65C02 wrote on 2025-03-10, 23:52:

And isn't the 1280x1024 resolution difficult to cleanly scale to (unlike 1600x1200, 1920x1200, or 4K)?
I like the idea of a retro themed LCD, but the 5:4 panel doesn't seem like the best choice for it.

Agreed. This was one of the common questions/complaints as to why they didn't use a 4:3 panel.

Mind you, it does do proper 4:3 aspect ratio with letterboxing. So in theory this gives you a 1280x960 display which at least can scale into 640x480 and 320x240.

However, this also assumes that image smoothing can be turned off. By default it does seem to be applying some image smoothing, so I'll have to see if there is a way to disable that.

edited:

Just tried Gateway (640x480 DOS game) and it is blurry due to image smoothing. This is a close-up of the image:

In comparison, here is a shot of a Dell 2007FPb:

Tiido wrote on 2025-03-10, 23:09:

* The OSD system is cluncky and lacks simple things like image positioning. Whatever is used seems to be from a low end TV and n […]
Show full quote

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-03-10, 22:39:

Why, what happened?

* The OSD system is cluncky and lacks simple things like image positioning. Whatever is used seems to be from a low end TV and not something really fitting for a monitor.
* It couldn't display stuff like BIOS boot screens over VGA connection (at least on the computer we were playing with, a Samsung monitor had no issue whatsoever).
* The CVBS inputs were doing stuff like deinterlacing and had absolutely awful image quality. It was also frame-rate converting and did a horrendous job at it. If you absolutely need to see something you can use them but any gaming is better forgotten.
* HDMI input was able to accept the oddball output from my OSSC that was tuned to perfect capture of Mega Drive's analog RGB output, but it was doing very poor frame-rate conversion when 50Hz signal was input.
* Bezel covers few of the edgemost pixels of the panel, i.e Speedsys frame is invisible because of it.
* The panel has pretty slow response time, absolutely unfitting for scrolling games. Sonic on MD turned into a total blurry mess as soon as things started to move.
* Power on/off button is wired the wrong way around

The monitor lacked the board with SCART input so I cannot comment on if its inputs were better behaving. I would surely hope so because the rest has was a disappointment to put it mildly.

I did like the swivel and tilting capability and sound wasn't half bad among other monitors with little built in speakers.

Holy cow, sounds like a pretty poor attempt at a retro display. If I paid the prices they're asking and the end product had these limitations I would absolutely not keep it.

The modular inputs and the styling are interesting, but if the display performance is no better than some generic 5:4 office monitor you could get free any day of the week on a local marketplace, what is the point? Maybe it's meant for streamers\youtubers to impress people with it's retro styling?

Seems like people would be much better off just getting an old CRT TV (possibly for free) if you need a low resolution display for consoles or 8bit computers, or grab a cheap OLED monitor when they go on sale in the sub $400 range and hook it up to whatever scalers you need. At least that will be able to handle different refresh rates and with the right input source it has some possibility of mimicking the qualities of a CRT display.

Eventually, things like the Retrotink 4k or Retrotink 4K CE will be a lot more affordable and could potentially turn any modern OLED display into an extremely versatile retro monitor.

It really doesn't look any better than some of the Dell ultra sharp monitors released from 2005-2014ish. In fact it looks substantially worse in that Gateway photo.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-03-11, 07:28:

The modular inputs and the styling are interesting, but if the display performance is no better than some generic 5:4 office monitor you could get free any day of the week on a local marketplace, what is the point? Maybe it's meant for streamers\youtubers to impress people with it's retro styling?

The big question is how the company supports this monitor in the future. Some of these issues seem like they could be fixed either in firmware or possibly with a new module with more PC friendly options.

I plan to document all the issues I run into and send them to the owner.

I tested the black monitor and its screen is correctly centred. Below its running Speedsys with the left and right borders both visible.

I'll have to open up the white monitor to see if its panel positioning can be fixed as well.

I also did find options for moving the image around. It's under the "VGA Setup" settings in the OSD. Not super intuitive unfortunately.

The BIG parts lot from the scrapper arrived!

Glad to say that from what I tested, the most important gem GPU wise works - a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI!

EDIT:

Tests results as follows:

- P5A rev 1.06 does not POST 🙁
- CT-5RSA0 does not POST
- GA-6BA does not POST (might come back to it later as I'm slightly confused jumpers wise)
- GA-6BXDS (almost the same as the 6BXDU I got from @Socket3 but with the older 2940UW instead of U2W, I also think it does not support Coppermines due to being rev 1.7) works, need to flash the proper BIOS as I tested it using the BIOS chip off 6BA
- GA-6BXU posts - single CPU version of the BXDU I think? Neat board tho, might recap and check if it eats Coppers
- DFI K6BV3+/66 does not POST (not sure if it's the Teapos? Might try a recap on all the non-POSTing Socket 7 boards except P5A)

Untested yet:
- OR840 - couldn't find a way to power on, IBM board with 7 pin header
- XG-DLS - no CPUs on hand yet and needs a vinegar bath
- 2x Turtle Beach Vortex 2 AU8830

Working:

-PCI V3 2k 😀

Bought this poor, Sound Blaster CT1350B, will try to repair it
Voltage regulator was removed with the PCB damage, most of the electrolytic capacitors were removed too, unfortunately some of the pads were ripped too.
Hope fore the best )

Got some fairy dust in the mail today... 😀
I am working on restoring and recapping the board right now. It was drying on my preheater when I took the pic.

It's a albatron 754 mainboard with two PCIe slots, nforce 4 chipset and SLI capability. Similar to the epox one and probably as rare.

I'll join the new (old) motherboard club today.

Received this Gigabyte nForce 3 250 board in some very questionable packaging (a padded envelop...) The caps were capsized but luckily no damage to anything significant (and I was planning on replacing them anyway). The new red caps are polymer from Kyocera (https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/KYOCERA-A … urrencyCode=GBP). They were a real pig to install. The voltage plane must be something else (grounds were no problem).

Anyway, it's working now. Probably should replace those 1000uF caps too but not sure if I can face it.

All in all, quite a nice and rare socket 939 with AGP board.

Masterchief79 wrote on 2025-03-11, 14:48:

Got some fairy dust in the mail today... 😀
I am working on restoring and recapping the board right now. It was drying on my preheater when I took the pic.

It's a albatron 754 mainboard with two PCIe slots, nforce 4 chipset and SLI capability. Similar to the epox one and probably as rare.

Lostdotfish wrote on 2025-03-11, 15:35:

I'll join the new (old) motherboard club today. […]
Show full quote

I'll join the new (old) motherboard club today.

Received this Gigabyte nForce 3 250 board in some very questionable packaging (a padded envelop...) The caps were capsized but luckily no damage to anything significant (and I was planning on replacing them anyway). The new red caps are polymer from Kyocera (https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/KYOCERA-A … urrencyCode=GBP). They were a real pig to install. The voltage plane must be something else (grounds were no problem).

The attachment PXL_20250311_152447644.jpg is no longer available

Anyway, it's working now. Probably should replace those 1000uF caps too but not sure if I can face it.

All in all, quite a nice and rare socket 939 with AGP board.

Nice, two old boards of a similar vintage, will make for interesting systems. Its an interesting period, a mix of new and old in terms of what was supported

gerry wrote on 2025-03-11, 15:42:

Masterchief79 wrote on 2025-03-11, 14:48:

Got some fairy dust in the mail today... 😀
I am working on restoring and recapping the board right now. It was drying on my preheater when I took the pic.

It's a albatron 754 mainboard with two PCIe slots, nforce 4 chipset and SLI capability. Similar to the epox one and probably as rare.

Lostdotfish wrote on 2025-03-11, 15:35:

I'll join the new (old) motherboard club today. […]
Show full quote

I'll join the new (old) motherboard club today.

Received this Gigabyte nForce 3 250 board in some very questionable packaging (a padded envelop...) The caps were capsized but luckily no damage to anything significant (and I was planning on replacing them anyway). The new red caps are polymer from Kyocera (https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/KYOCERA-A … urrencyCode=GBP). They were a real pig to install. The voltage plane must be something else (grounds were no problem).

The attachment PXL_20250311_152447644.jpg is no longer available

Anyway, it's working now. Probably should replace those 1000uF caps too but not sure if I can face it.

All in all, quite a nice and rare socket 939 with AGP board.

Nice, two old boards of a similar vintage, will make for interesting systems. Its an interesting period, a mix of new and old in terms of what was supported

I was always disappointed with my S939 system back in the day. I came from a nf2 Ultra B with a Mobile Barton 2500 that would clock up to 3GHz on air. I paired that with a 6800 GT GS from Gainward and absolutely loved it. It was a fun system to build and a fun system to overclock.

Then I got my DFI nF3 250 and 3700+ and it just underwhelmed me. Stock clocks of 2.4GHz and it didn't overclock an inch... Looking back now, I realise I got unlucky and bought a Newcastle core not a San Diego core 3700+

So I've managed to find a cheap nice stepping San Diego 3700+ to go with this to see what it can really do. Just wish I still had my old 6800 GT to go with it (and my DFI motherboard for that matter...)

If it's still not fun - I'll send it on it's way.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-03-11, 10:05:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-03-11, 07:28:

The modular inputs and the styling are interesting, but if the display performance is no better than some generic 5:4 office monitor you could get free any day of the week on a local marketplace, what is the point? Maybe it's meant for streamers\youtubers to impress people with it's retro styling?

The big question is how the company supports this monitor in the future. Some of these issues seem like they could be fixed either in firmware or possibly with a new module with more PC friendly options.

I plan to document all the issues I run into and send them to the owner.

Hopefully firmware can alleviate some of those issues, but it's still a 5:4 IPS panel.

I had one of the best upper-mid range IPS gaming monitors you could buy in 2024 and the IPS glow when viewing anything even remotely dark was absolutely horrible. I don't know how anyone could find IPS displays suitable for anything with black or dark content (like a DOS command line). I replaced it with a cheaper monitor using a Fast-HVA panel and the difference with dark content is staggering. If OLED is prohibitively expensive, Fast-HVA should be the go-to monitor tech for anything like this these days.

Though I guess if they went with a 5:4 panel, they most likely just got them because that's what was available. I doubt there are any Fast-HVA panels in 5:4, let alone 4:3 being manufactured right now.

Does the Checkmate at least have backlight strobing to counteract the poor motion clarity mentioned earlier? You absolutely need backlight strobing on an LCD or BFI (or a rolling CRT beam simulator) on an OLED to not have severe blurring on any display like this, even with a relatively fast response time.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-03-11, 18:52:

Though I guess if they went with a 5:4 panel, they most likely just got them because that's what was available. I doubt there are any Fast-HVA panels in 5:4, let alone 4:3 being manufactured right now.

That's the biggest issue, panel availability, especially for low-volume manufacturing like this. They apparently investigated using OLED during development, but getting a custom OLED panel manufactured required a minimum of 50,000 units. In comparison, the kickstarter had only ~1400 backers and the initial run was about 1800 monitors.

There just isn't the demand to justify the capital investment required for fancier panels.

Does the Checkmate at least have backlight strobing to counteract the poor motion clarity mentioned earlier? You absolutely need backlight strobing on an LCD or BFI (or a rolling CRT beam simulator) on an OLED to not have severe blurring on any display like this, even with a relatively fast response time.

No, it doesn't. For a 60Hz panel this wouldn't make sense since it would introduce all sorts of flicker. You need a much higher refresh rate for that to work.

Fixed one of the dead boards from the lot so far - DFI K6BV3/66+ is alive and kickin'.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-03-11, 19:41:

No, it doesn't. For a 60Hz panel this wouldn't make sense since it would introduce all sorts of flicker. You need a much higher refresh rate for that to work.

My old BenQ XL2720Z could do 60Hz single strobe and it made a huge difference in motion clarity. Backlight strobing on LCD panels happens sub-refresh rather than relying on full frames like BFI on OLED. Yes, at 60Hz it is more flickery than at higher refresh rates (a little worse than 60Hz on a CRT), but to at least have the option on such an expensive retro display would be nice.

I'm assuming this monitor is more suitable for some non-PC retro computing tasks but amongst all of retro stuff I tinker with, I can't really picture what it would be good for versus just using a cheap\free LCD and an appropriate external scaler, now that so many of those have been produced specifically for retro gaming\computing.

It is cool looking and the modular nature of it is neat... but... man, I just can't get over the physical limitations of the display and the form factor.

PcBytes wrote on 2025-03-11, 20:28:

Fixed one of the dead boards from the lot so far - DFI K6BV3/66+ is alive and kickin'.

Have three of them including the ATX version .. super solid board 100% worth saving !

Is yours Rev B ? should have blue IDE sockets.

kagura1050 wrote on 2025-03-10, 00:27:

I received this two days ago. It's a Trident 8900D-R 1MB, my first ISA VGA. It's unused (with nice box and Windows 3.1 driver floppy) and I bought it on Yahoo! Auctions for 4500 yen (about $30).
I'd been keeping an eye on auction sites for about two years, hoping to find an ISA VGA for under 2000 yen ($13), but it seemed impossible, so I gave up.
Well, I'm glad I got a good one in the end.

Nice card! But you should do a recap since it never used for past 30 years. Also, there's a tool on the utility disk called TVGABIO.EXE which can improve the performance.

dominusprog wrote on 2025-03-12, 09:55:

Nice card! But you should do a recap since it never used for past 30 years. Also, there's a tool on the utility disk called TVGABIO.EXE which can improve the performance.

I’ll give TVGABIO.EXE a go on my 8900D as well. Do you know what the difference is between an 8900D and 8900D-R?

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-03-12, 08:28:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-03-11, 20:28:

Fixed one of the dead boards from the lot so far - DFI K6BV3/66+ is alive and kickin'.

Have three of them including the ATX version .. super solid board 100% worth saving !

Is yours Rev B ? should have blue IDE sockets.

Yes, rev B2, the most common I've seen around my country.

btw, if TRW needs a better photo from me, I can provide one. I noticed my photo just now (the last one with a missing cap and MMX chip)

Latest purchase: Zenith ZWL-183-93 with original MS-DOS box /manual. Booted it up and on the second attempt the hard disk sprang to life! There will be a video coming April hopefully.