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From: snoopy@ecrcvax.UUCP (Sebastian Schmitz)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: monitor whine
Message-ID: <119@ecrcvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 5-Jul-85 11:23:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: ecrcvax.119
Posted: Fri Jul  5 11:23:28 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 7-Jul-85 06:14:01 EDT
Organization: ECRC, D-8000 Muenchen 81, W. Germany
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Reply-To: snoopy@ecrcvax.UUCP (Sebastian Schmitz)
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Organization: European Computer-Industry Research Centre, Munchen, W. Germany
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I have found that this varies from monitor to monitor i.e. just
keep swapping till you find one that does not whine. It is
annoying though. "Normal" TV's do the same: I can usually walk
out on the street underneath peoples windows and tell you who
has his TV turned on or not just by hearing the whine (and not
the soundtrack). Well I may have bats ears but it is annoying.
Incidentally the whine you hear is the flyback transformer
which means you either hear the very annoying aprox. 18.5 KHz
tone or subharmonics thereof (which are less annoying but
usually louder).
I remember that some years ago there was plenty of discussion on
net.works if one should not pressurise manufacturers to do
something against this whine. This would be another big point
on the "our monitors have such lovely ergonomics list".
There would be a BIG market, I think... So anyone building
monitors please take note of this. I think that headaches
people get using CRT's are not due to eye strain but rather due
to the sound...
/* this is true probably because high pitched
sound can cause intense pain in the inner ear. This principle
is used by a US Army "sentinel robot", which prowls by the side
of military fences, looks at you with its infrared sensors and orders
you to stop whatever you are doing or else. The "or else" means
it will flash at you with a megawatty flash gun (to blind you,
duuhhh) and if you run/stumble away it will come after you at up to 30
m.p.h. and will irradiate the surroundings with "a high
frequency sound source which causes intense pain in the inner
ear." In other words if you have not been scared shitless up to now,
nows the time ! The article further claimed that so far there
"were no plans to equip the robots with any lethal restraints".
I don't know where this was published but it was some year or
so ago on the last page of some electronic news magazine (could
have been BYTE even). This last page was a sort of "last minute
news" section. However I believe my quotes to be accurate and
if anyone remebers the magazine please mail me the reference */

Perhaps someone can investigate this more
formally (i.e. put a bunch of summer students in a terminal
room, let them bash out memos of highly naive/political content to
inapropriate newsgroups and bombard them with high frequency
sound and plot typing error frequency against noise
pitch/intensity. ;-) )

Happy whining and dining :-) /* groan - someone get me off the
net !*/
love,
-- 
  Love,
  Sebastian (Snoopy)

"You haven't done it, till you've done it with pointers"

\!mcvax\!unido\!ecrcvax\!snoopy /* N.B. valid csh address */