VOGONS


First post, by Chaniyth

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Greetings,

Over the past couple years I've had a few CRT monitors randomly die on me. The first was an old 80 column Magnavox monitor that died as a catastrophic event (zap! bang! poof!) complete with smoke and ozone smell and just recently my 17" CRT flat screen monitor died "peacefully" during use and without any warning signs; the screen suddenly and out of nowhere lightened a bit, image became big and then distortion in an "S" shaped pattern then she was gone, all it does now is a click of death which I assume is the flyback.

As much as I absolutely love and prefer CRT's I just don't have the heart to deal with them anymore; parts are getting harder to find due to lack of manufacture and vast recycling, CRT's are getting stupidly expensive (online anyway) and are hard to find locally anymore though CRT tv's seem to be in abundance CRT monitors don't seem to be, and besides that realistically they all are on death's door these days.

So the monitor needs replaced, the PC is a pure DOS machine. Can anyone recommend a good and fast response LCD or LED replacement? Ideally 4:3 ratio is preferred but I guess a 5:4 ratio is allowable. Please, NO 16:9 or any other widescreen ratios.

Thanks in advance.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you... but first they must catch you. 😁

Reply 1 of 35, by xjas

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I've found the following to be extremely good at handling difficult VGA tweakmodes and scan rate hacks.

- Dell 2001FP (probably also 2007FP)
- Samsung SyncMaster 214T <-- this is my current general purpose monitor, I have two DOS machines, two Win98 machines, a Mac Mini and my Linux workstation hooked up to it through a KVM. 1600x1200 & great picture quality for its age.
- EUC AGN|PRO EP19AV

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^^ this scene is basically my benchmark, it messes with the scanline start location & horizontal refresh. A lot of LCD controllers HATE this and just throw a fit. If a monitor handles this demo, chances are it'll be pretty good for just about anything in DOS use.

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Reply 3 of 35, by xjas

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Oops! Yes, that's the one. Copper by Surprise! a.k.a. "the official pc scene vga card torture test" according to the second Pouet comment. 😜

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 5 of 35, by Jo22

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Ah, the Copper demo. Wasn't it optimized for the ET4000 also ?

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 6 of 35, by JonathonWyble

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I'd have to agree with SPBHM. 1024x768 CRT monitors are better than those other monitors in lower resolutions. I personally don't handle resolutions lower than 1024x768. Also, is there actually a such thing as 16:9 CRT monitors? Because I always thought that the 16:9 aspect ratio was for modern widescreen LCD screens...

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Reply 7 of 35, by chrismeyer6

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Yes they had 16:9 crt monitors. John carmak used one while he was developing Quake it was a 26 inch 1080 in 95. https://www.geek.com/games/john-carmack-coded … n-1995-1422971/

Reply 8 of 35, by leileilol

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chrismeyer6 wrote:

John carmak used one while he was developing Quake it was a 26 inch 1080 in 95.

NOT THAT ARTICLE FROM GEEK AGAIN. That picture is from a Doom3 making of video. It's nowhere near 1995.

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Reply 9 of 35, by chrismeyer6

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That's an old picture look at how young John is there's no way it's from when he was making doom3. The Silicon Graphics/Integraph InterView 28hd96 color monitor dates back to 94 and the SGI workstation he's using us also early to very early mod 90s

Reply 10 of 35, by Chaniyth

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@xjas How well does the Dell 2001FP and Samsung SyncMaster 214T handle the Ambience and Luminati demos? How well do they handle the vgasuite you put together from a few years back?

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you... but first they must catch you. 😁

Reply 11 of 35, by xjas

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^^ I sold the 2001FP a while ago, but IIRC it did pretty well on everything, including Ambience+Luminati. Keep in mind all the 2001FPs are getting pretty old and are starting to have technical issues, but they were very good monitors when new.

I'll try all the tests out on the Samsung & post back here. It should be pretty good too.

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 13 of 35, by Chaniyth

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xjas wrote:

I'll try all the tests out on the Samsung & post back here. It should be pretty good too.

Ok thanks. 😎

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you... but first they must catch you. 😁

Reply 14 of 35, by xjas

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Finally got around to running the testing suite on the Samsung. It's been a while since I filled out this form! 😜

-----
Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 214T
Native res.: 1600x1200
Scaling: Crisp interpolation
Aspect ratio: 4x3, seemingly no options
Machine: P233MMX, S3 Virge DX, FreeDOS / 386DX, ET4000AX, PC DOS (Copper, Do)
UniVBE: No
Tested by: xjas

OVERALL COMPATIBILITY RATING: 11/14 - pretty good

  Application          P   F   CP  Notes
,-----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Ambience | | | X | Started out of range, holding 'down' until |
| | | the refresh lowered enough got it to |
| |-----------| display. Very flickery when it did. |
| Luminati | | | X | Flickered like Ambience. Displayed OK on |
| |-----------| fresh start. |
| Timeless (56Hz) | X | | | Worked perfectly. OSD showed 55 Hz. |
| Timeless (60Hz) | X | | | Worked perfectly. |
| Dowhackado | X | | | |
| Kukoo2 | | | X | Scrolling jerky. Flickers & unstable. |
| Copper | X | | | Wobble sections slightly blocky, as the |
| | | display tries to compensate for the |
| | | changing scan offset leading to a "stair |
| | | step" effect. Have seen this on other |
| | | panels too e.g. Dell 2001FP, but not all. |
| |-----------| Performance otherwise very good. |
| Sunflower | X | | | Fakemode looks good, handles mode changes |
| |-----------| pretty quickly |
| Yo | X | | | |
| Impulse Tracker | X | | | |
| CubicPlayer 132x43 | X | | | |
| Tweak 256x256 | | | X | Displayed at 240p, cropped 16px top+bottom |
| Tweak 360x480 | x | | | |
| Tweak 376x564 | | X | | Out of range. |
| PAL-on-VGA | | X | | Went into standby |
| NTSC-on-VGA | | X | | Went into standby |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Note: it seems to convert 70Hz -> 60Hz by dropping frames, as almost all panels of this era do. That causes some slightly jerky motion in scrollers, but it doesn't bother me too much. I suspect a 'true' 70Hz 1600x1200 TFT panel in a consumer-grade monitor literally doesn't exist.

I was expecting PAL & NTSC modes to work on this, as most monitors with composite & s-video jacks (like this one) allow that, but sadly no dice. 🙁 I'd still recommend it for DOS use despite its imperfect results; the parts where it failed are really edge cases. The display is REALLY vibrant & bright for a 2006 panel. It actually impressed me a lot on some of these old demos compared to the 2001FP or EP19AV (it replaced both of them in my setup.)

EDIT: FWIW the Dell 2001FP can definitely display PAL/NTSC/15kHz modes over the VGA port. They're popular with Amiga/Atari ST crowd for that reason (I sold mine to a friend to use on his A1200.)

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 15 of 35, by NJRoadfan

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One of these days I have to hook up the OSSC and put it thru the torture test that is the Copper demo. My CRTs can't even display that demo properly! (mostly because it assumed a fixed frequency CRT was the only monitor it would be run on)

Reply 16 of 35, by xjas

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Please record the result if you do. 😜 AFAIK Copper starts with a standard-ish VGA mode (i.e. 400p 70Hz, already line doubled) and just hacks it to all hell and back. Isn't the OSSC more for 200-240 non-doubled stuff?

twitch.tv/oldskooljay - playing the obscure, forgotten & weird - most Tuesdays & Thursdays @ 6:30 PM PDT. Bonus streams elsewhen!

Reply 18 of 35, by bmwsvsu

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About 5 years ago when these weren't stupidly expensive yet, I snatched up a factory sealed 21" flat-screen CRT monitor (I believe it is an NEC) that I stashed away into storage for when the day comes that my Philips 21" CRT inevitably dies (I still use this as my main monitor - in fact I'm on it right now). I suppose one of these days I should open it up and test it and make sure it actually works.

Reply 19 of 35, by TheMLGladiator

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I'm glad that this discussion exists. The CRT I'm currently using is on its way out. The picture is really dim so I have to turn the lights off in the room it is in just so I can see what I'm doing on it. I've been hesitant to replace it because finding good CRT's is difficult and I wasn't quite sure if an LCD would be a good option for retro gaming.