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From: goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com (Fred R. Goldstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: RFI, the FCC, and STs (was re: Talking about other computers here)
Message-ID: <17942@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Date: 7 Dec 90 17:27:35 GMT
Sender: newsdaemon@shlump.nac.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA
Lines: 35


In article <479@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca>, rwa@cs.athabascau.ca (Ross Alexander) writes...
>In short, the 1040st howls all up and down the bands.  We're talking
>continuous S9+20dB heterodynes and growlies from baseband all the way
>up to 450 MHz (to be charitable, it does fall off somewhat in the UHF
>bands. On 145.01 MHz it's still pretty damned loud).  How this thing
>ever got past the FCC I can't begin to imagine.  I can only assume
>Part 15 subpart J class B means "leaks RF like a sieve".  It took
>fairly heroic measures to get the intereference down to the point
>where I could recieve anything from other stations; lots of bypassing,
>coax cables, chokes, shielding, and physical separation were needed.
>Having done all that it works fine (good serial I/O, lotsa horsepower
>:-).

This is my first posting in this group in many moons, since I'm a 
discouraged Atari owner now using a clone for packet radio among other 
things...

But I don't understand the problem.  The _nicest_ thing I can say about 
my 1040STe is that it is _quiet_ (at rf).  My no-name clone, and its el 
cheapo monitor, make moderately annoying noise on some of the HF bands, 
and a little (S1 but enough to clobber weak-signal on 2m, not packet)
on 2 meters.  The 1040St, on the other hand, makes very little noise.
If my wife is using it in the next room, I don't know it.

Note that I _never_ breached its internal shielding to, say, add memory 
or an 8530 or TOS1.4 or anything else.  It's still factory-soldered.
And there's no HD, just the build-in sloppy disk, and the Atari color
monitor.  If it could do HDLC (darn, no bus!) it would be a great packet 
computer.  I'd check the internal shield integrity.
---
Fred R. Goldstein     k1io     Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA
goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com   voice: +1 508 486 7388
 Do you think anyone else on the planet would share my opinions, let
 alone a multi-billion dollar corporation?