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Showing posts from August, 2018

Thoughts on "Best Electronics"

Deal with Atari hardware long enough, and sooner or later you're going to come across "Best Electronics" (http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/).  While I haven't done a ton of research on the company, I gather that at one point they were a (or possibly THE) official Atari repair shop.  When Atari called it quits from the gaming biz, Best ended up with most, if not all, of the leftover stock of systems, games, accessories, repair parts and miscellany. The first thing you're likely to notice is that browsing their website is like time-traveling to the early nineties.  Seriously, just fire it up and you'll see what I mean.  Monolithic old-school HTML pages complete with in-line gifs, center-justified spacing, funky font color transitions, and yes, a hit counter at the bottom of the page!  The whole thing is disorganized and difficult to wrap your brain around, but kind of fun if you aren't in a hurry to find useful information. Some pricing is available on the

ViewEra V220D-B Monitor Repair Notes

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A little over a year ago, my ViewEra V220D-B monitor started struggling to wake up out of power-save mode.  At first it would take a few seconds to come on, then it would take minutes and pretty soon it simply wouldn't come on at all.  This a classic case of spent capacitors. According to my NewEgg order history I bought that monitor 11 years ago in 2007.  It doesn't even go up to 1080p.  Over the years it ended up front-ending secondary and tertiary computers that I barely used.  When it finally quit altogether, I stashed it in a corner and it stayed there for at least a year gathering dust. It's customary when an old monitor goes out to use that event as an excuse to buy a new one with better features and chuck the old one in the bin.  Given that and the age of this thing I think the odds against someone stumbling across this post and finding it useful are astronomical.  But I've never been a fan of wastefulness, and if a perfectly serviceable bench monitor can be ha