I always liked Philips monitors. They aren't as "harsh" as the Trinitrons and give you a nice image.

Just for perspective's sake, those two samples (on the right side) are *way* more blurry and smeary than what was ever considered "proper" or desirable for VGA; jwt27 indicates that the monitor was .39mm, which is a positively huge dot pitch - I certainly don't remember anyone deliberately seeking this out 'back in the day'.

If that's how it displays 320x200/240 modes, I don't wanna imagine even looking at text modes on it, let alone SVGA graphics. But hey, to each their own - if that's what you're after, you might as well just take any old CRT and mod it to deliberately unfocus the beam. Or drink like a fish, *then* use your Trinitron. 😉

VileRancour wrote:

If that's how it displays 320x200/240 modes, I don't wanna imagine even looking at text modes on it, let alone SVGA graphics. But hey, to each their own - if that's what you're after, you might as well just take any old CRT and mod it to deliberately unfocus the beam.

That's actually a neat idea. Maybe you could rig it up to a dial so you can tweak the amount of focus you want on the fly; set the focus all the way for textmode stuff and svga, turn the focus back for 320x200/320x240 games. 😉

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

VileRancour wrote:

If that's how it displays 320x200/240 modes, I don't wanna imagine even looking at text modes on it, let alone SVGA graphics. But hey, to each their own - if that's what you're after, you might as well just take any old CRT and mod it to deliberately unfocus the beam.

That's actually a neat idea. Maybe you could rig it up to a dial so you can tweak the amount of focus you want on the fly; set the focus all the way for textmode stuff and svga, turn the focus back for 320x200/320x240 games. 😉

Might be a good idea for someone with electronics knowledge and/or soldering skills which I have neither.

Simply just easier for me to buy another monitor. 😀

I really liked the compressed image of the IBM PS/2 CRTs. I had a 8513 until yesterday: great for gaming IMO. 😀

VileRancour wrote:

Just for perspective's sake, those two samples (on the right side) are *way* more blurry and smeary than what was ever considered "proper" or desirable for VGA; jwt27 indicates that the monitor was .39mm, which is a positively huge dot pitch - I certainly don't remember anyone deliberately seeking this out 'back in the day'.

True, no one sought the monitors out deliberately, it came with the territory, so to speak. The whole "proper look" thing is subjective I guess to the individual. IMHO, the images on the right in the pigs posted look proper as in how the developer of a game intended for it to look [no jagged edges / no stair stepping, etc] . 😎

.24mm dot pitch IS too sharp for DOS games, the pixels show as prominently as they do on LCD, LED, etc monitors, it doesn't look right.

Anyone with some CRT monitor model suggestions for the look I want for DOS games?

PeterLI wrote:

I really liked the compressed image of the IBM PS/2 CRTs. I had a 8513 until yesterday: great for gaming IMO. 😀

I remember those. IBM PS/2 CRT'a always had a unique physical look. They unfortunately have fallen victim to the whole retro craze and generally sell for ridiculous prices on EBay, etc.

My first PC was a Packard Bell 486SX with a 14" CRT with .39mm dot pitch. Could only do 1024x768 at 47 Hz interlaced too. I remember *hating* that thing and couldn't wait to get rid of it. I eventually swapped it for a hand-me-down NEC(???) with the then-more-common .28mm DP and was blown away by how much it improved things despite being the same size. And yes, I could see the squared-off corners of individual pixels at 320x200.

Nobody *wanted* crappy CRTs back in the DOS era. If you want one now I suggest looking at the lowest- of the low-end and hope they weren't all tossed away. I'm just saying.

Edit: if your video card has TV out you could also try something like an Amiga 1084s or a mid-range SDTV. That might give you the look you're after.

One has to take into account that the "blurry" version on the right in the op is zoomed what 300-400%? Even if it was that blurry, at 100% it would not seem unfocused unless you were expecting all the pixel corners.

To me the last 20 years has been the dark ages of pc monitors - what you see on the right in the image below - the fact you are seeing some rectangular corners of pixels is a *defect* in the displays. Now the ~300 DPI displays are finally taking care of that atleast for text. This low res pixelation issue is kind of comparable to how SDTV needs high quality upscaling to look decent on say 30-40" LCD. If you go to videophile forums they tell you that 30-40" CRT still beats the crap out of any flat screen of comparable size when it comes to SD content. That argument is in a way applicable to why low res games look like crap on LCD's.

The left side is attempt by someone at some forum (and then color/contrast corrected by me) to approximate the CRT look - it will still be pixelated obviously but I doubt anyone will claim that the right side resembles CRT's more than the left side... I still have CRT's so I know what they look like - more natural and forgiving to low res than LCD's.

The left side has some kind of artificial grid pattern that creates the illusion of more resolution but with CRT you don't have that. (go look around some text on a small VGA CRT, there's no grids, no lines, no jaggies/pixelations because when the pixel pitch matches the source material resolution and the "dots" on the display aren't reclangular like in trinitron and lcd's, the dots won't end up looking like rectangular pixels... - atleast this is the best theory I have so far to explain why I noticed the low res graphics quality went down when updating from 320x200 VGA CRT to high res CRT in mid 90's - then updating to LCD it went so much down that I just got really frustrated at LCD oems that were selling LCD for CRT prices despite it being very obvious that LCD "bill of materials" was maybe 1% of a CRT .. and considering the logistic cost, LCD should have never cost more than a tiny fraction of what CRT cost at their low point - obviously there had to be and *was* a price fixing cartel between the big LCD vendors to keep prices at CRT levels!)

I should add that if someone says "I'm not seeing rectangular corners in my lcd pixels".. well Hello mcfly! The OS is cheating! Turn off all the anti-aliasing of fonts to see how the (low dpi) LCD's really look. This anti-alias gimmick was needed to hide the fact LCD's suck. (that comparison image I just posted is pretty much doing analogous cheat to make the low res source look more acceptable on the LCDs)

edit: Yes I know "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". I live in very cramped space so acquiring (small VGA) CRT's hasn't been a high priority but this thing has been bothering me more so than anyone else I suspect so I'll get to that sooner than later. (my small VGAs broke 20yr ago so I have to order some eventually to have the proof to support my memory & arguments). While I do feel even high res looks better on CRT than similar size LCD, this difference is nowhere as clear as eg. comparing poor quality SD DVD on 15" CRT TV to same thing on same size LCD. For SDTV I believe there's some supposedly high quality upscalers, for games this may be the case too - if one is willing to work for it. I just feel it's a bit premature until I have some reference point at hand.

So if you are happy with your pixelated jaggy pixels, ignore me. 😊

avx, EXACTLY! You really hit the nail on the head with your post(s), I love CRT tv's and monitors SD content look amazing on them (if its high-end parts) I own 2 Sony Trinitron CRT televisions, 1 is a 36" in the living room and a 25" in the man cave, both are used for SuperVHS vcr's, DVD players and "retro" game consoles. My rule of thumb is SD devices get connected exclusively to CRT and HD devices get connected exclusively to "quality" LCD, LED or even better to HD CRT displays.

I'm glad to see that other people think CRTs are better for SD content personally I like Dell monitors, Packard bell made some of the best CRTs back in early 90s at least in my opinion, they did have a long run as a TV manufacture though. The only type of HDTV I think is any good for SD are DLPs

Any 14 inch, shadow mask, VGA only (640x480 max) monitor will definitely give you the effect you want.
Generally they look like a goldfish bowl and have analogue controls 😎

I'll just add that 'squared-off' pixels (on a VGA CRT) are a natural and expected consequence of how VGA works at low resolutions. 200/240-line modes are always double-scanned at the output stage to 400/480, and doubled pixels across identical adjacent scanlines *appear* to be rectangular (instead of point-like). Any artists designing graphics on a halfway-decent monitor would be seeing their artwork exactly like that. That's very different from LCD pixels (which are physically square) and the annoyance of crappy LCD scaling, so let's not confuse the two.

I can sorta understand the appeal of trying to smooth out the 'jaggies', but you can't assume that this was how the artists intended things to look, since it likely didn't look that way on their monitors to begin with. More importantly, staring at blurry graphics for too long isn't a good idea - your mileage may vary, but I personally wouldn't screw around with my vision/health if I could help it. Most people hated high-dot-pitch monitors because they didn't enjoy headaches.

IIRC, the IBM 5153 also had a dot pitch around .39mm (someone correct me if I'm wrong), but that's perfectly acceptable for a CGA display which is designed for less than half the vertical resolution of VGA. Non-doublescanned VGA modes would simply be a pain on such a monitor.

Chaniyth wrote:

Might be a good idea for someone with electronics knowledge and/or soldering skills which I have neither.

Bring it to computer service. They should remember CRTs and may make this.

Tertz wrote:

Chaniyth wrote:

Might be a good idea for someone with electronics knowledge and/or soldering skills which I have neither.

Bring it to computer service. They should remember CRTs and may make this.

Yeah, right. I don't know any computer shops that ever serviced CRTs and there certainly aren't any now. Your best bet would be to find an old school TV technician.

Chaniyth wrote:

avx, EXACTLY! You really hit the nail on the head with your post(s), I love CRT tv's and monitors SD content look amazing on them (if its high-end parts) I own 2 Sony Trinitron CRT televisions, 1 is a 36" in the living room and a 25" in the man cave, both are used for SuperVHS vcr's, DVD players and "retro" game consoles. My rule of thumb is SD devices get connected exclusively to CRT and HD devices get connected exclusively to "quality" LCD, LED or even better to HD CRT displays.

I am very curious to know what happened in your quest to find an equivalent monitor to these? Did you ever find any in the US?

I have a 12"/13" IBM VGA CRT-COLOR-Monitor. I think these are best for Dos-Gaming, but I don't use it. I use a 15" Eizo TFT.

bjt wrote:

Any 14 inch, shadow mask, VGA only (640x480 max) monitor will definitely give you the effect you want.
Generally they look like a goldfish bowl and have analogue controls 😎

I'm usually in the 'you can't go sharp enough or hi-res enough' camp; I consider 2560x1440 to be the lower limit for a modern ~24" desktop screen and get irritated at my 'mere' 1920x1080 monitors at work (and yes, I'm scheming for an excuse to get the one I use the most replaced by a 4k beast of similar size).

But...

When it comes to DOS gaming, I don't like it. I'm not even a huge fan of my high-end early-2000 vintage Iiyama Diamondtron flat-screen CRT for 320x240 (although it's great for SVGA). Maybe it's just nostaliga as my first PS was an IBM PS/2 with the ubiquitous 12" colour monitor, but I can see where TS is coming from. I picked up a 486 with pretty nondescript but decent Tatung 14" shadow mask monitor from ~1995. After all the flat stuff it really did feel like a goldfish bowl - but that just sort of looked 'right' for 256-colour VGA 320x240 gaming. Note that this isn't especially crap, it's a decent 0.28dp 60kHz beast. I wouldn't recommend going for the worst low-end stuff you could get in the day. I did in 1995 (an awful "Sunshine" branded CRT, with unknown but awful specs) and regretted it for four years until my mother took pity on me, bought a new PC herself and donated me her old IBM G50 15", which was also a simple 0.28dp 57kHz device. It was great - at least for DOS; its lack of resolution and refresh rate strained my eyes in Windows.

So, TLDR: second the idea of a 14" shadow mask monitor, but don't do anything worse than 0.28 dot pitch, you'll regret it.