This is quite hilarious to me - I love stories of weird hardware and software issues / quirks like this. A few other classics come to mind, like this story about magic and this feline-induced...
So folks, don't forget to check if your Ikea chair is compatible with your screen. I'm not kidding. A thread 🧵.
I've had the problem with my new screen for several weeks now, that every now and then the screen goes black for a few seconds.
Today I had enough and wanted to investigate the problem. So I started changing all the cables, plugging the screen into a different socket, and and and. Nothing helped.
…
The only correlation I could find was that the screen only goes off when my Ikea office chair is somehow involved.
…
It turns out that the fabric seat cover, and/or the gas suspension creates such a strong electrostatic discharge (ESD) that my screen shuts off for a short time.
This is quite hilarious to me - I love stories of weird hardware and software issues / quirks like this. A few other classics come to mind, like this story about magic and this feline-induced lightdm crash.
I feel like I've heard this exact story before, pretty much to a T. Including the gas spring ESD thing. Not sure where, but might've been german-speaking internet somewhere. I'm having the...
I feel like I've heard this exact story before, pretty much to a T. Including the gas spring ESD thing. Not sure where, but might've been german-speaking internet somewhere.
I'm having the weirdest and most specific sense of deja vu right now.
Your memory is correct. And the post is even linked in the Mastodon thread: https://www.computerbase.de/forum/threads/hauptmonitor-wird-sporadisch-kurz-schwarz.2060771/
I did catch that. The thing is - I don't visit that forum at all, so that alone didn't really explain to me how I know about it. Turns out, my memory is correct - that's a subreddit I do monitor,...
I did catch that. The thing is - I don't visit that forum at all, so that alone didn't really explain to me how I know about it.
Turns out, my memory is correct - that's a subreddit I do monitor, and did monitor when that post was new. And the post did get quite popular. Unexpectedly, I found it basically instantly once I bothered to search.
And because DeepL had a hell of a hard time translating that (articles, prepositions, that kinda stuff), here's a revised translation. I hope DeepL stored all the corrections I made as training data. Emphasis mine.
Small anecdote to give you something to smile about, marvel at, and save you headaches:
Last week I noticed again how my screen would randomly go into standby, lose signal, or turn off altogether. It got to the point where I was able to replace it (Amazon Prime). The problem persisted and I vehemently tried to isolate the source of the error:
Windows 11 is currently still quite error-prone as far as the Radeon drivers were concerned and the latest driver didn't help. So the OS was unceremoniously wiped out and 10 was installed. Long story short: No improvement.
I changed the cables between client and display because I suspected a loose contact. Or a bad shielding. No improvement.
In the meantime, I even replaced the desk, because I had to buy a new one anyway due to relocation. You can guess: no improvement.
I was about to doubt my sanity when I noticed that the monitor always had problems or switched off when I got up from the desk. Some sort of AFK feature like on some laptops doesn't exist natively on Windows 10, and without a webcam or the like, how could the system know I was moving away from my desk anyway?
The phenomenon can be found here and there with a handful of people on the internet and at some point I came across a paper somewhere that showed causality between the gas lifts in office chairs and a brief electromagnetic pulse. And lo and behold: The standing up and unloading of the gas lift in my chair in combination with the static between the cover and my pants (friction when standing up) discharged a short electromagnetic impulse, which interrupts the signal of the monitor. The monitor then either switched to standby or looked for another source.
Long story short: Ferrite cores on the display port cable or a cotton towel on the chair help out. Greetings from Absurdistan!
Was zum fick!? A charge so strong that it makes its way all the way from the chair to the screen - which has to be what, at least half a meter away from the chair? This is insanity!
Was zum fick!?
A charge so strong that it makes its way all the way from the chair to the screen - which has to be what, at least half a meter away from the chair? This is insanity!
This is quite hilarious to me - I love stories of weird hardware and software issues / quirks like this. A few other classics come to mind, like this story about magic and this feline-induced lightdm crash.
I feel like I've heard this exact story before, pretty much to a T. Including the gas spring ESD thing. Not sure where, but might've been german-speaking internet somewhere.
I'm having the weirdest and most specific sense of deja vu right now.
Your memory is correct. And the post is even linked in the Mastodon thread:
https://www.computerbase.de/forum/threads/hauptmonitor-wird-sporadisch-kurz-schwarz.2060771/
I did catch that. The thing is - I don't visit that forum at all, so that alone didn't really explain to me how I know about it.
Turns out, my memory is correct - that's a subreddit I do monitor, and did monitor when that post was new. And the post did get quite popular. Unexpectedly, I found it basically instantly once I bothered to search.
And because DeepL had a hell of a hard time translating that (articles, prepositions, that kinda stuff), here's a revised translation. I hope DeepL stored all the corrections I made as training data. Emphasis mine.
Was zum fick!?
A charge so strong that it makes its way all the way from the chair to the screen - which has to be what, at least half a meter away from the chair? This is insanity!