Some years ago, in another century, I was hired to work in the EMC labs
at Tandy Corporation, in Fort Worth Texas. When I showed up, they
realized they hadn't actually budgeted funds to pay me – but they did
have money for consultants, and so they had me build, from the piled-up
panels, a double-sized. copper mesh shielded room in the basement of
one of the two buildings. That was probably all the interview they
needed with me, because I was there until the computer business was sold
to AST Research. I was the last one out of that lab, too; another story.
*Flame retardant's.* I didn't see this, I read about it and I heard
about it. Back in the days of the Model 2000, 8186 computer, beside
having to pull it out of stores because someone had sent it out for
marketing before it got FCC approval, there were problems with
peripherals. (I later bought my mother one of those computers when Radio
Shack was getting rid of them for pennies on the dollar – she wrote
several books using it, even though the 5 MB hard drive sometimes had to
be twisted around the axis of rotation to start.)
Of that approximate vintage, it was discovered that another item bought
from the HDD's Korean firm, now one of the larger chaebols, a monitor
whose specifications and nomenclature I don't remember, was capable of
operating at modes it hadn't been designed for – and if I recall
correctly, it was necessary to issue a warning not to use anything more
then the modes the manuals prescribed; apparently, they apparently
caught fire if they were operated beyond the limits of the vendor's
design. That firm would later have problems with AST Research as well,
when they bought it and tried to run the outfit the same way as a Korean
one.
Cortland Richmond
Retired, but "on call" at Belcan
On 9/16/2019 16:55 PM, Ted Eckert wrote:
Do We Need Flame Retardants in Electronics?
I seem to recall that long ago, when televisions had vacuum tubes,
high voltage and high power, fires were an issue. I’m not positive,
but I thought that the requirements for flame retardants came from
investigations of a number of fires of plastic enclosed televisions. I
believe that the basis for the requirement is sound. It’s been decades
since flammable plastics were commonly used for IT and A/V products.
The fact that there have been few issues may be due to the
effectiveness of flame retardants.
Ted Eckert
Microsoft Corporation
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