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Opinion
Summer Punch List Mania
7/31/2006
Item 4: “Power plugs in rack not fully inserted.” Several of the electrical cords in the rack were not fully inserted. Also, the DC power transformers (“wall warts”) were not secured to vertical power strips, and several were close to falling out only weeks after installation.
Item 7: “Cables not consistently labeled according to acceptable scheme.” Only about two-thirds of the cables were labeled with any type of label – machine printed or otherwise. Uncorrected, this would have a significant affect on the ability of the college to troubleshoot or upgrade the room.
Item 9: “Documentation stuffed in rack.” Instead of being placed into three-ring binders, the installer had jammed the manuals inside the rack between the equipment and the side panels.
Item 11: “DB-9 connectors not covered with hoods”. The installer explained that he had left them off in case the programmer needed to switch pins, but that he failed to remember to come back and put the covers on. Because the soldered connections on the back of the DB-9 connectors are fragile and exposed, covering them with metal hoods is a reasonable precaution to ensure reliability.
Item 14: “Barrel not connected to rack PC audio connector.” The contractor had carefully soldered a stereo mini 1/8” connector but had forgotten to slide the barrel on the wire first, and apparently didn’t want to correct the oversight. As above, a barrel to protect the solder connections is a good idea, particularly with a PC where connections are likely to be changed in the future and the connector exposed to damage.
Item 15: “Individual RG-59 used for RGBHV cabling.” This is not necessarily bad, but the specification required use of specialty RGBHV cabling inside a single jacket. In this case, the contractor used what he had in his van, which was RG-59 CCTV cable. If the coaxial cables were cut to the same length, this would have worked fine. Unfortunately, as Item 33 notes, a color-shift of pixels on one of the projectors indicates a possible difference in RGB cable lengths among the individual strands.
Item 16: “Big sloppy hole in ceiling tile at plasma monitor location.” In the contractor’s defense, the hole was near the edge of a tile where the ventilation duct was inches above the tile. The hole cannot be seen except when standing directly underneath the monitor and looking straight up, and the hole around nearby sprinkler fixture is much worse. This sort of subjective, aesthetic issue is best handled on a case-by-case basis.
Item 23: “No audio settings in project record manual.” Actually, no project record manual at all. The specification required that the nominal audio settings be documented so that the college could return the system to normal in the event that the settings were changed or lost.
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