Old Hardware Rant

[JEFF MCCRIGHT]

ALL,

FYI: It is possible to track down the monitor manufacturer by the FCC ID
Number. All electronic goods manufacturers who want to sell in the US must
apply for and receive an FCC approval and ID. This ID number can be searched
at the Federal Communications Comission's database which will yield the
original manufacturer, address, phone number, and in some cases, the
Website. Once the OEM is found, a simple search of the web usually provides
a website of the manufacturer. To access the FCC's database on-line, point
your browser to:

     http://www.fcc.gov/oet/fccid/

By the way, this works for unmarked/3rd party adapter cards, monitors,
keyboards, radios, and all kinds of other stuff!

HTH,

Jeff McCright

On Mon, 14 May 2001 12:19:43 -0500, Jonathan Hutchins, Rune Webmaster wrote:

>  
>  > ... you should be able to find the sync rates for the monitor from
>  > the manufacturer's website.
>  
>  The "manufacturer" in this case is some company that made a short run of
>  silk-screened bezels and UL stickers and shopped everything else out to a
>  local assembly house in the far east.  I'm certain there's no web site.
>  There are people who could figure out the actual assembler from examining
>  the circuit boards, but I'm not one of them.
>  
>  I've had this problem a lot - while certain common, NON-CHEAP monitors
are
>  in the databases, I seem to end up with the ones that are either a
different
>  model or an unknown brand.  If I spend a few days diddling the config
file,
>  I can get 600x300 with 13 colors (and a default desktop of 12,437 x
10,694)
>  or something useful like that.  Even with NEC and Compaq monitors, I
often
>  can't get the resolution in X that I can in '95.
>  
>  Clearly Microsoft isn't relying on a Manufacturer/Model table when they
set
>  up monitors in 9x.  They get GUI mode every time, and any monitor that
isn't
>  a ghosted-out dinosaur will at least go 800x600x24 or better.  Most will
do
>  1024x768x16, though you won't want to.  Setting the monitor type to
>  "Plug-and-Play" will almost always get a decent display, which suggests
that
>  the installers for X are missing a piece of info that is often right
there
>  for the asking.
>  
>  
>  

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