In a minute, aroma emanating from the microwave made it clear that all inhibitions that might have survived so far have been abolished, thus sealing the sandwich’s fate and hastening its untimely demise.

The light on a lamp post flickered and gave way to darkness.   

Have you ever wondered why All-in-One designs of a personal computer enjoyed such an unparalleled success? Look at the Sales Charts of Laptops, more appropriately called Notebooks, Tablet PCs, Portable Workstations or even Desktop Replacements! Those charts exhibit one uncompromising trend - Up and nowhere else! So, what if we are stuck with an Old World Desktop, do we plunk down cash for latest Apple creation or sleek Sony model? No, we do it the hard way, overcome hurdles, invent new and apply the old to obtain one-of-a-kind marvel of a machine that may yet have one or two tricks up its sleeve (of floppy bay) to one-up all those spiffy latest all-in-one-hang-me-on-the-wall models. And, yes, again, do we succeed …

We use a 15-inch LCD screen and a mini-tower for this exercise. When placed separately on the desk, they both occupy significant desk area - which is why most towers tend to be banished to underdesk space - out of sight, out of reach, into the dusty, cramped, kicked Inferno Of All Mini-Towers. On-the desk placement would offer advantages of being more accessible, sanitary and less of all the above. It may increase the noise level somewhat, since fans would be close to the user, which should be tested beforehand prior to starting this project.

Virtually all LCD screens have so-called VESA mount holes on them. That is, there are threaded holes on every LCD screen that have standard dimensions and spacing between them, positioned in such a way as to provide secure fastening of the LCD screen to a variety of supporting structures, be it a desk stand, a wall mount, a tree branch or, as we shall see, a side of a computer case.

First order of business would be to disconnect all the cables and carefully remove the screws holding the LCD screen to its desktop base. Any suitable screwdriver will fit the proverbial bill here. Hold tight the LCD screen, do not allow it to fall and shatter! We would rather allow its desktop base fall to the floor and break to pieces, since we soon will have no need for a desktop base anyway!

Then comes an exciting time of Placement and Positioning (or Placing and Positionment) of LCD screen on the desired side of the mini-tower case. For reasons of easy accessibility we chose right side of the case when viewed from the back. Mounting on the opposite side would require removal of the motherboard, a process we were rather indisposed to endure.

The Golden Rule Of All Rules here: measure and measure again before you drill. Measure up, measure down, measure left and measure right. Measure inside and measure outside, measure diameter and measure distance, measure corners and measure sides, measure open and measure closed. There can be no too much measuring here, only too little. Because once you drill - your LCD will be fixed into whatever crooked contorted skewed and screwed position on the side of your minitower that you chose with your wery own rule and set in stone with your own hand drill. Well, not exactly in stone - as can be seen on one of the pictures where one extra hole is visible - a result of a sad mistake in measurement. Also, important to note that VESA standard specifies distance between holes in millimeters (75 or 100) and screw size is metric as well. It helps to remove any drives - CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, EIDE, or Serial ATA that might stand in a way of a mighty drill bit piercing the side of the case. No need to scatter digital bits and bytes in addition to all the metal and plastic debris that will appear during the drilling step.

We de-burred the sharp edges of freshly made holes by hand, using a larger drill bit and then vacuumed off all the debris. This concluded preparatory work for actual attachment of the LCD.

Cables must be connected to LCD screen and secured beforehand, since after LCD is screwed to the flat surface access to cable connectors becomes nigh impossible for people with hands of customary size. Screws must have appropriate length to penetrate increased thickness of the material compared to original desktop stand attachment. We needed to replace all four screws with longer ones. 

All four screws secure, case closed, cables out of the way - what a fitting conclusion of our efforts! Time: 45 minutes. Leftovers: desktop stand. Unique new All-In-One sight of an old trusty computer - priceless! 

Then there was that other lad who also came knocking on Vanadis’s door. She grew accustomed to the game, however, and was in no rush at all to open the squeaky door. The lad was a stubborn one, nevertheless, and kept banging at the door until it flew open and he saw Vanadis in all her unkempt beauty…

The rest is (chemical) history. Element Vanaduim was discovered and named by the persistent chemist who was sure of what he wanted, what he needed and what he saw.

Let’s just say one more time : never ever give up.

Admit it, LCD screen on a standard pedestal takes way too much space on our desk. Our desks are small and increasingly cluttered, and Earth is not becoming any larger. The solution to this dilemma just might lie in a judiciously chosen LCD hanger that would unclutter at least a portion of the desk now uselessly occupied by the plastic stand. It looks like a great idea at first sight, but we all know too well - with computers the devil is in the details.

You can buy any number of LCD-hangers these days. Large and small, tilt and swivel, white, black, silver, arm and leg - they clutter virtual shopping malls and make it hard to make an informed choice, lest provide our cherished LCD with a more dignified support than a bland and clunky factory pedestal made of extruded ABC plastic.

There are several principal problems with any given LCD hanger:

1. It usually requires screwing something. Into the wall. Be it nuts, bolts, screws or quick release levers - it’s just too involved to be pleasantly entertaining.
2. It usually requires un-screwing something from the wall when it’s time to move. Since everybody is on the move in our dynamic lives - that means un-screwing often.
3. After LCD moved  - please, see 1 and, please, don’t forget to patch the old holes in the wall.
4. It costs too much money. Value for the buck is dismally low. Too low. 

We hear appeal for help and rush to the rescue!

  LCD hanging on paper clips.

For this LCD-mounting project we will need 2 large paperclips so beautifully impersonated in classic Microsoft Office series; a needle-nose pliers and a push-pin. Nothing more, nothing less, and of, course, an LCD screen. This technique works best with screens of smaller size, where value-for-money quotient has to be especially competitive. If you plan to do this with your new 50-inch plasma display, we reckon you have gone far past The Frontier Of Reason as well as Point Of Diminishing Returns and suggest you NOT to go ahead with this project. We bear absolutely NO responsibility if you follow this information and something goes Horribly Wrong. Following this advice may be harmful of fatal - you are responsible for the consequences. Having uttered this obligatory disclaimer, let’s continue with our project … 

Our object under duress will be a run-of-the-mill 15-inch LCD screen for which we absolutely, positively do not have space on our admittedly small desk.

Besides not having much space on the desk, we do not even have a wall on which to hang the display. The desk is equipped with a hutch that precludes access to the wall. Therefore, we cannot use conventional LCD wall mount, short of making a big hole in the desk’s decorative false wall. Making a hole would be undesirable if only for reasons of being irreversible and potentially disconcerting.

Therefore, we will resort to mounting our LCD directly on the hutch structure. After examining several possible ways, we decide to proceed with hanging onto the decorative wall surface. The wall is made of pressed paper pulp about 0.2 inch thick and is very sturdy, especially in the direction of the plane. It certainly can support the weight of the 15-inch LCD screen if the screen is hung as close to the surface as possible, thus distributing the weight in a downward direction of the plane with minimum sideways “bending” force component. With that much of a scientific preparation, it is now time to grab the paperclips.

In a fitting tribute to Steve Jobs and his array of colorful iMac computers we select from a rainbow pile of paperclips. We opted for a “moonlight mist silver”-colored pair of jumbo-sized clips, sturdy enough yet pliable to a required shape. Two pinhole openings in a cardboard wall of a desk hutch is all that is needed for our paperclip hooks to hold on. Holes are easily drilled with a push pin by pushing it through the cardboard and wiggling it until satisfied.

Looped end of each paperclip is attached to the LCD screen using existing screws in top corners of that particular model of a monitor. We did not test what might work for those supremely cost-effective models that lack screws in top corners and leave it as an interesting exercise to the reader. We then attached paperclip hooks to the wall via pre-drilled holes and connected the power and video cables. A good tug down on the monitor served as a final test of robusness. It passed with flying colors, surpassing feeling of immobility we experienced tugging on some commercial LCD monitor mounts.

Pictures show closeup of a corner mount. Paper clip is performing beautifully. Visible on the left side corner is a golden-colored thread of ritual significance.  

Summary

We successfully achieved our primary objective of hanging the 15-inch display onto the wall, thus maximizing space while minimizing investment and damage to the work environment.

This method of mounting LCD screen, while simple and efficient, may not be for everybody. In the next project we will tackle LCD mounting in a completely different, shall we say, fashion…

To be continued …

 Little did game players know that some of those machines already utilized some fundamental principles on which video compression technologies are based today …

ZX Spectrum, the legend that brought a “Sir” title to its creator, Sir Clive Sinclair! This machine that has become first “computer for the masses” in Europe, utilized some of the simple yet far-reaching principles that made it such a success. By far the most important was its amazingly fast and colorful video display that outshined many other displays of the time and led to appearance of vast library of, yes, games! All that despite being based on the relatively slow processor - 4 MHz 8-bit Z80. How it become possible to bring together the three qualities of the graphics system that tend to be mutually exclusive: colors, resolution, speed? The same general principle that is used today in many video compression schemes, including MPEG-1, although such connection is not very apparent at the cursory glance at the ZX Spectrum architecture, design and programming.

We, however, will take a closer look on these pages.

To be continued…