🚀 go-pugleaf

> :  The CRT is the shortest-lived part in the display by a wide margin,
> 
> maybe at HP :-)
> most of the 'display' failures i've seen have been power supply related.
> 
> we are 'nursing' our last-surviving DEC regis-capable terminal
> by leaving it on all the time
> 

Well, actually, it depends on what you mean by "life."

A true, hard failure in a CRT (i.e., it simply doesn't work anymore) IS
fairly rare.  But CRT lifetimes are generally quoted in time to half-bright.
You may not consider half the original brightness to be a "failure", as it
happens so gradually that most folks won't notice it UNTIL they put a new
unit next to the old one.  But the typical tube reaches this point in
something like 10k-20k hourse, whereas there's no reason that the rest of
the monitor (if designed properly) shouldn't have at least a 40k-50k MTBF.


Bob Myers               |   User Interface Technology Div.
myers@fc.hp.com         |   Hardware R&D - Display Dept.        
                        |   Ft. Collins, Colorado