And now, my evil scheme is revealed!

Still needs some work, but the basics are in and I can display pretty much whatever I want. Video, images, cameras or video input from capture devices... Scanners too, which is a bit useless. I can clone the image onto all monitors, spread it across all monitors or display separate images on each screen. It is all controlled from a 5th monitor which cannot be seen in the images. I will probably try to write a simple, primitive, remote control - probably using a simple Telnet server and some kind of "library" to call the content from, the library could be updated via FTP. All output is automatically cropped to 4:3 aspect for the 1280x960 space the monitors provide. Finally, I have a CRT video wall, albeit a very small monochrome one. I have wanted one of these since I first saw one. Now I know it works, I may replace it with a more elegant color system in the future, but I actually like the character of the simple black and white screens, even though they aren't perfect by a long way. I don't want to tear the monitors apart, but one tweak I will do is to flip the top monitors upside down. I shall build a simple enclosure for them with fans to hold them in place and keep them cool.

If you know the movie and the song in these images, I will be impressed.

I like where the last image ended up because it almost looks as if the woman is responding to me tapping on the screen with my finger. The image was taken from me shooting the whole thing working on video and this was completely unintentional as I went through the file and just randomly hit the snapshot button.

My last notes on this thing are that it does throw out a decent amount of heat, requires a pretty nice mass of wires and makes the room smell of ozone for a little while once it is first turned on.

oh lord, you are one of those people that put cameras in bathrooms and changing rooms.

I have no comment... Funny thing is, my first thoughts were that it looked like some kind of prying CCTV network or something. The other strange thing is how many low budget 90s music videos look like they were filmed in elaborate changing rooms.

Would certainly recommend a video wall to anyone who wants to take over the world, because even if you're crap at running an evil empire, you will at least look the part.

I have gotten primitive TELNET control working, I can add things to the loop and start or stop the player. Also I can control the power state of the machine. Unfortunately, Windows' Telnet sucks and doesn't display my horrid ANSI art properly;

It was supposed to look like this;

But I will probably control it from 9X/DOS machines more anyway, only the library is likely to be touched with newer systems and I don't have that in place yet. It can only be accessed locally or via a network share, but I want to hook it up to FTP for compatibility. There is practically no security on this thing, but it doesn't do anything important and has no internet connection so it doesn't matter. May be worth it to enable auto-login on these services then.

Interesting fact: Vida is the female equivalent of David. My server appears as Dave on the network. Both systems are pretty much headless for most of their operation - as I will probably not plug in the control monitor unless I need it for this system.

I turned an old broken TV into a PC.

Why not use a Raspberry Pi?
1. The only LCD I had that would fit didn't have HDMI or DVI. Only VGA.
2. I didn't want to buy anything (no USB-VGA adaptor, not even the Gert RasPi VGA adaptor)
3. I already had everything I needed to do this.

The volume knob works, and controls a basic kit amp connected to the TV's original speaker. Onboard audio (though this may change, there is a lot of "computer thinking" noise from the onboard audio on this mobo) and onboard video (Intel HD 3000).

The front glass from the tube has an etched texture on the inside that works to soften the image. When you sit back, it really feels like you're watching an inexpensive 1980s television. Feels good man.

Very nice SquallStrife 😀

It's kinda ruined by the LCD, but then, I don't see how you'd fit a CRT in there unless you used a motherboard which fit along the bottom. I tried something similar with a monitor once (Essentially tried to make an All-in-One machine) and it was a pain in the ass for airflow and cooling though, plus if you think you've got noise on that thing try having the audio gear in the same box as a fly-back transformer and CRT driver circuits with no shielding at all. Give you a hint, it sounds like a a dentist is in the room and the pitch constantly changed depending on what was being displayed.

You could argue that it is more authentic though, because my Ferguson TV from that era has a 50Hz hum all the time. Mostly not noticeable, but when certain colors display in certain patterns it can get louder. Noticeable in side-scrolling Nintendo games where you can control the volume of the buzz by making the screen scroll. On the other hand, I think the TV is broken somewhere because once you turn the volume past halfway it starts going down again. I rarely turn it up and this "feature" amuses me, so I never bothered to look into what is wrong with it. It always buzzed though even before that started happening.

HighTreason wrote:

It's kinda ruined by the LCD,

That was my first thought. I nearly didn't bother. Of course it looks pretty average when you're sitting up close to it.

But like I said, once you're sitting across the room from it, you nearly can't tell. (Save, perhaps, for the "Please activate Windows" message! 😜)

Quite possibly. LCDs have certainly improved since all mine were made anyway (Early 2000s) and it's still cool. Pair it with a wireless keyboard and mouse and I imagine it will be a rather novel device.

Whilst I'm in this thread, in continuation of yesterday, I made small improvements to my script. It was possible, before the fixes, to queue another command before the first one had been parsed. Nothing bad would likely happen (Very small chance of an infinite loop if the command was queued at the right moment) and it would most likely just remove the first command and replace it with the second one. The script now checks to make sure a command was executed before allowing the user to imput another one. I also tidied up text drawing so the screen no longer has to scroll. Instead the text below the instructions is cleared and the cursor moved back to the line below them, all text fits in this space and the area is cleared before writing any new text to the screen. Also added a delay after error messages as the text was being cleared immediately, making the message unreadable.

Glad I used Telnet because I forgot the password for the machine and ended up exploiting the script so it would fall back to a command line - The server doesn't really allow this, but COMMAND was essentially running inside my own program, so the server sees VIDA and not COMMAND - where, as luck would have it, the password is stored as plain text in the Telnet configuration only a few directories away. Now I'm glad I slacked off on error handles.

SquallStrife, that's awesome!

OH GOD I JUST FOUND THIS

http://www.my90stv.com/#6QD4ZUfgNzQ

MY EVENING IS PLANNED YOU GUYS

SquallStrife wrote:

OH GOD I JUST FOUND THIS

http://www.my90stv.com/#6QD4ZUfgNzQ

MY EVENING IS PLANNED YOU GUYS

A Computer Chronicals episode about easy to use databases was the best thing I could find when zapping through the channels 😜.

SquallStrife wrote:

OH GOD I JUST FOUND THIS

http://www.my90stv.com/#6QD4ZUfgNzQ

MY EVENING IS PLANNED YOU GUYS

Nice find.... Damn it's sweet. 😜

Been testing two motherboards, and put them up for sale.... Sad to see them go, just that I have no real use for them at the moment.
It is better to have them go to someone that will use them and have a good time.

Been lugging all my boxes of CPUs downstairs and even though they are fewer in number than the number of boxes of graphics cards (thank god!), my god are they heavy! A problem surfaced when I found out I don't even have enough transportable storage capacity to actually safely relocate all of them downstairs, so I'll have to do part of the inventorying in the attic. Bummer.

My 7600GS came in today, I'm putting it through its paces. It's much quieter than my old 9600XT. It's stable and pretty damn fast for what it is.

Started Inventorying my CPU collection, did all my Slot 1 ones, but the s7/s370/sA CPU trays will have to wait till tomorrow...and frankly I can't wait 🤣!

Sedrosken wrote:

My 7600GS came in today, I'm putting it through its paces. It's much quieter than my old 9600XT. It's stable and pretty damn fast for what it is.

I liked the GF7600GS, was very similar in performance to the GF6800 using 2 very similar A64 rigs.

SquallStrife wrote:

OH GOD I JUST FOUND THIS

http://www.my90stv.com/#6QD4ZUfgNzQ

MY EVENING IS PLANNED YOU GUYS

Wow nice find! 😲

Been trying to install a Creative Video Blaster MP400 (CT:6080) ISA card.
It's a full size MPEG-1 encoder/decoder ISA card, that requires both loopback cable and VGA-Passthrough internally.
When this P166 is installed with Windows98, I will have a nice little CD-I machine.
Combined with an AWE64-Gold and 32mb ram, I think it's a nice machine.
Going to install an Orchid V1 in this baby too... 2 loopbacks. 😁 😁
Choosen a Number Nine S3 Virge, just to make shure it has a strong VGA signal through two cards.

Nice work managing those pesky ribbon cables!

Thanks... That is actually one of things I enjoy about building computers. 😀