Strange and funny phenomenon

[whiz115]

Interesting phenomenon!

By total coincidence i discovered something very funny and strange...

While i was scrolling down a web page i had a small 17'' Philips turned on in my room, the TV started making noise from the speaker and some small lines like snow added to the already bad reception of the specific channel...
when i stopped moving the mouse wheel the noise stopped!
Then i turned off my crt monitor believing that this is the cause of the interference and i started moving the mouse wheel and the noise came back!

the interference is on specific channels and not on every channel!



P.S. my tv cable that goes to the aerial is a little bit damaged by my room door and some channels have bad reception.

 

[vinke]

Contact Mulder and Scully!!Paranormal activities..

 

[dknguyen]

WHen I scroll my mouse wheel I can hear the noise through my speakers.

 

[vinke]

Is it a wireless mouse? Neways the power dissipated in a mouse is so small that its hard to cause so much interference as noise in other devices,perhaps your mouse is defective.When i say defective,perhaps it can still work but its dissipating extra power.Most mouse use an IR beam to detect the position of the scroll wheel, perhaps that IR beam is more powerful than it should be..

 

[Torben]

Here's a test. Make the room very quiet. Turn off the TV etc. Now put the computer where you can get your ear fairly close to the video card (but don't stick your head in the case). Now try scrolling a page or moving a window around the screen. You may be able to hear the sound coming right off the card.

I've noticed this on various computers over the years. It seems (totally anecdotally) to be related to moving large chunks of pixels around, I would suspect because of the amount of memory copying that goes on. I can't say for sure.


Torben

 

[whiz115]

Is it a wireless mouse? Neways the power dissipated in a mouse is so small that its hard to cause so much interference as noise in other devices,perhaps your mouse is defective.When i say defective,perhaps it can still work but its dissipating extra power.Most mouse use an IR beam to detect the position of the scroll wheel, perhaps that IR beam is more powerful than it should be..

This is the first thing i would think... the mouse isn't wireless.

@Torben yeah i have noticed it too years now

 

[matc]

I've noticed the same thing coming from the video card - and I agree with the "moving large numbers of pixels around" assessment. I suspect it's noise from the current spikes (mutual inductance of the PCB traces) as the GPU does a large chunk of DRAM writing.
You can test this by making the screen scroll with pgup/pgdown, or by arranging your windows such that the mouse scrollwheel does nothing on screen.

 

[Hero999]

The CPU, RAM, mother board and hard drive all have millions of transistors inside them switching on and off at billions of times per second. This all generates electromagnetic radiation in the radio region of the spectrum. As you move the mouse and run various programs the frequency and amplitude of the radiation emitted varies causing interference to radio and TV reception.

The best way to cure this problem is to use an external aerial fitted as far away from your computer as possible.

 

[whiz115]

Ok i think i discovered what's going on...

Torben said that when he scrolls pages up/down he can hear a noise
inside the computer, as i said few years back, i experianced the same thing and because it was annoying i did some search that time and i learned that the noise is comming from the coils/chokes of the motherboard.

It's a vibration of the ferrites caused by the large amount of current the CPU draws when a certain activity is executed... (e.g high CPU usage of an application).

Now..what i didn't knew is that these coils can produce EMI interference,i thoughted that the problem is limited to that high pitch noise!
and now that my TV cable is damaged and also happend i have my computer case opened, the cable picks up the interference that probably is in the UHF range and that's why i can see it only on specific tv channels.

at least that's what i think...

 

[wmmullaney]

Man, do you know how to do reserch!!!

Oh, I guess this only happens with pcs, my mac hasn't ever done it.

 

[mabauti]

It happens sometimes in my AM radio :O

 

[crashsite]

MAC People are Funny...

Oh, I guess this only happens with pcs, my mac hasn't ever done it.

MAC people are funny...

 

[dknguyen]

Man, do you know how to do reserch!!!

Oh, I guess this only happens with pcs, my mac hasn't ever done it.

THat's cause you're too distracted by your MAC's shiny shiny case and monitor to notice

 

[HiTech]

Most television sets anymore today are poorly shielded and are fertile for interference of all kinds. I surprised the TV mfgrs. bother to even shield the tuner module, those cheapskates! Good 'puters and monitor mfgrs. properly shield their products to eliminate or reduce interference. The FCC has strict guidelines mandating interference reduction... even if it's a USB card or GPU card. If you want to see cheap electronics, look inside a eMachines product!! Just enough to squeak by in every aspect! Sad! Take apart a medium to high end Gateway 'puter or monitor and you'll be at it for awhile before you can even access the innards! Dell once practiced these good measures, now they cut corners where possible.

 

[crashsite]

Most television sets anymore today are...fertile for interference of all kinds.

I hope my TV is not too fertile. The last thing I need is a pregnant TV to have to contend with. Not to mention the raised eyebrows at the local DNA paternity testing facility....

But, the original poster did give a good clue that his TV was on a weak station and thus would be extra suseptible to any stray RF signals nearby.

 

[wmmullaney]

THat's cause you're too distracted by your MAC's shiny shiny case and monitor to notice

What are you talking about?(I don't see a shiny case)
Why are we Mac fans "funny"?

 

[wmmullaney]

Most television sets anymore today are poorly shielded and are fertile for interference of all kinds. I surprised the TV mfgrs. bother to even shield the tuner module, those cheapskates! Good 'puters and monitor mfgrs. properly shield their products to eliminate or reduce interference. The FCC has strict guidelines mandating interference reduction... even if it's a USB card or GPU card. If you want to see cheap electronics, look inside a eMachines product!! Just enough to squeak by in every aspect! Sad! Take apart a medium to high end Gateway 'puter or monitor and you'll be at it for awhile before you can even access the innards! Dell once practiced these good measures, now they cut corners where possible.

You don't see that on Apple's, they are much better.

 

[crashsite]

MAC People are Funny

Why are we Mac fans "funny"?

An entire text book could be written on that subject so, trying to distill it down to the basics makes it all sound trite. But, hell...I don't mind being a bit trite.

Jobs and Wosniak, not Gates, should have been the richest men on earth. But, they had the wrong attitude (which I call the "Apple Attitude"). They were the first with a practical, desktop computer and they started out right by dumping them into the schools. But, the boys had (still do) a mentality that this was their baby and they pretty much closed off Apple to 3rd party development.

IBM/Microsoft, on the other hand, opened the PC platform and encouraged software development. Result: If you're a MAC affectionado you compute the way Apple decided you'd compute (less so now but, the attitude still does prevail and you even still see it pretty strongly in their ads). Meanwhile the PC crowd was/is using all sorts of commercial, sharware and freeware programs.

So, there's a basic difference between PC and MAC thinking. I liken the MAC crowd to hippies and their VWs. Yeah, the VW has its charm and a "personality" that meshed well with their owners and there are still Deadheads driving around in their bugs and busses. But, it's more of a niche mentality...like Apples and their owners.

MAC users have a version of the Apple attitude and tend to get very defensive about their choice of computer. PC users just don't have that attitude because they don't have the emotional attachment to their computers that the MAC types do.

I'm not saying that Apples are bad computers any more than VWs are bad cars. I used to own a bug myself at one time...loved to drive it. I've never owned an Apple and, frankly, would not want to be tied down to what I consider its limitations (the exact things which I'm sure you would consider to be its strengths). Sure, MACs can run PC applications (a persistent brag) where PCs (for the most part) can't run Apple apps (for two reasons...Apple wont allow it and PC users have so many options they neither need or want to).

Anyway, to wrap it up (the short, rather trite version), MAC people (bless your devoted hearts) are indeed funny.

BTW: Glad you posted the photo of the "stylish" Mac display. It's a gentle reminder of the styling of the Ericofon of the 1950s. One almost expects to see some cheesy, gold-tone rabbit ears to automatically extend from the darn thing when it's powered up.

**broken link removed**

 

[ThermalRunaway]

Why are we Mac fans "funny"?

I'll give you a classic Apple Mac quote to answer this one;

"There was an error. Because there was an error."

Brian

 

[dipmicro]

Most television sets anymore today are poorly shielded ...

I disagree, the HF input (tuner) is always well shielded, the rest of the TV circuitry does not neet to be shielded for this purpose because it does not require micro-voltage sensitivity like an input.

The problem is not in the TV but in the poor design of the mouse transmitter generating harmonic frequencies outside of the designated frequency range.

I have noticed that my wireless Labtec mouse started freezing from time to time. First I thought it was my cell phone, but even after turning it completely off it did not stop. Perhaps the neightbour got a new WiFi router or a cordless phone that's interfering with my cordless mouse The time has come to go back to old good wired technology.