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What the Heck to do with a Samtron SM-460 Monitor

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First post, by RubDub2k

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Hi everyone,

I got this monitor in a bundle with a bunch of CRTs recently, and I honestly have no idea what to do with it. I'm under 30, so I don't really have a massive collection of stuff from the 80s... a decent amount of PC's and stuff from the 90s/2000s though.

From my research, my understanding is this monitor is for use with old IBM/IBM clones from the 80s for the most part, not VGA, so thus not particularly useful on most of my hardware. I have a tandy 1400 HD laptop I scored awhile ago, and a Macintosh SE, but that's about it for my 80s hardware.

I'm thinking maybe of trying to list it online, as it at least turns on, for trading or selling so I can pick up some missing parts for my other PCs... I don't know if it's even worth it tho? Couldn't find much on this monitor, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

- RubDub

Reply 1 of 6, by wierd_w

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Hook it to an MGA card?

The DB9 connector with missing pins *screams* monochrome TTL.

Reply 2 of 6, by RubDub2k

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The oldest PC's I have right now are those two 80s ones I listed, and then a bunch of first gen pentium computers and newer... did they even make MGA cards that late into the 90s? As I mentioned, this is *very* new territory for me, so apologies if I sound a bit uneducated haha

Reply 3 of 6, by The Solutor

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wierd_w wrote on Yesterday, 23:47:

The DB9 connector with missing pins *screams* monochrome TTL.

A quick Duckduck search agrees.

Reply 4 of 6, by RubDub2k

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Yeah I think the problem is I don't have any hardware that can utilize that format... what do people even do nowadays in the retro pc community with monochrome ttl?

Reply 5 of 6, by wierd_w

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Hercules graphics based games, and 'cga games with a tsr'

Those monitors can abuse persistence to simulate shades of grey, when paired with the correct card and an appropriate tsr.

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/cga_simulato … or_hercules.php

If I were a betting man, i'd say that monitor is 'amber', and probably went on a serial terminal system.

It should live fine on an MGA card in a vintage PC though.

Reply 6 of 6, by Jo22

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Dual monitor setup? CGA and MDA/MGA (Hercules) can co-exist.
AutoCAD can use CGA for graphics and MDA/MGA for the text-based interface.

A Hercules card (aka HGC aka MGA) can be used to upgrade an IBM PC compatible to hi-res graphics (to run Windows or GEM properly).
It's the easiest way to upgrade if there's an on-board CGA card that can't be disabled.

Users of an EGA/VGA card could use an MDA/MGA card for debugger output (SoftICE etc).
That used to be a very popular setup in the 90s among developers, I think.

Last but not least, some 80s era graphic cards could use the TTL monitor in other graphics modes.
EGA in 640x350 in monochrome supported it.
Some ATI cards could simulate CGA graphics in grayscale on a TTL monitor (ATI Small Wonder?) or something like that.

Some games and applications had native Hercules support, also.
The text font in Sierra games looks better in Hercules, I think.
Mobygames has a Hercules tag: https://www.mobygames.com/attributes/attribute/4/

Edited.

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