Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!snorkelwacker!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!ads.com!killer!usenet
From: anders@penguin (Anders Wallgren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: hairlines a common monitor fault?
Message-ID: <1990Jun9.025041.27038@verity.com>
Date: 9 Jun 90 02:50:41 GMT
References: <1990Jun8.192304.4492@isis.educ.lon.ac.uk> <1990Jun8.230821.23506@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: usenet@verity.com (USENET News)
Reply-To: anders@penguin (Anders Wallgren)
Organization: Verity, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 21
In-Reply-To: philip@Kermit.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)

Nope, this is no fault - it's a feature of Sony Trinitron (sp?)
monitors, which is what Apple's 13-inch color monitors, as well as
many third-party large-screen monitors, really are.

These monitors don't use a shadow mask (a metal mask behind the glass
with triplets of holes to give the three electron guns a clear shot at
its particular color phosphorus), they use a screen of vertically
arranged wires (to give each electron gun a clear shot at it's
particular color phosphorus, although the dots in this case aren't
triplets of RGB, they're little rectangles - look closely, and you'll
see what I mean).

The horizontal wires in question are stabilizers for the previously
mentioned vertical wires, and (as far as I know) a sure sign that your
monitor was made by Sony.  (Real programmers check by whapping their
monitor on the side and watching for the picture to look funny because
all the wires came out of alignment for a split-second (or forever if
you hit it too hard), or listening for the "bunch of wires moving
together and apart" sound.)

anders