[BRLTTY] Slightly OT, cleaning braille display cells

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Mario Lang on 2007/01/06 at 02:13 +0100]

>One reason why the PBs feel so nice
>to me might be that I think they have slightly longer pins than the newer
>cells these days, so the text feels more present, and I guess
>problems with dust might show a little later than with newer displays.

Another possible reason (just a thought) is that newer displays are designed
with battery conservation in mind wqhereas the older ones were designed to run
on house current. The pins on the older ones, therefore, may have been moved
with a stronger action.

>Additionally, the PB is the only display type I know where
>it is really simple for the end user to remove the caps.  The newer types
>of displays dont make this easy.

Papenmeier cell caps are also easy to remove. The only tricky thing with them
is that there's a little plastic piece which fits over the pins and clips into
the underside of the cap to hold the pins in place. That little plastic piece
is rather difficult to manipulate.

>Yeah, this surely increases the display live time by several years.
>Dont eat breakfest while working, wash hands if you feel
>a bit sticky, and by all means, avoid getting dusty particles
>on your display.  I've developed a unconscious habit of realising
>early enough if there is something dusty on the display, and in many
>cases I manage to just throw it away before it ends up falling
>into one of the holes.  Additionally, putting some kind of blanket
>over the display if you do not use it also helps to increase life time,
>especially if the display is in a room with lots of
>dust in it...

My biggest catastrophy in this area was when one of my children accidentally
spilled a whole glass of water into my display. For some mysterious reason, a
couple of the cells and three of the control keys suddenly stopped working.

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