Unseasonably warm weather makes my monitor flicker

Posted by Automatic_Mulberry@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 48 comments

I used to work for a small company that had a few offices scattered around an older city. This was in an area with very mild weather, so a lot of these buildings didn't have air conditioning - it just wasn't worth the bother and expense to retrofit it into buildings where it would be used one week a year. Then, that one hot week, I got a call from one of the satellite offices - "My monitor is flickering, and it's giving me a headache. Could it be the heat? Can you come down and look at it? I think it needs to be replaced." I grabbed a spare monitor and put it in my car and drove down to the satellite office. Yep, the monitor was flickering, all right. But when I turned off the cheap desktop fan sitting right next to the monitor, it stopped. Yep, running an unshielded fan next to an unshielded CRT monitor is going to make the image flicker. You should move the fan. Then I drove back to the main office and put the spare monitor back on the shelf.

48 Comments

[-]

sandrews1313@reddit

Speaking of unshielded....who remembers the days when they knew their cell phone was gonna ring a full 5 seconds before it did because the computer speakers started making angry noises?

30p87@reddit

I can actually still remember that. Even though I'm just 17, back in 2010-ish my dads phone used to interfere with the headphone connection from a DVD player + monitor mounted to the car roof with the headphones, so I always heard it when he used it.

BunsenH@reddit

I remember that one of the early home computers didn't have a speaker, but could generate sounds via a nearby radio that was tuned off-band. But I don't recall which model that was. Definitely not a Commodore machine (I worked with those extensively and would have known), but possibly an Apple or Trash80..?

ToothlessGuitarMaker@reddit

My dad's TRS-80 model 1 used a transistor radio sitting on the right end of the computer/keyboard casing as its sound device.

Stefanina@reddit

Yep, I remember that too, The Trash 80 CoCo was my first computer, but a few friends had earlier models.

That sounds about right. And makes some sense given the brand: "We're Radio Shack, and we want to promote sales of radios."

TheMightyGoatMan@reddit

Steve Dompier of the famous Homebrew Computer Club in Menlo Park California famously blew the minds of his fellow club members by programming his Altair 8800 to play the Beatles' *Fool on the Hill* on a nearby radio on April 16, 1975.

Electrical_Escape_87@reddit

friggin nostalgia

ITrCool@reddit

Or landline phones that rang once very briefly a split second before lightning stuck nearby.

jebinspace@reddit

That was actually a feature not a bug. Analog phone lines are generally 48 volts. To make one ring, you simply pumped 105v down the line. Ergo the ring when lightning occurred

Dank-memes-here@reddit

The fact that you can explain the phenomenon does not entail it being a feature, it's still unintended behavior, i.e. a bug

jbuckets44@reddit

It's a free, no-cost-to-the-user feature!

jeff_barr_fanclub@reddit

Found the product manager hahaha

Thanks for the promotion!

Don't think of it as a promotion, consider it a "responsibility rightsizing" instead!

Ugh! That's too many syllables....

> A bug causes unwanted~~, negative~~ behavior

Unwanted is still a negative action. Said feature is an unexpected, but welcomed & appreciated function.

Tygronn@reddit

Just because the user doesn't consider it a bug doesn't mean it's a bug. People loved to use the BXR in Halo 2 all the time, but it was a bug. The ski feature in Tribes was a bug, made into a feature in later games (maybe just Ascend, I don't know Tribes that well). Unintended behavior from the creator(s) means bug.

Right. I'm just saying, it's something I remember frequently growing up. You knew you were about to get a loud BOOM if you heard the phones ring once very briefly during a thunderstorm.

Loko8765@reddit

There were even special devices to detect that, like vibrating ringers in case your phone didn’t have one.

Jasperlaster@reddit

An antenna that gave light!! I had that one and i loved it haha

anubisviech@reddit

>kering, all right. But when I turned off the cheap desktop fan sitting right next to the monitor, it stopped. Yep, running an unshielded fan next to an unshielded CRT monitor is going to make the image flicker. On the old phones with antennas, there was enough power in the transmitter that an LED with a bit of wire would be enough to light it up.

pletro78@reddit

There was a dance record that sampled the angry noise.

Tatarola - Who Is Calling? Love that track :3

asad137@reddit

Only if you had a TDMA phone!

kyrsjo@reddit

TDMA was US only i think? GSM in Europe definitively also made the noise. Can't remember if NMT (older standard from 80s/90s) also did, don't think so...

Early GSM was TDMA, I believe.

Ah, time domain multiplexing! Yeah, probably. I was thinking of the weird cell phone protocol that only the us used in the flip phone era.

SunosUnix@reddit

CDMA?

Fo0ker@reddit

Huh, did not know that.. does it not happen anymore because of better shielding and lower power, or because of a shift to FDMA?

Supposedly has something to do with how the RF amplifier in the phone would power up when it received a signal. Or something like that, I looked it up in about 5 seconds this morning and promptly forgot everything I read.

wolfie379@reddit

How about the woman whose dog would start barking a few seconds before the phone rang? Turns out the dog was tied up (chain leash) to the ground rod, which was pounded into dry (poor contact) dirt. Dog would get a shock, start barking, and relieve itself. The urine improved conductivity to the point that enough current would flow to operate the phone’s ringer. Moral of the story: Sometimes pissing and moaning will fix the problem.

APiousCultist@reddit

I feel like that can still happen, or that I've had it happen since I've had a flip phone. That or I had a wireless landline close to my earbuds. Hmm. Makes me wonder if you'd have gotten the same noise if you made an outgoing phonecall, since the signal is from your phone's response to receiving the call.

androshalforc1@reddit

the days when? My speakers/ cell phone still do that

pharmacofrenetic@reddit

Tik-tika-tik-tika-tik-tika-tik Screeeeeee!

RandomJoke@reddit

I was sitting in the court house for jury duty around that time and even though we were told to turn our phones off some moron just put theirs on silent. The judge was not a happy camper when during his spiel the speakers started the phone call coming in screech.

Cremageuh@reddit

Not computer-related : We lived in a rural area during all of the 90s through 2001. We got cable TV in 2000, so before that we only had access to a handful of channel over radio waves. We lived close to a road used a lot by truckers, and whenever they would speak in their radio, we would hear the conversation through the TV speakers.

MorganDJones@reddit

Something something static from plastic rulers.

rob-entre@reddit

This reminds me of a desk setup. In the early 2000’s, when I was an audio engineer, I had very large bookshelf-style speakers on either end of my desk. The magnets were so large on the woofers that they caused one corner of my CRT monitor to discolor. I moved my monitor 1’ to the left - centering between the two speakers. Much better.

I always had fun with the degauss button on those CRT monitors. Like the ones in computer labs that face back to back in each row. Press the degauss button on one and like three others would wiggle along with it and freak everyone out lol. It was good fun.

thetzar@reddit

BoooOOAAaam -click-. It was so cathartic, but then you had to wait a while for it to re-gauss before it gave the same effect. If you tried again too soon, it would be disappointing. Like so much in life.

I always had fun prancing classmates, while they’d run to the bathroom or get distracted across the room, I’d play with the positioning controls and reposition their monitor output to be all weirdly shaped and/or way off. So they’d come back to see it all distorted and get confused.

Reply to Post

48 Comments