First post, by BraveToaster
Hi,
When I put up my old Pentium 233 MMX again, I found a used CRT monitor that's in very good shape and is overall working very well, but it has very limited brightness. It's a Samsung SyncMaster 750Ms, and brightness and contrast are both set to 100%. At that setting, normal operation is fine, but any game that's a little darker (Doom without Gamma correction or Full Throttle) are only playable when all lights are out, and even then it's kind of hard to make out the screen contents.
I know that CRTs get dimmer as they age, but this seems to be a little extreme to me. Does anyone have an idea whether it's possible to get this monitor to a higher brightness, like with a maintenance menu or some hidden hardware setting? Alternatively, is there a way to mess with the input signal or potentially set some gamma correction with software (graphics card is an ATI Rage II+) or some box that messes with the VGA signal?
As you all know it's really difficult to find a decent CRT on the market right now that isn't scratched or anything, so it'd be really great if I could fix the one I have.
Thanks!