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What monitor do you use?

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Reply 60 of 101, by swaaye

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bushwack wrote:

A 24" widescreen that is 1920x1200 will give you a nice 1600x1200 4:3 that scales the other 4:3 resolutions well. It's the 1080p and 16:10 monitors (like that 22") that scale 4:3 like grabage because they have to interpolate the pixels with their neighbors and get some rounded approximation off a mess.

Oh no, his 22" wasn't just struggling to make it look decent, it was doing a straight stretch with no scaling algorithm. It works like the old '90s laptops. It creates hideous aliasing on everything.

Looks kinda like this (scaled DOSBOX console in GIMP with no interpolation algorithm)
eea87b101764798.gif

My Dell 2005FPW 20" is a 1680x1050 screen and looks vastly superior to that thing thanks to doing proper image scaling. But you are definitely right that having the 1600x1200 capability of a 1920x1200 screen is very useful.

Reply 61 of 101, by Svenne

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A LG Flatron W1934S for my main PC, and a Siemens-Nixdorf MCM171V for my retro rigs.

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Reply 62 of 101, by ratfink

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My retro rigs are attached to a Lacie electron22blueIV, which replaced my old Dell 1626HT.

The Dell felt much sharper but it was worn out - way too dim and on top of that I could never get the colours right. The red had to be turned all the way up, and it still looked washed out.

The Lacie has good colours but doesn't feel sharp to me [though I think that's only on my HD4850, all my retro PCs look great on it iirc]. And now when it starts up I get a red glow on the left that fades after a few seconds. Maybe I nudged a setting somewhere...

Reply 63 of 101, by Ace

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I use a 20" Samsung SyncMaster 206BW on my main desktop computer. Has very nice colors, is very sharp and is nice and bright.

For my MS-DOS and Windows 9x gaming PCs, however, I don't use monitors. I use a 27" Electrohome CRT TV with the S-Video or Composite outputs of each PC's graphics cards(ATI Rage II on my MS-DOS gaming PC, ATI Radeon 9000 on my Windows 9x gaming PC). The reason why I have my retro PC gaming computers hooked up to my TV that way is for direct capture using my TV capture device for any retro PC gaming on my YouTube channel. I'd rather use the original hardware than DOSBox or any other emulator(I do use DOSBox every now and then on my laptop for MS-DOS gaming on the go, however). The picture is very blurry through Composite, but almost as sharp as a CRT monitor when using S-Video. Some text is still hard to read, however. I think I should get graphics cards that output Component; that should deliver even better picture quality.

Reply 64 of 101, by MrKsoft

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It's probably a form of heresy, but my DOS computer is currently hooked up to a 22" Insignia NS-L22Q-10A LCD television's VGA input. Since it's for gaming, it's sitting next to all my game consoles, as a part of my "game corner". I can sit in my comfy gaming chair and put the keyboard/mouse in my lap. It's not the absolute best solution, but I prefer the convenience over the perfection of the image. So the picture's sorta blurry (although still better than some of my older game systems look through composite), and there a few minor issues (sound cuts out while the screen is changing resolution, for instance) but it doesn't hurt the fun I have.

If I ever move it back to a desk configuration, I have an HP branded 17" CRT from about 2005 in the basement. It has an extremely crisp image and everything looks awesome on it, although it's also very bulky.

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Reply 65 of 101, by dirkmirk

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This is a bit left field, I have'nt got a computer monitor at home and ive started building my retro 386DX40 system, the screen I am using is......

A 2008 vintage 42inch "HD" panasonic plasma - 1024x768, ive got to say from the limited use the screen is very, very good, I have'nt done extensive testing though, is their anything I should look out for or, games to test etc.

The downside being its my main TV, I have to wheel out the 386 every night and pack it away so the kids don't destroy it, I would seriously consider using this as my main Screen if I had the room and appropriate bench/table setup, cant sit too close to it.....

Reply 66 of 101, by sgt76

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I use a 15" IBM TFT circa 99-00 bought especially for playing old games. Looks slim but is quite heavy unlike today's plasticky stuff. Best part is native resolution of 1024x768 which means no blurry scaling with old games. 800x600 looks pretty good too. Previously was using a succession of CRT monitors until my poor eyes told me no more.

Reply 69 of 101, by WildW

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I have a fairly generic 17" CRT monitor (Gateway EV700) that came with a PC I bought locally. I think you really need a CRT to do DOS gaming properly - more than just resolution support, some games just look and feel right on a CRT. With a reasonably quick XP machine I use the CRT for Amiga emulation which feels a lot more authentic without the scan-doubling headaches of using real hardware.

Reply 70 of 101, by harddrivespin

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I use a Samsung SyncMaster 17gli for all my retro rigs (That is, two) and I quite like it. It's from the mid-90s (made in 1996) so it goes well with both my Athlon XP rig (~2002) and my 486SX rig (~1992)

Reply 71 of 101, by PTherapist

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I just use regular modern TFT monitors as I don't have the room for CRT anymore. I've got a 19" & a 17" CRT (both Dell branded with Black casing from late 1990s/early 2000s) within easy reach, but they're just so much bulk & effort to bother setting up. There's a few more 15" and 17" beige CRT monitors up in the loft. I don't recall how I managed to get them up there but I'm certainly not gonna try and get them back down any time soon, no matter how interesting they are. 🤣

Most of my retro rigs only get set up from time to time and they are mostly connected to either an LG 22" Widescreen LCD TV, or 1 of my other spare TFTs - a 4:3 13" & a 4:3 15".

I'll probably regret this 1 day, but about 10-15 years back I pretty much junked a load of old CRT monitors that were taking up space. I basically got rid of any monitor that couldn't go above 800x600 resolution, as back then they served no purpose for me. I think/hope I still have an old monitor from the early 1990s that could do 1024x768, but I fear it may have met it's demise back at the time as it's picture quality was poor.

The only monitor I regret losing really is my old green screen Hercules Monochrome compatible CRT monitor. I ran out of room to store it in the house so put it outside in the shed - dumbest move I ever made as I could really do with 1 of those now!

Reply 72 of 101, by Srandista

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So far I have 20" LCD LG L2000CN-SF with 1600x1200 resolution. It was my previous monitor, which I used long after wide screens was widely adopted by market. Since I replace this monitor at the end of 2013, nobody was interested in buying it from me, so I stashed it away. And now, when I build my "retro" machine, it came into use again 😀

I will see however, if I won't be buying something smaller, since I bought card, which won't be able to power majority of games in that high resolution.

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Reply 73 of 101, by Gered

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With my retro PC's, I currently use a Sony CPD-100SX 15" CRT. It's pretty awesome. Max supported resolution is 1024x768 which is plenty enough for my needs. It probably will need to be re-capped in the short-term, as I have to turn up the brightness quite a lot to get a normal looking picture. Otherwise, aside from some yellowing along the back, it's in great shape.

Also just yesterday I picked up a complete-in-box Samsung SyncMaster 763MB which was only very lightly used by the original owner. It looks practically brand new from my initial inspection of it. Unsure if I will use this over the Sony going forward or not.

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Reply 74 of 101, by clueless1

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WildW wrote:

I have a fairly generic 17" CRT monitor (Gateway EV700) that came with a PC I bought locally.

I have the same monitor that I use for my Win98 and ME machines. 😎
I've actually got a better CRT (ViewSonic A75f) I use for my DOS machines because I spend more time on them.
And on my main system I've got an Acer AL2216W (22" 1680x1050). It was a thrown out monitor that I rescued and repaired by replacing a couple of capacitors. The last monitor I bought for myself was in 2008. 🤣

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Reply 75 of 101, by .legaCy

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for Win9x and MS-DOS
LG 710e
for main rig, and windows xp build
BenQ XL2720Z(the scaling present on the monitor (can do 1:1 scaling which can result a small screen with black border all around like those 800x600 lcd present on pentium era laptops,can scale to input aspect ratio can do 4:3 aspect which has options to scale to a 17" inch monitor, and 19", also can do 5:4 simulating a 19" 16:10 simulating 19" and 16:9 simulating 21.5")
On my main computer i use full scaling because is a 1080p output on a 1080p monitor, on my windows xp i use 19" 5:4 mode because almost every game that i have installed will run on 1280x1024, the scaling looks great.

Reply 77 of 101, by looking4awayout

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For my retro daily driver, I use this one, a 14" Crystal CM1402E from 1989. It's one of the earliest sVGA monitors available on the market. While it's unable to support XGA resolution, being a 8514/A compatible monitor, it has very rich, vibrant colours. Games simply look great on it. Being a shadow mask monitor, text is a bit fuzzy but readable anyway. I like it a lot. Currently I'm using it at the resolution it was commonly used back in the late 1980s/early 1990s: 640x480 at 60Hz. It doesn't flicker much either, unless I run it at 1024x768 at 43,5Hz interlaced.

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Reply 78 of 101, by TheGouldFish

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For the 30khz machines I got my self a HP 5500 15" CRT, it took me months to find some one actually selling a CRT rather then chucking them out.
For the 15Khz machines I have a Commodore 1084S-D1 monitor (which is currently out being fixed).

Reply 79 of 101, by SW-SSG

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Just a 17" Samsung SyncMaster 730B from the mid-2000s, which I rotate between all of my desktops, old or new. 1280x1024px native resolution. I'm not very picky.

If and when it fails, I'm thinking of picking up a NEC AccuSync AS193i. 19", same 1280x1024px resolution, IPS panel, and can still be bought new (albeit expensive).