like a comment to me!)
*/word/*

I'll look at them when the message up shows in the NG...

Both are in bold + italic here.

Well, to be 100% accurate, the first is in italic + bold :)

BTW, the reason I had to wait until I could read it in the NG is that
this reader (MesNews) displays bold, italic, and smileys as straight
text in the composition window.
 
A

Arfa Daily

kony said:
The problem with goose grease is the high number of geese it
would take to treat all monitors. :)



Ok, I never did think capitalizing as shouting worked very
well anyway, since the person has to read the text either
way for it to matter.


I'm not the one who wants to end up with less than the
computer was designed to output. Yes the grease idea is
crazy and has no merit but it is the type of degradation
(albeit to a greater extent) causing your more lifelike
image. CRT manufacturers didn't aim for that, it was just
the result of the coating and thick glass. If LCD
manufacturers wanted this, they could put a thick diffuser
sheet on the front.



Ok!

Yeah, OK! Just messin' with ya! Really, I don't have a problem with my LCD
monitors. Both of them look just fine. But subjectively, a CRT picture just
has something that makes it a little more 'human' to my perception. I would
guess that it's the same as CD versus vinyl, where the vinyl has a 'warmer'
sound (oddly, Steve Wright was discussing exactly this on his BBC radio
programme today, and it was his opinion that CD sounded 'cold' compared to
vinyl). Another example might be programme material shot on video tape,
versus that shot on film stock. Outdoor scenes in particular always have a
flat, cold, unrealistic look to them, when shot on video, but I'm sure that
you would probably be able to apply your 'more accurate not lifelike'
analysis to these examples as well. Anyway, all of this is causing me to
lose the will to live now, and I'm done with it. I think we better just
settle on agreeing to differ ... Later

Arfa
 
A

Arfa Daily

Gene E. Bloch said:
Both are in bold + italic here.

Well, to be 100% accurate, the first is in italic + bold :)

BTW, the reason I had to wait until I could read it in the NG is that this
reader (MesNews) displays bold, italic, and smileys as straight text in
the composition window.

So I guess that's why the common convention is to use slashes and asterisks.
I never knew that some newsreaders actually interpreted these as such. Learn
something new every day ! So that does leave capitalization free for
'shouting' ... d;~}

Arfa
 
T

tholen

Doc said:
I don't like the way LCD/flat panel monitors look. The image isn't as
sharp

That's hard to believe. A problem common with CRTs is trying to achieve
convergence of all three colors everywhere on the screen. Lack of
convergence leads to loss of sharpness. Convergence is not an issue on
flat panels.
 
A

Arfa Daily

That's hard to believe. A problem common with CRTs is trying to achieve
convergence of all three colors everywhere on the screen. Lack of
convergence leads to loss of sharpness. Convergence is not an issue on
flat panels.

I don't really think that cvonvergence has been much of an issue since
slotmasks became the norm many years ago, as these are inherently self
converging. Whilst very cheap-end CRT monitors and TV sets might still have
some slight convergence issues at the screen extremities, I can't honestly
say that I have seen anything in this respect worth commenting on, for some
years now. Perhaps I'm just lucky, or just selectively seeing what I want
( or don't ! ) want to ... d;~}

Arfa
 
T

tholen

I don't really think that cvonvergence has been much of an issue since
slotmasks became the norm many years ago, as these are inherently self
converging.

How so?
Whilst very cheap-end CRT monitors and TV sets might still have
some slight convergence issues at the screen extremities, I can't honestly
say that I have seen anything in this respect worth commenting on, for some
years now.

I have.
Perhaps I'm just lucky, or just selectively seeing what I want
( or don't ! ) want to ... d;~}

There's also the issue of focus. I've seen CRTs go "soft" as they age.
Focus is not an issue on flat panels.

Then there's magnetic effects. Aside from degaussing, which modern CRTs
are designed to do automatically, you have to worry about external fields,
such as from nearby loudspeakers. I had a modern CRT image start to
"shimmy" when an outdoor security light came on every evening. Flat
panels are immune to external magnetic fields and don't need degaussing.
 
A

Arfa Daily


***********
It is largely a function of the precision wound deflection yoke that is
carefully matched to the CRT at the factory. This yoke requires only basic
static convergence to be adjusted, and this is accomplished usually with a
combination of 4 and 6 pole annular magnets at the rear of the yoke. See
second para from bottom

http://www.answers.com/topic/television-receiver-1?cat=technology

***********

I have.


There's also the issue of focus. I've seen CRTs go "soft" as they age.
Focus is not an issue on flat panels.


*************
It is fairly rare for CRTs to age this way these days. Often, something else
in the circuitry fails, to render the monitor not worth repairing, before
the CRT is showing serious signs of aging, although I do accept that this is
a potential age-related failure mode of a CRT display. Whilst I agree that
focus per se is not an issue that can be directly related to LCD display
technology, many cheap end displays never-the-less do not look as sharp as a
*good* CRT display, and also suffer from serious motion blur, both as a
result of switching lag in the LCD cells, and display drive circuitry. There
are other issues with LCD monitors, which some consider to be a bigger
problem than the minor defects with CRT display technology. These include
poor contrast ratio, poor eveness of the back illumination, fairly rapid
wearing of the CCFLs providing that illumination, very poor results with a
drive source resolution of anything other than the panel's native figure,
and motion blur as already discussed.

Focus of modern CRTs is well taken care of. Very well performing dynamic
focus circuits have been in common usage for some years now, and the CRTs
electron lenses are carefully designed to maximise the beneficial effects of
this. Again, some cheap end monitors / TV sets are not terribly good in this
respect, but that is more of a cost than technology issue. On a decent
quality CRT display, you would be fairly hard pressed to find focus errors
worth complaining about.

*************
Then there's magnetic effects. Aside from degaussing, which modern CRTs
are designed to do automatically, you have to worry about external fields,
such as from nearby loudspeakers. I had a modern CRT image start to
"shimmy" when an outdoor security light came on every evening. Flat
panels are immune to external magnetic fields and don't need degaussing.

*************
Magnetic effects should not be an issue with modern CRTs, unless a powerful
field is brought close to the face of the CRT. The construction of the
device includes a magnetic shield, and before they did, they were surrounded
by a mu-metal shield, which blocked all but the strongest interfering
fields. It is not the CRT which degauses itself automatically. Rather, it is
a piece of circuitry which at switch on, applies an initially large,
progressively decaying, AC current to the degausing coils surrounding the
CRT. In the case of a TV set, that's it, but with a computer monitor, as
well as this automatic degausing at switch on, a manual switch or menu
option is often provided as well, to allow for a 'hot' demagnetisation. I've
never really understood why manufacturers thought this necessary. Maybe
because monitors are mounted on a tilt and swivel base, which could result
in purity errors due to the realignment of the earth's magnetic field if you
do spin the monitor round, but it would have gone back right anyway, when
you turned it back. Still, it looks pretty, if you're bored with what you're
doing ...

As far as your monitor shimmering when the outside light came on, I would
suggest that this was nothing to do with magnetic fields or CRT technology.
Far more likely to be mains-borne mutual interference between the monitor's
switch mode power supply, and something like triac switching in the outside
light. Did you ever pin down what you thought was actually causing the
problem ?

Arfa
 
A

Arny Krueger

That's hard to believe. A problem common with CRTs is trying to achieve
convergence of all three colors everywhere on the screen. Lack of
convergence leads to loss of sharpness. Convergence is not an issue on
flat panels.

Agreed. I believe that if money and maintenance are not issues, you can
still get the best visual quality with CRTs.
 
G

Gene E. Bloch

So I guess that's why the common convention is to use slashes and asterisks.
I never knew that some newsreaders actually interpreted these as such. Learn
something new every day ! So that does leave capitalization free for
'shouting' ... d;~}

Arfa

:)

You could always put in metacommands, like below:
<SHOUT>
....
</SHOUT>

I noticed in configuring something on the Mac a couple of days ago (I
forget what, sorry) that stars can bracket bold words and underscores
can bracket italics in that app. I think this newsreader displays
_word_ as an underscored word, but I won't know until I read it as an
incoming article, as before.

I knew about stars for emphasis, but I didn't know about displaying it
as bold type until I started using MesNews a couple of years ago.
 
A

Arfa Daily

Gene E. Bloch said:
:)

You could always put in metacommands, like below:
<SHOUT>
...
</SHOUT>

I noticed in configuring something on the Mac a couple of days ago (I
forget what, sorry) that stars can bracket bold words and underscores can
bracket italics in that app. I think this newsreader displays _word_ as an
underscored word, but I won't know until I read it as an incoming article,
as before.

I knew about stars for emphasis, but I didn't know about displaying it as
bold type until I started using MesNews a couple of years ago.

Just goes to show how many years you can use something for, and still not
know all about it. The underlining thing is yet another one to add to my
knowledgebase. So I wonder if you can both bracket and slash either side to
ensure that it will get read as italics in either variety of reader. And
then again, can you add stars as well for bold and italics ?

Arfa

Arfa
 
A

Arfa Daily

Arfa Daily said:
Just goes to show how many years you can use something for, and still not
know all about it. The underlining thing is yet another one to add to my
knowledgebase. So I wonder if you can both bracket and slash either side
to ensure that it will get read as italics in either variety of reader.
And then again, can you add stars as well for bold and italics ?

Arfa


Senior moment. That should of course, have read "underscore and slash". I
hate getting old ...

Arfa
 
G

Gene E. Bloch

Senior moment. That should of course, have read "underscore and slash". I
hate getting old ...

Arfa

Just to make you feel younger:

*/_test phrase_/*

For some reason, I felt I had to do LIFO on the markers :)
 
A

Arfa Daily

Gene E. Bloch said:
Just to make you feel younger:

*/_test phrase_/*

For some reason, I felt I had to do LIFO on the markers :)

LOL ! Thanks. Feeling better now ...

Arfa
 
D

Dan

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc Doc <[email protected]> wrote:
enough to get me through short hit outages with both machines running.
And with the el-cheapo battery in there, that figure will be down to
<1 minute in no time. And you would be well advised to test the
claim. Software can be made to lie to you, you know.
If i may ask a related question: ups comes with small batteries so as
to make it portable. Once I've put it in a permanent location, can I
connect a bigger battery by using cables (say replacing the 12 Ah with
30 Ah battery?) or the charger will be exhausted bringing the bigger
battery up to capacity?
 
K

Ken

If i may ask a related question: ups comes with small batteries so as
to make it portable. Once I've put it in a permanent location, can I
connect a bigger battery by using cables (say replacing the 12 Ah with
30 Ah battery?) or the charger will be exhausted bringing the bigger
battery up to capacity?

The UPS can get too hot.
 
T

tholen

It is largely a function of the precision wound deflection yoke that is
carefully matched to the CRT at the factory. This yoke requires only basic
static convergence to be adjusted, and this is accomplished usually with a
combination of 4 and 6 pole annular magnets at the rear of the yoke. See
second para from bottom

Meanwhile, see lots of current CRT televisions. I witnessed one
tonight with horrible convergence, and it's relatively new.
It is fairly rare for CRTs to age this way these days.

Sort of like how CRTs are allegedly inherently self converging, when
simple inspection shows that they are not?
Often, something else
in the circuitry fails, to render the monitor not worth repairing, before
the CRT is showing serious signs of aging, although I do accept that this is
a potential age-related failure mode of a CRT display. Whilst I agree that
focus per se is not an issue that can be directly related to LCD display
technology, many cheap end displays never-the-less do not look as sharp as a
*good* CRT display,

Comparing a cheap something to a good something is like comparing apples to
oranges. Hardly a valid comparison.
and also suffer from serious motion blur,

LCD response times are getting shorter and shorter.
both as a
result of switching lag in the LCD cells, and display drive circuitry.

If you find the blur unacceptable, then use the right tool for the job.
I use a television to watch motion pictures, and I use a computer display
for computer tasks.
There
are other issues with LCD monitors, which some consider to be a bigger
problem than the minor defects with CRT display technology. These include
poor contrast ratio,

"Poor" is subjective. One can be lower than another, but can the user
tell the difference? To use an analogy, consider a loudspeaker with
frequency response up to 25 kHz; compared to one with response up to
30 kHz, one might call it "poor", but how many listeners will be able
to tell the difference? I've seen LCDs side-by-sde with plasmas that
claim to have contrast ratios an order of magnitude higher, but you
can't really tell from the content being shown.
poor eveness of the back illumination,

Sort of like a CRT after an image has been burned in. A great example are
the airport monitors showing flight arrival and departure information.
fairly rapid wearing of the CCFLs providing that illumination,

Manufacturers are switching to LEDs for illumination.
very poor results with a
drive source resolution of anything other than the panel's native figure,

CRTs have the same problem in one dimension when using Trinitron-style
(aperture grille) tubes with vertical color stripes, and in both dimensions
when using tubes with dots (shadow mask). With NTSC, broadcast (about 330
lines) always looked sharper than VHS-SP (about 240 lines). Super VHS
could supposedly do about 400 lines, and ED Beta about 500 lines, but
what if your CRT didn't have 500 phosphor triples in that direction? You'd
never see the benefit of the technology.
and motion blur as already discussed.

And my response as already presented.
Focus of modern CRTs is well taken care of. Very well performing dynamic
focus circuits have been in common usage for some years now, and the CRTs
electron lenses are carefully designed to maximise the beneficial effects of
this. Again, some cheap end monitors / TV sets are not terribly good in this
respect, but that is more of a cost than technology issue. On a decent
quality CRT display, you would be fairly hard pressed to find focus errors
worth complaining about.

CRTs have been around for a long time. Manufacturers have had lots of
time to tweak the technology, and mass production has brought prices
down. LCDs are newer technology, still undergoing rapid development
(panels are getting bigger, resolutions are getting higher, stuck pixels
are getting fewer, manufacturing yields are improving, response times
are faster, viewing angles are getting wider, backlights are getting
more reliable. Reminds me of the debut of the Compact Disc. The earliest
players had a tough time measuring up to the state-of-the-art in analog.
Magnetic effects should not be an issue with modern CRTs, unless a powerful
field is brought close to the face of the CRT. The construction of the
device includes a magnetic shield, and before they did, they were surrounded
by a mu-metal shield, which blocked all but the strongest interfering
fields.

Can you see through a mu-metal shield?
It is not the CRT which degauses itself automatically. Rather, it is
a piece of circuitry which at switch on, applies an initially large,
progressively decaying, AC current to the degausing coils surrounding the
CRT.

The circuitry doesn't need degaussing. The CRT needs degaussing, hence
saying the CRT is designed to be automatically degaussed is the more
appropriate description.
In the case of a TV set, that's it, but with a computer monitor, as
well as this automatic degausing at switch on, a manual switch or menu
option is often provided as well, to allow for a 'hot' demagnetisation. I've
never really understood why manufacturers thought this necessary. Maybe
because monitors are mounted on a tilt and swivel base, which could result
in purity errors due to the realignment of the earth's magnetic field if you
do spin the monitor round, but it would have gone back right anyway, when
you turned it back. Still, it looks pretty, if you're bored with what you're
doing ...

With LCDs, you don't need to worry about the Earth's magnetic field.
As far as your monitor shimmering when the outside light came on, I would
suggest that this was nothing to do with magnetic fields or CRT technology.
Far more likely to be mains-borne mutual interference between the monitor's
switch mode power supply, and something like triac switching in the outside
light. Did you ever pin down what you thought was actually causing the
problem ?

All I can say is that other computer monitors on the same power circuit
didn't shimmy when the outdoor light came on, but the large Mitsubishi
Diamondtron did. The strength of the field was measured, and the measurer
claimed that it was less than that produced by an electric pencil sharpener,
said that the lights were operating within specs, and didn't do a thing to
help eliminate the problem with the computer monitor. "Not their problem."
 

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