mkarcher wrote on 2020-09-30, 19:35:

As the 8-bit guy stated, the one he got had a color monitor (and obviously a 15kHz model), whereas the other computers might have had the 31.5kHz monochrome monitor. I don't hear the 15kHz whine on youtube videos on my hardware, and I am admittedly too lazy to caputure the sound with a spectrum analyzer to find out whether the non-working system had the 15kHz signal others observed at the kind-of working system.

That's interesting. So in simple words, any common, cheap LCD TV set with a VGA-in had a chance to display an MCGA picture generated by these machines?

Jo22 wrote on 2020-09-30, 19:43:

mkarcher wrote on 2020-09-30, 19:35:

As the 8-bit guy stated, the one he got had a color monitor (and obviously a 15kHz model), whereas the other computers might have had the 31.5kHz monochrome monitor. I don't hear the 15kHz whine on youtube videos on my hardware, and I am admittedly too lazy to caputure the sound with a spectrum analyzer to find out whether the non-working system had the 15kHz signal others observed at the kind-of working system.

That's interesting. So in simple words, any common, cheap LCD TV set with a VGA-in had a chance to display an MCGA picture generated by these machines?

Most VGA cables nowadays don't have the key pin missing and won't fit into that machine. If you want to connect a non-IBM monitor, you need to make sure the monitor ID sense pins are wired for "VGA color monitor" (31kHz). Any VGA-compatible CRT or LCD monitor should work, this includes TVs with VGA input. If you wire the monitor ID pins ("none pulled to ground" according to vcfed) for "15.6kHz color monitor", you will get a NTSC-timing analog RGB signal. I have no idea whether LCD TV sets will sync that low on the VGA input.

He disabled the comments on his video now, not sure if I think that's the way to go about it.

spacekats wrote on 2020-09-30, 15:33:

chinny22 wrote on 2020-09-30, 08:58:

I don't think he was the best youtuber for Computer Reset to contact. Look at his previous video's Mac's and 8 bit machines are more his thing. But I understand why they did. A successful youtuber that lives in the same city. Not sure who else is based in the Dallas area.

I think they contacted him because he's part of the super tight group of nerds in the DFW area that seems to run the place. The Computer Reset admins like to keep everything in their little "club". I mean hell, they have been threatening, muting, or banning people that even talk about this instance in the Facebook group.

Please tell me you didn't join VOGONS forums just to post in this thread...

He has posted a response on Patreon:

https://youtu.be/SYopBjwhF1M

This is an unlisted video, but feel free to share it if you are part of some of the groups that has been demanding a response.

Sounds reasonable. ¯\(°_o)/¯ Possibly except for his statement that he didn't think anyone would consider that machine valuable - I guess he should've known better. But it's clearly not the same as that fumbling drooler of ill repute, who smashed up that CRT precisely because some consider it valuable.

idk... sounds pretty unapologetic... and not really going into the actually valid criticisms much, more just trying to fend off all the unnecessary personal attacks that unfortunately happened.

still saying the multimater showed a "dead short" which is just not the case and not acknowledging that, there were a lot of comments calling that out, and the reasoning that the paperclip method worked on "other computers" before isn't really a good reasoning either imo.
with just a little bit more knowledge about this era computers and power supplies it should have been obvious that shorting this connector is not a good idea, or at least should have made him reasonably doubtful to not just try it.
you wouldn't put a paperclip across live and neutral in an AT computer either to turn it on.

btw, just to verify I just measured a CRT of mine, it shows 28 ohms and the multimeter beeps on continuity... so with just a bit more research this should have been obvious.
most multimeters beep on values at or below anywhere from 20-300 ohms, the Fluke 115 he used apparently only beeps under 20 ohms so while it wouldn't have beeped on the CRT I just tested it did with the IBM one at 15 ohms... the fact still stays the same though, 15 ohms is not a "dead short" as he still claimed.

I get all the stress and being in a hurry due to other projects, but why not just acknowledge that mistake then and carry on.

Regardless of what the actual resistance was, measuring it was not going to be useful in any way; it was obvious that the wires were AC mains (from the colors) so they were practically guaranteed to be connected to a transformer, i.e. a coil specifically designed to have as little resistance as possible.

yes, it should have been, but just saying that he again reasoned with "it showed a dead short" which is not actually the case.

imi wrote on 2020-10-01, 17:44:

idk... sounds pretty unapologetic... and not really going into the actually valid criticisms much, more just trying to fend off all the unnecessary personal attacks that unfortunately happened.

Yeah, I don't think he really cares about learning from his technical errors in the video, as you say it's more focused on the people who brought up the gun stuff and politics to justify personal attacks on a retro hardware video.

In any case, it doesn't surprise me he's not interested in acknowledging serious mistakes such as the paperclip when he sees comments like this one from his "fans":

Some idiot on YouTube wrote:

The paperclip solution is perfectly legitimate & I’ve done it myself… that being said this is YouTube comments where everyone knows better than everyone about everything. See, I know better than you about that. LOL! 😄

Sure dude, I'm glad you know better than me when it comes to shorting live and neutral...

Here we go with people in the comments doing a 180 and giving him all the loyal love.

(And calling "haters", "Karens" apperently? Lol)

Overall. Some apology is better then no apology. I'm glad he atleast took the time out to explain a little bit.

He'll move on, we all will. Live and Let go. Better he hurt a computer then 1000 potential more vile things YouTubers have been accused of as of late.

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-10-01, 18:21:

Here we go with people in the comments doing a 180 and giving him all the loyal love.

Is it that surprising? The video is unlisted, and thus mainly going to be seen by Patreons, who by this point will be the majority of people who won't care, because he's still their idol and they'll still spent their money on him. Which is fine, but that's obviously going to skew the comment section.

I'm a patron of his, but he is most certainly not my idol. 😁

Mistakes have been made and he apologized for it, that's a good move. This incident will be forgotten very soon.

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-10-01, 18:21:

He'll move on, we all will. Live and Let go.

I just wish he'd gained some knowledge from his mistake apart from that people on the internet are vile.

Daniël Oosterhuis wrote on 2020-10-01, 18:43:

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-10-01, 18:21:

Here we go with people in the comments doing a 180 and giving him all the loyal love.

Is it that surprising? The video is unlisted, and thus mainly going to be seen by Patreons, who by this point will be the majority of people who won't care, because he's still their idol and they'll still spent their money on him. Which is fine, but that's obviously going to skew the comment section.

Yeah. The comments sections of so many retro tech and gaming channels have turned into a load of people screaming "notice me senpai". People treating Youtubers as celebrities or authorities on a subject, when they haven't earned it, has been bugging me a lot lately. Mainly because it's often allowing "facts" to be signal boosted when they're anything but, but I digress.

This latest video doesn't do anything to convince me that he has the knowledge to repair old hardware outside of improving things cosmetically. He could use this as a learning experience, but it almost sounds like he's blaming the hardware rather than his faulty assumptions and questionable methodology. He's still saying "it was a dead short" and "it should have worked", FFS.

Well, at least this little mishap caused some discussion. Which is good, because it makes people think on their own. 🙂

Or as an old saying goes: Nothing is worse than insensibility. (translated; I don't know the English saying.)
I assume only a few people really realize what a great and important gift an opinion is.
No matter whether it turns out to be "right" or "wrong" in the end, it helps us to sort things out by providing us with a counterpart. This helps us a lot to reflect the situation and often also to find out the truth.

schmatzler wrote on 2020-10-01, 15:39:

He has posted a response on Patreon:

https://youtu.be/SYopBjwhF1M

This is an unlisted video, but feel free to share it if you are part of some of the groups that has been demanding a response.

He mentions having done computer repairs from the year 2000 or so and that the paperclip thingy had always (worked or at least not done any damage). But this seems like it was all ATX PCs. Those old IBMs don't work that way. That he had no idea how to handle the IBM proprietary screws also tells me he probably hasn't experience with PCs from that era. Thus experience from much newer rigs doesn't apply to much older PCs. This is something that many people starting the retro PC hobby will probably find out when they build their first AT systems (things like the 486 jumper hell is something that is not of the modern era anymore, just to name something).

He also does mention the time pressure.

How he values the IBM has a resemblance of someone who simply doesn't value (old) PCs, which is something I have seen others write on forums like for instance vintagecomputing, where there are more people who are much more interested in computers which are not PCs. Him not having (at any one time before he started messing the old IBMs up) any second thought about the value of these old IBMs is what I don't really understand. If he worked with PCs since the year 2000 and has a youtube channel which is basically literally named after 8 bit computers, then 20 years later not having a clue about the value of a (probably) prototype IBM PC. I mean how? How could someone of that caliber have missed something so obvious? That is what I personally am surprised about.

But probably a rhetorical question in as much as that it's obvious that he rushed it. In that case the rushing was perhaps the biggest mistake. And that mistake he could have easily prevented.

When it comes to making stupid mistakes, we've all made stupid mistakes. It can happen to the best of us and I believe that it also comes with the territory. We're all humans after all.

Tetrium wrote on 2020-10-02, 03:57:

How he values the IBM has a resemblance of someone who simply doesn't value (old) PCs, which is something I have seen others write on forums like for instance vintagecomputing, where there are more people who are much more interested in computers which are not PCs.

He's definitely a Commodore guy rather than a PC guy, loves his PETs, VIC-20s and C64s to bits.

I wrote a lengthy post on his Patreon explaining what might have caused his continuity probe to appear "dead short" (though if you look closely, the meter says 15 ohms), he mentions this in the follow-up video. tl;dr My educated guess is it's either the primary of a transformer, or the degaussing coil's PTC thermistor in its cold state. I don't know what his Fluke meter considers a dead short, but apparently 15 ohms fits the criteria, I find that concerning.

Anyway, the scarring to the PSU is minor and will never be visible once the lid is on, and everything else is probably simple to fix once properly diagnosed. As you say, people make mistakes. C'est la vie.

SquallStrife wrote on 2020-10-02, 04:18:

I wrote a lengthy post on his Patreon explaining what might have caused his continuity probe to appear "dead short" (though if you look closely, the meter says 15 ohms), he mentions this in the follow-up video. tl;dr My educated guess is it's either the primary of a transformer, or the degaussing coil's PTC thermistor in its cold state. I don't know what his Fluke meter considers a dead short, but apparently 15 ohms fits the criteria, I find that concerning.

That plug is actually the AC input for the monitor that gets passed through the power supply directly from the mains, the color of the 3 cables is what gives it away (live, ground and neutral). Also, there are no other cables from which the monitor can get power so it has to be the AC IN + ground. So you are in fact correct, the 15 ohms "short" is a transformer in the monitor, and what he did by joining those two pins in the PSU was essentially shorting live and neutral in the wall socket.

TheMobRules wrote on 2020-10-02, 05:44:

SquallStrife wrote on 2020-10-02, 04:18:

I wrote a lengthy post on his Patreon explaining what might have caused his continuity probe to appear "dead short" (though if you look closely, the meter says 15 ohms), he mentions this in the follow-up video. tl;dr My educated guess is it's either the primary of a transformer, or the degaussing coil's PTC thermistor in its cold state. I don't know what his Fluke meter considers a dead short, but apparently 15 ohms fits the criteria, I find that concerning.

That plug is actually the AC input for the monitor that gets passed through the power supply directly from the mains, the color of the 3 cables is what gives it away (live, ground and neutral). Also, there are no other cables from which the monitor can get power so it has to be the AC IN + ground. So you are in fact correct, the 15 ohms "short" is a transformer in the monitor, and what he did by joining those two pins in the PSU was essentially shorting live and neutral in the wall socket.

The gotcha is that the power switch in the monitor activates the PC part, so potentially the monitor is double-insulated and the third wire is a "power on" signal back to the PC's PSU.

Or maybe it's activated through a pin on the signal cable. I dunno, all speculation on my part without any kind of manual or schematic.