Another screen-related fail for me, this time — relatively costly.

My 15" Sony Trinitron started acting weird lately — it would cause any system to stop booting whenever you put it on top of a desktop case. I tried various cases, motherboards, PSUs and videocards — nothing helped. Whenever I tried to boot the system with the screen on top of the case, I would only get a white screen and all keyboard LEDs glowing. So I said to myself — why not get another screen?

I always wanted a more "authentic" mid-90s screen since I'm mostly into 486/early Pentium stuff. So when I found a '94 Samsung Syncmaster 15GL, I was really glad — it really looked the way I wanted it to look, and looks like it wasn't really a budget model like a Syncmaster 3. Unfortunately, when I brought it home and turned it on, the screen showed its biggest issue — the tube was really worn out. The image is incredibly dark, just look at this DOOM screenshot, brightness and contrast at max:

The seller sold it to me without any cables, so I couldn't really test it, but "great tube and brightness" was one of the selling points. Guess, I'll try to get my money back tomorrow.

debs3759 wrote:

derSammler wrote:

Just bought a lot of 90 ISA/PCI/AGP cards. 😲

Pictures, or it didn't happen 😀

One of the seller's pictures:

More when I've got those. 😎

jheronimus wrote:

Unfortunately, when I brought it home and turned it on, the screen showed its biggest issue — the tube was really worn out. The image is incredibly dark, just look at this DOOM screenshot, brightness and contrast at max:

Did you try lowering contrast? Contrast makes dark parts even darker and bright parts brighter. It's not a good idea to increase contrast if you want a brighter picture.

derSammler wrote:

jheronimus wrote:

Unfortunately, when I brought it home and turned it on, the screen showed its biggest issue — the tube was really worn out. The image is incredibly dark, just look at this DOOM screenshot, brightness and contrast at max:

Did you try lowering contrast? Contrast makes dark parts even darker and bright parts brighter. It's not a good idea to increase contrast if you want a brighter picture.

The will also be a brightness adjustment on the flyback if you open up the monitor.

Some of the older ones even had holes in the case so the use could adjust the focus and brightness without opening up the monitor.

derSammler wrote:

debs3759 wrote:

derSammler wrote:

Just bought a lot of 90 ISA/PCI/AGP cards. 😲

Pictures, or it didn't happen 😀

One of the seller's pictures:
More when I've got those. 😎

Wow. The 6MB Voodoo alone is impressive.

derSammler wrote:

Did you try lowering contrast? Contrast makes dark parts even darker and bright parts brighter. It's not a good idea to increase contrast if you want a brighter picture.

Yes, I tried that. It just gets even darker.

The will also be a brightness adjustment on the flyback if you open up the monitor.

Some of the older ones even had holes in the case so the use could adjust the focus and brightness without opening up the monitor.

Thanks, I'll check that!

Munx wrote:

Anaxagoras wrote:

Hi, […]
Show full quote

Hi,

I bought this graphics card, NVIDIA 7950GT AGP version.
I think that this graphics card are one of the last sold for AGP bus.
It works very well in my Pentium 4 and there are a lot of difference with the previous installed card, a NVIDIA GeForce 6200.

Doom 3, Quake 4 and Painkiller waits me!!! 😈

That's the raddest, most tubular card I've ever seen! 🤣

Me too!
I think that this design is for windowed (and illuminated) case. Too pretty to be not seen. 😊

The will also be a brightness adjustment on the flyback if you open up the monitor.

Some of the older ones even had holes in the case so the use could adjust the focus and brightness without opening up the monitor.

So, I've opened it:

Not really a single "brightness adjust" here. The labels are as follows, left to right:

VR101 R-Gain
VR121 G-Gain
VR141 B-Gain

VR142 R-Bias
VR122 G-Bias
VR102 B-Bias
VR403 Sub-Bright

<obscured>
<obscured>
VR301 V-Lin
VR401 H-Hold

And on top there are two black adjusts that read "focus" and "screen".

How do I proceed? I couldn't find a user manual for this screen, let alone a service manual, but may be there is some common approach here?

Sub-bright should do the trick.

If that doesn't fix it, then I would ask for your money back.

I think that this graphics card are one of the last sold for AGP bus.

That's Galaxy retail card and you can use it on motherboards with AGP 3.3v. Probably rarest AGP after Gainward 7800GS+ and the most rarest with 3.3v compatability.

Well, I'm pleased with this one. I just hope they ship things carefully (I've given some instructions on how to pack these somewhat safely).

So, I saw the boards and got better pics of those. The two older ones have some damage... battery leakage on the small AT board, and a burn mark on the AT power connector of the other older AT board. Too bad. The third one looks okay, but it does have an old NiCd battery that has to go.

But when I looked at the squarish card on the left that's flipped over in the heap, I saw a gameport and two metal audio jacks, and something else along the back plate. I KNEW it had to be a soundcard, but which one? The first card I thought of was a MediaVision Thunderboard. So I compared what little I could see of the through-hole solder joints on the back of the card in that image, compared it to this picture, and I KNEW that's what it was. The lines of resistor packs, the yamaha chip and the 3-lead capacitor near the ISA slot gave it away.

I was 98% sure I wanted the lot anyway, due to the Diamond VLB video card, but decided to ask for more pics. Sure enough, this is what they sent:

Woohoo! 😀

Also, there's a few nice looking old drives, a bunch of ISA interface cards (IDE, parallel, serial) and even a VLB IDE+Parallel+Serial card, which is neat. I'm really hoping that the boards are salvageable, but I won't be totally heart broken if the repairs are beyond my abilities, as the other stuff in the lot was good too. The price was quite good too. 😀

What else is usually damaged when an AT power connector is burnt like that?

Here's that keyboard next to the monitor and mouse. Really ties the room together.

furan wrote:

Here's that keyboard next to the monitor and mouse. Really ties the room together.

That looks awesome.

I have to ask... how does it sound? If this was a "premium" product, I would hope it isn't as bad as the beige plastic speakers from that time... but the speakers are built into the keyboard and the casing is still plastic...

What do you think? 😀

Ozzuneoj wrote:

What do you think? 😀

Honestly it's not bad - the bass is pretty good and you get a sense of a stereo 'stage' I guess. However, some part of it is not shielded - it seems to be picking up the bit pattern sent by my wireless mouse to its dongle. 😀

Ozzuneoj wrote:

5.jpg

The heatsink on this one (the one with ALI chipsets) looks like it had part of it sheared off using a Dremel or something. Makes me wonder why, considering it was seemingly already pretty short.

The AT connector damage on the other one might be the result of plugging the AT power connectors in the wrong way (red and red and you are dead, or something). Looks like one of those blue tantalums got burnt as well.

Overall nice haul.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

I recognize that isa ide card. its a siig, and it is awesome! its plug and play any hard drive for 28x 386 486 for hard drives up to 8.4gb. easy peasy. That is what I would take from the lot if I had to choose only one thing.

Picked up a new video card for my 386 project. This sat on Ebay for weeks, advertised as tested & working, with a $39 BIN and cheap-ish 'domestic' (for me) shipping, so I finally bit.

A little more than I usually spend on retro gear, but damnit, it's an ET4000. Hopefully this will improve my 1.1 FPS Doom results & the weird graphics glitchiness I'm getting with the other card.

Also scored a big stack of colourful floppies for free on a local site. Always handy.

that is a beastly card. I *just* put one on ebay. 😜 Your has the XL rom so it will be more compatible with MCA/CGA/EGA titles. The manuals say 100% but nothing is ever 100% compatibility.

luckybob wrote:

that is a beastly card. I *just* put one on ebay. 😜 Your has the XL rom so it will be more compatible with MCA/CGA/EGA titles. The manuals say 100% but nothing is ever 100% compatibility.

Awesome! it's in great shape too, super excited to give it a try. 😀 Did you still need the ROM dump you were asking about earlier?

It also has a VESA feature header in case I ever decide to try my VFX1 on the 386.

nope. I got one. Then this card falls in my lap, and it has a different rom. So now I have two. I think the one for the w32i is different than the AX, but it might just be me.