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.
