it's unlikely to be a problem with the chip or wiring. a wiring error is usually well tolerated by video cards, even shorting a line. high end video chips do tend to run hot, after all they basically have thier own cpu built in, and one that's optimized for a very fast video bus. the video out is probably the highest bandwidth signal that comes out of the computer, and competes well with the internal signals when you consider that for each of the red, green, and blue lines it can put out a dc to 150 mhz or higher waveform with an arbitrary shape, that's why cheap video cables destroy the image quality. rule of thumb, for good designs with decent reliability, none of the chips should be "too hot to touch", though they may get uncomfortably warm if you leave your finger on them as it impedes thier normal heat flow. also, generally once a chip really starts getting too hot, it gets worse, quickly, and then more quickly and fails completely fairly quickly as too high a temperature actually starts to melt the chip and turn it into a homogenous resistor rather than a highly, highly ordered and structured piece of solid material. once this process starts, it tend to get out of hand quickly as it nearly always draws more and more power while failing getting hotter and hotter. note that this isn't how most chips fail, but is how they fail if they get too hot because of design flaws or failed fans etc.
if you are really worried, run it for a couple of days without a break, if the color/performance has substantially shifted i'd worry, otherwise it's probably fine. a lot of highly integrated (usually also meaning many, many leads) chips do run hot, it's one of the problems with miniturization, i.e. the generation of more excess heat in an ever smaller space. some semiconductors actually use industrial diamonds to help spread out the heat in the package and deliver it to an external heat sink! (diamond is an excellent thermal conductor). there are actually some chips out there with over 300 connections to the outside! now that's a lot of signals going in and out. most likely the pink is from the monitor, a little color impurity is common especially for white which is hard to get perfect. i've adjusted monitors and tv sets before, just adjusting all the color controls can take a while, adjusting the convergence as well can take even longer. picture tubes are ugly beasties from an electronics standpoint, after all, they are vacuum tubes and run at a very high voltage (though i'm actually very impressed with the level of performace available using an inherently ugly technology, tubes do have some advantages, but precision isn't one of them, and a color picture tube is a very, very complex vacuum tube!). "paul.lawson" wrote: > > I did short test of an Apple Video Overlay card I've had on my "part > shelf" for a while. It mirrored the IIgs video to an old Nec II monitor. > > I noticed at least one of the large chips on the card was quite warm > when I shut everything off. Can anyone say if this is "normal"? Could > I have had the monitor cable wired incorrectly ? The picture on the > NEC was decent and stable, but the whites were pinkish. Obviously with > a monitor this old, the color problems could easily be monitor related. --------- -- Philip Stortz--"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms."-- Thomas Jefferson, Draft Virginia Constitution, June 1776 from <www.rkba.org> I'd encourage all to actually read the constitution and Bill Of Rights. -- Apple2list is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... / Buy books, CDs, videos, and more from Amazon.com \ / <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/lowendmac> \ Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Apple2list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/apple2.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/apple2list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
