Master Foo's Institute of Technology

Tutorial the Sixth - The Hardware

Tut 6 - Up close and personal

In this tutorial, we'll finish the tour we started in the first tutorial, and add detail aglore.

The monitor

The monitor is pretty straight forward: if you need to set one up for use with a computer, turn off that computer and plug it into here (if the computer is a laptop, you definitly do not need to do any of this):

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Make sure that it's not the serial port, which is a little longer, like this:

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And Windows should set it automatically for you. Without a monitor, your computer is essentially worthless to you1, putting a $800 piece of metal on your desk. Now that you know that the monitor (screen) is the lifeblood of your interaction with the computer, you know why it's scary when it doesn't respond.

Now, if you're shopping for a monitor, you want to know some things. If you're not shopping for a monitor, read this anyways because you'll need a new monitor. If you're going to fix it yourself, best of luck with avoiding mercury poisoining. The first thing is the _resolution_ of the monitor. This is how many dots of color can be displayed at once, usually stated in number of rows by number of columns. A larger resolution relates to more things that you can fit on the screen, which is nice, but they also tend to be more expensive, larger, and bigger consumers of electricity (more space to light). The size is closely related, measured in inches diagonally across the viewing screen. However, the maximum resolution is the more important part, because that is the part that will actually determine the functionality of your computer.

Something also pretaining to the monitor is the frame rate, or how fast the monitor can draw the entire screen, a frame. By displaying frames fast enough, the computer can create the illusion of movement on the screen. Usually, the frame rate is 60 fps (frames per second). If the frame rate is too slow, you can get a jerky computer response, or start to have a flickering monitor. On the other hand, some monitor/computer combinations can't display some of the higher resolutions, and setting your frame rate needlessly high isn't good either. 60 or 70 fps is a good rate to stick to.

CRT

There are two major sorts of monitors: CRTs and LCDs. CRTs are older and bulkier, but also cheaper. Here's a picture of one, in case you all the CRTs in your life have already been replaced by LCDs:

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A CRT monitor is essentially an old TV 2: it runs off the same electron-firing technology. CRTs in general are not top notch quality, but if you have to stick to a budget (many of us) then CRTs might be a cheap option.

LCD

Or you could invest in an LCD and use it for years to come. LCDs draw a crisper image with less of a hardware backend, but they can be a pain in the wallet. Here's a mug shot:

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With the proliferation of Lcd monitors, though, and the constantly decreasing price of technology, LCDs soon might not be such a bad idea, especially one of the smaller, perhaps 15 inch, ones. With CRTs passing away, it might be a smart idea to get an LCD and pass


1 making a server out of it is out of the question. If you think of such things, you need to get out more.
2 So, perhaps an animation would help !!!image