Re: A sick computer monitor

["Bernard G. Cleyet & Nancy Ann Seese" <georgeann@REDSHIFT.COM>]

I have a friend (you all have already heard of him -- http://www.bmumford.com/ ) who got his start by making a speed up kit for the TRS-80.  I'd called it a trashy 80, and he corrected me.  A year
later he used a much worse appellation -- he'd called up for some support and their answer was "We no longer support the 80."

I'm not sure you'll do better with any other large company.  Now a co. like Vernier is another matter!

bc

P.s. I got a new monitor with the same warranty as Leigh except all the UCSC repair shop had was a larger one, lucky me!

Leigh Palmer wrote:

> Ludwik, you've seen my monitor. Is yours the same model?
>
> I had a 17" Applevision monitor that I bought in 1995. It gave
> up slowly, and I could hear loud arcs inside it. Since it was
> by that time 1998 I assumed that no warrantee was in force, so
> I opened it up and moved the high voltage wire to a position
> where it no longer arced over (I cleaned the dust out, too).
> It was quite a job getting the case open (you have to know one
> trick). Since I anticipated further difficulties I took a Dremel
> tool and ground off the onetime dogs that they used to close up
> the box in Singapore after they set the adjustments. This left
> me with a large lid that I could lift off at will. This worked
> fine with no trouble for almost a year, but on Christmas eve the
> monitor blacked out again, this time for good. I couldn't figure
> out what was wrong, so I took it in to our microcomputer store
> technician (not the same one who gave me the battery) and asked
> him to take a look at it. It turned out that that model had had
> a *secret warrantee extension* put on it by Apple. Any Applevision
> 17" monitor brought in to an authorized Apple dealer with trouble
> was to be replaced free of charge by a rebuilt unit. The secret
> warrantee expired on December 31, 1998. I was, to understate it
> greatly, extremely lucky. Hd the monitor expired a week later I
> would have been told that 3-1/2 years was not really a terribly
> short lifetime for a monitor, and I wouldn't have been told about
> the secret warrantee extension at all! My rebuilt monitor shows
> no worrisome symptoms after a year and a half. Nothing was ever
> said about my case modification.
>
> Apple will leave its customers hanging. There are some Macs that
> are declared obsolete and Apple will have nothing to do with
> supplying parts. I have a PowerBook 170 that, unsurprisingly,
> needs a new NiCd battery. In my view this is not a "part"; it is
> a consumable which must be replaced with a fresh specimen. Apple
> says I'd be better off spending my money on a new PowerBook.
>
> I like Macs much more than I like Apple.
>
> Leigh