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THE BUG REPORT
A monthly publication of
GS-BUG Inc. (c) copyright 1996.
Reproduction of any material herein by any means is expressly prohibited
unless written permission is granted. Exception: Articles may be reprinted
by other users groups in unaltered form if credit is given to the author
and the original publication.
STAFF
Editor - Kay Burton
RECYCLING PC COMPONENTS AND PARAPHERNALIA : PART 2
 |
NEW CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT
By Dr. John Hanson |
A beginners SIG has been started on Tuesdays
from 1 to 4 at the Scout center where the hardware
and DIG SIG meet. Dr. Hanson is the leader and
will nourish you gently with help from whatever level you
are. The current attendees are learning to use the mouse
more effectively in shifting windows around and resizing
them. One game that is very useful for mouse work is called
Cruel. It is like Solitaire but more useful. Rich Bulow
has found another program which is especially useful for keyboard
learning. Complete beginners, who well as those who
want to be more proficient in any area. Be sure
to call Dr. Hanson at 643-9882 if you can or can’t
come each time so he can make plans for helping you.
If you have specific programs that you want to
be better in, bring in your computer so you can practice
with your own machine. You can park right in front to unload
it easily.
Topics:
1. Video Card Failure
2. Motherboard Data
3. Program Speakers
4. Power Supply Failure
5. LCD Monitors
6. Computer Repair Class
7. Windows Beginners SIG
1. When Video card fails:
One day you turn on your computer and the icons are much bigger.
You are in a hurry to print some color pictures and try to
start Photoshop but it says it can’t run without 256 colors
and you had more than that before. Somehow the video display setting were
changed from what ever they were to the default 480x640 so
you go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, Display, Settings
and change them back. When you click on Apply it
moves them back. You try again and Panic.
Then you go to your back up computer, if you have one, to get the work
done providing you were wise enough to have the same files on each.
If you have the all in one motherboard that I recommend you may
not be able to just plug in a spare VGA card without
disabling the on board VGA. So what should you do?
Always do the easiest thing first which is to re-install the video
drivers from the CDrom that came with your motherboard.
2. You may remember that I told you to keep
the motherboard booklet and CDrom always with the computer
in an envelope glued to the outside of computer or inside.
You should also have made a copy of the CDrom and kept it in a separate
file folder. In my case I was lucky as somehow the drivers
had been corrupted and everything was fine with that simple
fix.
3. Getting good Programs: One of the most difficult
jobs in any club is that of program chairman. The same applies
to Rotary and Kiwanis, etc. How do you get interesting, informative
speakers for free, meeting after meeting? John Sellers has been doing
an excellent job for a long time so please take
the time to compliment him. It’s
embarrassing when a speaker is dull and boring but what do
you do when they don’t even show up and you have
so many talented, sharp people sitting
there waiting for a good presentation.
Normally I like to stay in the background but in the Rotary Club
it was a common experience so I began offering to pinch hit. And
soon I was doing it in other countries, during my business travels,
when their Rotary Club speaker didn’t show up and sometimes
you have to speak their language. You are not prepared
but you do the best you can so please don’t be too hardon me
when I offer to help President Sexton. If someone else
would like to take over, be my guest.
4. Power Supplies do Fail: If nothing
happens when you try to start your computer it could be the power
supply. It is easy to replace and runs about $15 to $20
depending on where you buy it. Some places even
charge $40 so be careful. 300 watts is a good value
these days. At the computer show you can buy the
whole case with a 300 watt supply for only $20.
How can you tell if it’s really the power supply. Open
the case and stick one probe of a voltmeter into a black wire hole of a
power connector and the other probe into the red (5v) or yellow (12
volt) if working. On my ATX computers I like to splice
a wire onto the purple wire and run it to a green led I install in the
front of the case. This is the power good wire and
is 5 volts whether the computer is on or off. If
the switch is on the power supply is turned
on. Leave one probe plugged into the black
wire of a power connector and stick the other probe into
any orange wire of the ATX connector that plugs into the mother
board. If power supply works it should read 3.3 volts. You
will note there are many orange wires, many red, many black and a
few yellow. Usually all the wires of the same color go to the
same place and are numerous because lots of current needs to be
carried in that circuit. There is one red that is different
but I am not sure what that is for so far. I am
not sure what the green wire is for. It is 2.5
volts when the computer is off and zero volts when the computer is
on. If anyone knows, please let me know. Jack Burton
has built an excellent load to test very small switching power
supplies and Emmett Ingram is building one to test standard size
ATX power supplies. If the power supply is not working
unplug the wires. Make a note of where they go. Remove
the four screws in the back and it comes out easily. Install
the new power supply (make sure its switch is off) and plug
in the wires and test your computer. A young member
brought me her dead computer and a new power supply fixed the
problem easily. We took the power supply apart and could
see where the failed part started a fire and Carl
Warner noted that the failure was so hot it melted the solder at
the start of the failure. It is almost impossible to
repair a failed ATX power supply and not worth it considering the
low cost of a replacement. If you own an older AT computer the
procedure is almost the same but be sure to mark the orientation
of the wires that plug into the motherboard. If you have
a brand name computer you might have to go to one of their repair
stations and could cost you a lot. Remember I told you
not to buy brand name desktop computers but to buy good
quality clones instead. This is only one of the many
reasons not to buy brand name desk-top computers.
On the other hand when buying a notebook youshould buy
a good brand name but I would avoid Gateway and HP.
5. Want an LCD Monitor? Frys has
some nice sales now and then but be cautious with anything
at Frys. If the sale price is about $300 for a 15 inch monitor with
a rebate you are better off buying one at the computer show.
There you pay the same price, no rebate is required and most
important you can see it working to make sure it has no flaws and
the seller guarantees it. I did get a good buy at Frys with a 14
inch for $200 but the second one I bought at the computer show was
a KDS Rad-5 15 inch for $306 and both are marvelous.
KDS is an excellent brand. There are some limitations
with LCD monitors you should be aware of. They work best
only at their native resolution and they are very
expensive when you go larger than 15 inches so if you have a good 17 inch
or larger monitor stick with it for awhile. You can get excellent
brand name used CRT monitors of 17 inches or larger for only about 60 to
$100 at the computer shows and even from Rita at the TRW Ham swap meet.
6. Computer Repair Class: Member
Bill Juneau told me about an excellent computer repair class at Narbonne
High School on Western south of Sepulveda. It is run by Mike
Ochoa, who really knows computers and is an excellent teacher.
He makes the learning experience fun and yet pushes
you to really learn how to jump start a totally crashed computer.
I joined in the middle of the class and so can you, even
for the summer class. It’s only $15 and is worth
every cent. It runs three hours two evenings a week from 5
to 8 pm. You can go on Monday - Wednesday or Tuesday
- Thursday as I do as well as other members Bill Juneau, George Austin,
Jimmy Corones, Art Harris, and John Sellers. Some of the members
take excellent notes which John Sellers types up and sends out via e-mail
which is especially useful, even if you don’t miss a class. If you
are very experienced like Bill Juneau you don’t need to take the formal
part at the front of the class but can go in the back
and do your thing with all the old hardware available and the
benefit of having a good teacher available when necessary.
Bill is building a computer on a breadboard so he can see how all the parts
work. It’s a great learning experience.
7. Windows Beginner’s SIG: Everything I know
about Windows I learned from attending John Sullivan’s and Virginia’s
SIG classes as well as Herman Krause’s Internet SIG. Actually
I don’t know much about Windows as most of my work is
in DOS such as this article so I am learning with my
students. It’s run very informally and is lots of fun.
Come join us if you want to be better at anything. See
the notice elsewhere for more info. It would be good if you
could attend the other Windows SIGs as well.
Editor’s Note: John Hanson is the inventor
of Tooties, a superb self-teaching system used by millions
in schools, homes, and by eye doctors around the world
to improve vision. He also invented a new form of psychology
called QET (Quick Effective Therapy) which transforms
poor students into good students, almost overnight,
usually in 5 to 15 days. He has also had
outstanding success in helping brain damaged people, even years
after their accident. Why go to therapy for years and spend lots
of money when you can improve quite fast with QET?
He uses computers to document his cases for his books so that others
may benefit and improve their vision and other skills. Visit his
web site at www.Tooties.com for more information.
************
 |
INTERNET TALK
By Frank Chao |
Welcome one and all to the 46th article in the “Internet Talk” series.
This is also the third newsletter that is being compiled by Kay Burton,
our new editor. Kay has incorporated some eye-appealing format changes
to the “look and feel” of this publication. Please feel free to join me
in commending her on her creative efforts on behalf of this great computer
users group. If you do not get a chance to speak to her in person, you
can send e-mail to her at orchidkay@earthlink.net.
INTERNET WORLD SPRING
On April 26th, Liz and I attended the Internet World Show at the Los
Angeles Convention Center. We have been attending this show for the
past 4 years and this is the smallest one that we have ever attended.
In spite of it’s diminished size, this exhibition was still fascinating
to us. The various technological wonders that comprise the Internet continue
to advance in complexity in spite of financial setbacks for some of the
companies that participate in the Internet phenomenon. If you would like
to see what we saw at this great show, go to http://www.iw.com/news.php?inc=spring2002/spring2002c.html
Hope to see you there in the Spring of 2003 !!
BLOGGING
Web logging or blogging is a simple way for you to create a personal
Web page. It usually consists of publishing one’s comments on a Web page.
You usually also have the option of posting pictures, artwork, and hyperlinks
to Websites that you want people to go to. For examples of “blogs”,
see http://www.blogger.com/home.pyra http://www.weblogs.com/
For technical and non-technical information about blogs, see:
http://www.larkfarm.com/wlm/faqs.htm
http://www.chymes.org/hyper/weblogs.html
If you create a blog, let me know about your experience.
ALTERNATE DIAL-UP ACCESS
While visiting the home of a GSBUG member last week, we noted that
Yahoo Mail’s Website (http://mail.yahoo.cm) was slower than molasses running
uphill on a cold day. This club member was especially unhappy since
he is paying Pacific Bell some big bucks for his DSL Internet access. On
a hunch, I told him to try accessing the Yahoo Mail Website with his Netzero
(56 kilobytes per second) dial-up Internet access. After logging in and
waiting for the ad banner to show up, we restarted Internet Explorer 6
and the Yahoo mail Website was working fine. After looking at his “Inbox”
for a few minutes, we turned off the modem and attempted to use his Pacific
Bell DSL again and the Yahoo Mail site was still slower than slow. Next,
we used Pacific Bell dialup, which is free for subscribers of Pacific Bell
DSL. After completing our dialup connection, we logged into his Yahoo Mail
account and it was fast again. Finally, we disconnected from Pacific Bell
dialup and tried to log into Yahoo mail through Pacific Bell DSL and it
was slowsville again.
In other words, the Yahoo Mail Website was slow for DSL Internet access
and fast (or faster) for dialup Internet access.
Under normal circumstances, the same Website is many times faster when
accessed via a DSL connection compared to access by means of a dial-up
connection.
One analogy that might explain this unexpected situation is:
Traffic on the San Diego Freeway is usually faster than traffic on
surface streets. However, there are times when the San Diego Freeway is
jammed and traffic along surface streets moves at a faster average pace
than along the San Diego Freeway.
If you are having problems with a certain Website and it is slow or
locks up, you might try dialing up with an alternate dialup Internet connection.
Even if you have a super duper DSL connection or a cable modem, if a certain
Website is slower than slow, try your backup Netzero or Juno dialup connection.This
example also underscores the advantages of having some dialup Internet
access capabilities, even if you have the latest and greatest DSL or cable
modem connection for your computer. When your broadband (DSL or cable
modem) Internet access is slow or inoperative, then your dialup Internet
access serves as a redundant backup connection for the Internet.
AT&T PREPAID INTERNET SERVICE
If you are a real light user of dial-up Internet access and Netzero
or Juno do not have toll-free phone numbers that are available to
you, AT&T’s PrePaid Internet Service might have a toll-free phone number
for you to use. To learn more about this service, go to tp://www.att.com/prepaidinternet/
According to this Website,AT&T’s PrePaid Internet Service is incompatible
with both flavors of Windows XP, so it will only work with Windows 95,
98, ME, and 2000.At the end of May, I purchased a startup kit for $9.95.
This package consists of a calling card and a CD-ROM with proprietary software.
It allows me to use up 8 hours of dial-up Internet service over the next
12 months, with no additional charges. The calling card has a serial number
and a PIN number that you have to enter when you use the CD-ROM to install
the software. After installing the software on the CD-ROM, I ended up with
an icon called “AT&T PrePaid Internet Service” on the “Desktop” of
my Windows 98 computer. Since that time, I have logged on three times
and each time, my V.92 modem was only able to connect at 28.8 kilobits-per-second
to an AT&T modem that is located in Gardena. I will experiment with
this Internet service and attempt to see if I can make a faster connection
in upcoming months.
DUAL BOOTING AND MULTIPLE BOOTING
Using multiple operating systems on a single computer can enhance the
amount of fun and utility that you get out of Internet-enhanced computing.To
learn about dual booting or multiple booting more than one operating system
on your computer, go tohttp://windows.about.com/cs/dualboot/
WAYS TO CONTACT ME:
If you have any questions or problems, I can be contacted by the following
methods:
1. Leave a voice message for me at 310-768-3896.
2. Send me e-mail at: fchao@pacbell.net
3. Send “snail” U.S. Postal Service mail to
Frank Chao
PO Box 6930
Torrance, CA 90504-0030. Or sell your computer and take up golf instead
!!
************
 |
SOFTWARE LIBRARY NEWS
By BOB HUDAK |
Big news this month is that the club has a copy of Windows XPProfessional
that will be raffled off at the July general meeting. That members is next
month. There are ONLY 30 chances. Buy one for $5.00 or 3 for $10.00.
Odds of wining are really good if you buy several chances. Give me a $100.00
and take the box! As you can see this is one great raffle.Buy your chances
at the general meeting or on Tuesday at the hardware sig at the Torrance
Scout Center. You can also senda check to our P.O. box and I will put your
name on the chances. You do not need to be present to win.
Last month we started to take pictures of members at the general meeting
for the new ID cards that will be made for members. Some venders
said they will offer special deals to members with ID cards. Our president,
Gary Sexton, is working on this. Right now it is the chicken or egg thing.
We need the cards before we can get the big discount deals for you and
we need the pictures before we can make the cards. So if you haven’t been
photographed yet, do it at the general meeting or come to the Torrance
Scout Center on Tuesdays between 12:00 and 2:00 pm. That’s your part.
Are you interested in a copy of your picture in a digital format?
I can give you the original file as captured by the camera and the worked
over version that will be used in making the ID cards on a disk for our
usual library duplication and distribution charge of $3.00. This is a deal
because each one has to be made separately. You can then use the file in
many ways. Copies for family etc. Work it over in your photo editing program.
Put it on your web page. So on. If interested, let me know.
Disk of the month. How many of you listen to the Jeff Levy show on
KFI on Sat and Sun morning at 10:00 AM? Each week he writes a lesson in
plain English on how to do something with your computer. How to fix
a problem or make something run better or easier. So far there are 219
lessons. How would you like to have a copy of them to study and get computer
smart? Pick up a disk. Nothing to install. Can run from floppy.
************
RECYCLING PC COMPONENTS AND PARAPHERNALIA :
PART 2
(Recycle/Reuse Options for Whole, Functional PCs)
by Lee Hudspeth
October 18, 2001
This article focuses on how to responsibly recycle whole PCs. There
are several different categories of functionality for whole, recyclable
PCs. A PC that you’re considering recycling could be obsolete (from your
point of view, perhaps not so for others) or it could be marginally useful
to you in a special role. Also, if you run a PC wholesale or retail operation
then you might have an overstock situation. Note that in this and subsequent
articles when I say “recyclable PC” I mean “a PC you don’t want any more.”
Any PC, even your latest hotrod PC, is a candidate for recycling.
If the PC you want to recycle is fully functional then consider these
options:
* keep it for a while
* sell it
* donate it to a charitable organization
* recycle (dispose of; scrap) it in an environmentally appropriate
way
In any of the above cases—except if you continue using it, say, as
a telecommunications server—you should completely sanitize its hard disk
(more on this in a moment). Optionally you may want to go the extra mile
and render the drive MS-DOS bootable after sanitizing it, as a courtesy
to whomever the recipient may be. Even in a “keeping it for a while in
storage” scenario, sanitize the drive since you might forget about it while
it’s in storage. When you stumble across it years later and it doesn’t
boot up due to some lack-of-use hardware failure, you won’t have any worries
about proprietary data sitting exposed—but not easily erasable— on the
belly-up PC’s drive.
While it’s true that you can scrap a fully functional, obsolete PC,
I encourage you to try and keep it in service if at all possible. This
way someone continues to extract value from it as an operating device,
not just scrap metal or spare parts, and this minimizes inefficient, premature
recycling.
If the PC is not fully functional then you’ll need to make a judgment
call. If the problems aren’t too severe, you may be able to repair the
PC yourself for just a few dollars. Even with severe problems, there may
be a market for it in the used component channel. If you’re fortunate to
have a PC donation/recycling organization nearby, contact them and see
if they accept dysfunctional PCs.
Here’s how to sanitize a whole, recyclable PC. Folks, always sanitize
a PC before you sell it or give it to someone else, even if you’re giving
it to a scrap heap!
Boot into Windows and manually clear the Recycle Bin, clear your browser
caches, delete proprietary data, delete password files, uninstall programs,
delete Registry keys containing sensitive or confidential information,
and so on. Then run a Windows-based tool like Norton Utilities WipeInfo.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/421/tr.cgi?lee1
Note that if you’re working with a hard drive that is beginning to
fail, since a deep government-level wipe operation may tax it, I recommend
you take the precaution of first manually deleting everything you can so
at least you get that far in the event the drive crashes during the wipe.
Although I have not yet personally evaluated any of these file/disk
sanitizing tools, there are plenty of them. Go up to ZDNet Downloads and
search on “erase”.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/421/.
These tools that popped up repeatedly during my Internet searches:
* DiskSanitizer, FormatSecure 2001, and Eraser 2000 http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/421/tr.cgi?lee3
*DiskAmnesia http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/421/tr.cgi?lee4
* Zdeletehttp://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/421/tr.cgi?lee5
Alternately—and ideally for an older Windows 9x (or prior, including
even MS-DOS-only) system—you have a copy of the now defunct but extremely
cool Norton Utilities MS-DOS tool WIPEDISK. There’s also a version called
WIPEINFO that supports a “Wipe entire drive” option.) I have kept copies
of my Norton Utilities v4.5 diskettes around for years, with the masters
safely tucked away; in fact, these tools’ timestamps date back to 1989!
This tool scrubs the entire drive to U.S. Department of Defense specifications,
and eradicates the system areas, so when you’re done you’ll have to format
the drive for it to be usable again. That’s exactly how well scrubbed you
want your hard drive to be before it leaves your possession. You don’t
have to do any manual deletion from within Windows with this tool, just
run it from “Restart in MS-DOS mode.”
If you want to sell a whole, recyclable PC, you can always try your
local newspaper and other printed media channels. Here is a list of Top10
Links’ current top ten (by popular vote) computer auction Web sites:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/421/tr.cgi?lee6
Here’s a listing of computer scrap companies in the U.S. (list maintained
by “Share the Technology,” a nonprofit corporation). You may be able to
locate other similar firms in your region either through the yellow pages
or by searching the Internet.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/421/tr.cgi?lee7
In future articles I’ll provide resources for donating and recycling
(disposing of; scrapping) a whole PC.
I welcome your comments on recycling techno-trash.
You can reach Lee Hudspeth at:
mailto:LeeHudspeth@TheNakedPC.com
************
MIGHTY MOUSE
By Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
In 1980, Apple Computer asked a group of guys fresh from Stanford’s
product design program to take a $400 device and make it mass-producible,
reliable and cheap.
Their work transformed personal computing.
DEAN HOVEY was hungry. His young industrial design firm, Hovey-Kelley
Design, had been working on projects for Apple Computer for a couple of
years but wanted to develop entire products, not just casings and keyboards.
Hovey had come to pitch Apple co-founder Steven Jobs some ideas. But before
he could get started, the legendary high-tech pioneer interrupted him.
“Stop, Dean,” Hovey recalls Jobs saying. “What you guys need to do, what
we need to do together, is build a mouse.” Hovey was dumbfounded.
A what? Jobs told him about an amazing computer, code-named
Alto, he had just seen at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). In
early 1980, most computers (including Apple’s) required users to memorize
text commands to perform tasks. The Alto had a graphical user interface—a
symbolic world with little pictures of folders, documents and other icons—that
users navigated with a handheld input device called a mouse. Jobs explained
that Apple was working on two computers, named Lisa and Macintosh, that
would bring that technology to market. The mouse would help revolutionize
computers, making them more accessible to ordinary people. “When I walked
out that door,” recalls Hovey, ’78, MS ’85, “I was ready to change the
world.”
Just one problem: a commercial mouse based on the Xerox technology
cost $400, malfunctioned regularly and was nearly impossible to clean.
That device—a descendant of the original computer mouse invented by Douglas
Englebart at the Stanford Research Institute in the early 1960s—was a masterpiece
of high-concept technology, but a hopeless product. Jobs wanted a mouse
that could be manufactured for $10 to $35, survive everyday use and work
on his jeans. “We thought maybe Steve wasn’t getting enough meat in his
diet,” says Jim Sachs, a founding member of Hovey-Kelley, “but for $25
an hour, we’d design a solar-powered toaster if that’s what he wanted.”
The toaster probably would have been easier. Jobs wanted Hovey-Kelley to
take a piece of technology developed by some of Silicon Valley’s greatest
minds, dramatically improve its reliability and cut its price by more than
90 percent.
They did. The mouse’s evolution “from the laboratory to the living
room,” as one of its designers puts it, is not well known—even some Apple
fanatics aren’t familiar with it—but it reveals something of the personalities
of its designers, the Stanford program that trained them and even the history
of Silicon Valley. Everyone knows that the University has helped shape
the region, but the influence is often described as a function of great
individuals like Frederick Terman, specific inventions like the klystron
or an accident of geography. The story of the mouse demonstrates the impact
of a particular academic program—product design—on the Valley.
When Hovey-Kelley was asked to design the Apple mouse, the firm was
a two-year-old start-up. Hovey and David Kelley, as well as most of the
firm’s other early members, had met as graduate students in Stanford’s
product design program. An interdisciplinary program that combines mechanical
engineering, art and, often, math, physics and psychology, it was founded
in 1958 by Robert McKim. McKim, ’48, was an industrial designer rebelling
against the “styling illness” he saw as common in his field. He wanted
his students to go deep, to think about aesthetics, technology, users and
economics. “Bob McKim was trying to create little Leonardo da Vincis, people
who were skilled in many things and diverse enough to create a whole product,”
Hovey says.
The post-Sputnik years were a good time to be a rebel with a cause
at Stanford; federal research money flowed freely and ambitious administrators
like then-provost Terman, ’20, Engr. ’22, and engineering dean Joseph Pettit,
Engr. ’40, PhD ’42, could afford to support unusual departments. “There
is always room in a university for one maverick program,” McKim says. Its
oddball status allowed the program to move into promising new areas quickly.
The invention of the microprocessor in 1974 opened up new ways to combine
electronics with mechanical design, even novel ways of thinking about the
relationship between a product’s form and its function. McKim’s colleague
Larry Leifer, ’62, MS ’63, PhD ’69, started a “smart products” course to
explore this territory; Kelley, MS ’78, and Sachs, MS ’79, were among its
first teaching assistants
McKim won not only the support of his superiors, but also the affection
of his students. “If McKim had been a Nazi artist, I’d be a Nazi artist
now,” Kelley says. McKim’s engineering-school colleagues, however, didn’t
necessarily share his passion. “My peers thought I was pretty strange,”
McKim says. “And the design division was kind of strange, and loved being
strange.”
That strangeness led in some surprising but fruitful directions. In
the 1960s, McKim participated in studies of the impact of psychedelics
on creativity, co-authored a book called Altered States of Consciousness
and founded a medical instruments company. This blend of entrepreneurialism
and counterculture might have been unusual in academia, but it brought
the product design program in sync with the emerging personal computer
industry, whose leaders also mixed cultural radicalism with high tech.
Both groups shared a faith that scruffy genius could succeed where conventional
expertise failed, both preferred late nights in the machine shop or lab
to meetings, and both saw themselves as outsiders, whether from the conventional
design world or from corporate America.
THAT PREFERENCE for late nights came in handy in the spring of 1980,
when Hovey-Kelley’s offices fairly hummed with activity. Hovey, the mouse
project’s informal head, says he “hacked together” the first conceptual
prototype in a weekend—using the ball from a bottle of Ban Roll-On deodorant
and a butter dish purchased at the Palo Alto Walgreens (“the mouse parts
store,” he calls it). That wasn’t the only unusual source of components:
one morning, his wife discovered that their refrigerator no longer worked
because portions of the motor had gone into a mouse prototype. Not to be
outdone, Kelley took the stick shift off his BMW when he was experimenting
with mouse shapes. “We all did the same thing,” explains Sachs, who with
Rickson Sun focused on the electrical and optical components. “We sacrificed
circuitry, we sacrificed anything. The idea of [formally] designing something
and having everything fabricated to your specifications was simply too
long, slow and expensive.” Better to “take apart something else, or find
something similar, and glue it together or cut it in half.”
This approach was a textbook example of “rapid prototyping,” or building
something quickly to test one’s ideas, relying more on models and materials
than formal specifications. A cornerstone of the product design program,
it was a method well suited to imagination-rich but cash-poor freelancers
and start-ups. And it encouraged ferocious concentration. Explains Hovey:
“When you’re in one of those modes where you’re building something and
you need a part, you figure, ‘Either I can stop and wait, or I can go forward
and wreck [the refrigerator]. But it’ll be $20 to fix it—it’s no big deal.’
When you’re in the midst of the passion of designing, you just do it.”
The designers also drew insights from unexpected directions. The company
had set up shop in a $90-a-month office on the second floor of a downtown
Palo Alto building (and as Kelley recalls, “we were scared to death, paying
$90 a month”). The aging building’s uneven floors helped Hovey reach the
first breakthrough in simplifying the mouse’s design. He was trying to
eliminate the precision part that the Xerox PARC mouse used to push the
ball onto the table. As Hovey watched balls roll off his gently tilted
table, he realized, “That’s exactly what I want it to do: I want it to
roll without slipping.” The ball didn’t need to be pushed; it could float.
“We’d barely [need to] touch it to get the information about where it was
moving,” Hovey says.Sachs, who had taken some electrical engineering classes
as an undergraduate, designed an optical encoder system that used rollers,
light-emitting diodes and phototransistors to track the ball’s motion;
this reduced the number of moving parts in the mouse and lowered the cost.
Sun, ’78, MS ’78, added an idler wheel with a spring-loaded roller to make
sure the ball and encoders kept in contact.
By late spring, “we had solved a number of problems,” Sachs says. But
the designers worried that “we had created something that reuired such
precision it probably couldn’t be mass-produced.” As students, the group
had often been assigned difficult, even dangerous, exercises: build a Rube
Goldberg-like device, design a one-wheeled vehicle for a race down Sand
Hill Road. The mouse had evolved into a similar bundle of odd challenges.
Electronics were normally expensive and high-tolerance, or inexpensive
and low-tolerance; the mouse would have to be cheap and precise. Even the
cord posed problems: electric cords were normally either flexible or strong,
but the mouse cord needed to be both.
The designers needed something that could keep these contradictory
demands from breaking the mouse. Jim Yurchenco proposed connecting the
electronics and optics to a single plastic platform, which could keep them
in correct alignment and protect them from shocks. Yurchenco, MFA ’75,
had studied sculpture as a graduate student, and his experience with crafting
three-dimensional shapes made him the obvious person to design this platform,
nicknamed the rib cage. (Most of the mouse parts had in-house nicknames—the
exterior cover was the fur, the cord the tail—but rib cage was the only
one that stuck.) Yurchenco did most of the work in his head—a tour de force
of 3-D visualization abilities, according to others on the project. Not
only did the tiny parts have precise specifications, but Yurchenco had
to make it possible for assembly-line workers to snap them onto the rib
cage. The rib cage pushed the state of the art in tooling and injection
molding. “There were a lot of very small features that had to be crammed
into a very small space,” Yurchenco says, “and building a mold to do that
was complex. Nobody had actually done this before.” But once the mold was
made, the rib cage could be mass-produced, to exacting tolerances, for
pennies a unit. Yurchenco also designed a ring on the bottom of the mouse
that users could remove to take out the ball and clean the rollers without
touching the electronics.
The group turned its attention to the exterior design in the summer.
Kelley and Douglas Dayton made prototype shapes out of wood or plastic,
ranging from square mice to wedge-shaped mice to one complete with “two
little eyes like a mouse,” Kelley remembers. “Apple rejected it completely.”
After conducting user tests, Dayton, MS ’79, and Apple designer Bill Dresselhaus,
MS ’74, produced the final exterior design. Apple also decided to reduce
the number of buttons from three to one after discovering that users had
trouble remembering which was which. The mouse was finished in early 1981.
Naturally, the designers showed it to Bob McKim, who declared it “an elegant
solution, very ingenious.” Looking back, he observes that the mouse project
was “a stretch” for his former students, “but not too much of one. There
is such a thing as the interesting project that’s a little bit beyond your
capability, but not so much beyond that you fail.”
Fail? Hardly. The Apple mouse transformed personal computing. Although
the expensive Lisa flopped, the Macintosh, released in 1984, made the graphical
user interface the industry standard. Microsoft responded with Windows,
and its own mouse—also engineered by Jim Yurchenco. “We made a mouse mass-producible,
reliable and inexpensive,” says Sachs, “and hundreds of millions of them
have been made.”
The mouse established Hovey-Kelley’s reputation, and its influence
continues to resonate in the successor company, IDEO . “The most sought-after
projects in the company are the ones in areas where we don’t have a lot
of experience,” says Kelley, who now divides his time between IDEO and
Stanford, where he is an associate professor in the product design program.
(Sun, Yurchenco and Dayton also are still with IDEO; Hovey and Sachs have
since founded other companies.) The mouse, Hovey says, “had the right balance
of mechanical design, ergonomic design, software design and electronic
design that really mapped well with the generalist, mini-da Vincis that
Hovey-Kelley had. Even down to the tactile aspect of the click, it was
a perfectly scaled project for a Stanford product designer.”
THE CLICK? What’s so important about that? From a mechanical point
of view, the button was simple, but Hovey-Kelley’s attention to it is illuminating.
The feel of the mouse shaped the experience of using the Lisa and Macintosh,
and the button defined the experience of using the mouse. A rugged detector
and encoding system, a rib cage to hold the electronics and mechanical
parts together, and a removable cleaning ring were all necessary to make
a mouse that would work.
Paying attention to the subtle ergonomics and aesthetics of the button
was necessary to make a mouse that would be used. Getting the button right—giving
it an audible “click” to tell users how far to push, figuring out how far
it should depress, making it responsive but not so sensitive that it could
be accidentally activated—meant getting the mouse right. It was part of
what Sachs calls “the Zen of the product,” the hard-to-describe qualities
that shape the experience of using a technology. We normally think of technologies
as mere applied science, reducible to drawings and parts lists; but as
Sachs explains, every device has a ghost of “intangible intellectual property
about how something works that you simply can’t document, or things where
language fails us. The Zen of the product is something you can’t write
down.”
That might help explain why the story of the Apple mouse isn’t widely
known. It would seem to have all the ingredients of a good Silicon Valley
story—young protagonists, innovation to burn, a wildly successful product,
a Steve Jobs cameo—but product design just isn’t something journalists
or historians tend to write about. It’s supposed to be invisible:the work
designers do belongs to their clients. It’s the reverse of fashion, in
which the designers are household names and the producers are anonymous.
Companies may actually forget that they were clients—in fact, the first
patent Apple filed on its mouse mistakenly assigned sole credit to an Apple
employee. But it’s more than that. Even in histories of Apple, “the mouse
gets lost and is just sort of there,” Sachs says. “Those of us involved
in the design actually smile at that, because our objective was to make
it seamless and invisible,” he says. “The fact that the mouse was unobtrusive
and natural is the result of a lot of work.” Few users ever notice the
heft of the cord, or the effect the connector linking the cord to the mouse
has on the mouse’s agility, or the silence of the ball as it moves across
the desk. But they’re not supposed to. It’s the peculiar fate of good design
to erase traces of itself; bad design is far more noticeable (remember
the first iMac mouse?). As proud as the designers are of the mouse’s popularity,
they’re even prouder of its invisibility.
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