This is part of my "looking for the perfect machine" project, and as mentioned before the 80's is where it has come together for me.
Of course it needed service when I got it and it may be that I felt more comfortable with it because I have the best service Tech about a 1/2 hour away at the Fabric Affair
Rich is great; a collector restorer and refixit guy that loves sewing machines.
As I have mentioned in other posts I have a huge background in what we at Chrysler called Human Factors, I was tutored by the great Howard Estes and many years of product development.
Human Factors now may also include HMI, Human Machine Interface. With the omnipresent "touch screen" HMI includes this difficult task.
We all have a touch screen or two that we are not fond of, they are fine for running electronics BUT when it comes to running a machine with it they are behind several systems. How would you like to ride a bike with a touch screen?
So simply; the 1230 has a computer that is controlled by physical buttons, buttons that have dimension, move a noticeable distance when depressed, have a feeling when depressed, and a light when they are activated. So in direct opposition is the Viking Designer 1 which I love but it has none of this "feedback" from the screen. "Haptics"attempts to mitigate this problem by creating a actual "thump" and a noise (thud) when activated and is in place in my Cadillac touch screen (although poorly) to mitigate the effects the problem; the problem is not knowing that you actually hit the button WITHOUT LOOKING AT IT.
The dials combined with the LED "temperature" style bars are the "home run" part of the machine.
SOO easy to understand and use. The trick is to have the dial on the right side of the bar so I can see the bar, AND to have the side of the dial closest to the bar move in the same direction as the bar, hard to describe, easy to understand. This is what Human Factors is all about. The stitch width works in the same friendly way.
So Kudos to the experts at Bernina back in the day, they really knew there stuff and set out to do it right.
