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PeterLI wrote:

I love 21" CRTs and I love my 30" LED. :) […]
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I love 21" CRTs and I love my 30" LED. 😀

Yes, but pixels in old games look larger on large screen monitors as far as I know. I don't even want to imagine how Diablo 1 looks on a 21 inch monitor 😀

Some good 15" CRT is ideal for old games. I have 14" and 17" CRTs. Although I like the design of this 22":

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

PeterLI wrote:

I love 21" CRTs and I love my 30" LED.

Yes, but pixels in old games look larger on large screen monitors as far as I know. I don't even want to imagine how Diablo 1 looks on a 21 inch monitor 😀

the dot pitch of larger CRTs is usually very low as most of them at that size are the higher end models that each brand produced...If you have a dot pitch of at least 0.28mm with a 21 inch crt...(some of my crts have a 0.25mm dot pitch which is razor sharp)...everything looks pretty sharp and pixels are not as big as you think. I have a Samsung 22 inch, a Dell with sony trinitron tube, 3 sun microsystems 22" with sony trinitron tube as well, and a sony 21" and all of them display games beautifully. ..I also love the fact that my large sony crts can go from displaying 320x200 retro dos games all the way up to 2048x1156 at 60hz for more recent windows stuff...love all that real estate!
I wouldn't worry about any game looking pixelated on my larger crts...I don't think Diablo would look bad at all. In fact I bet it would be so much better to play it on a larger screen.

In this case, trust me, bigger is better...The only limiting factor IMO is the actual gargantuan size of these larger monitors on my desk...sometimes I have to opt for a smaller crt just because of this, not because of the quality.

What about health issues ? Isn't sitting close to a big CRT bad for your eyes?

Nahkri wrote:

What about health issues ? Isn't sitting close to a big CRT bad for your eyes?

Certainly not the best thing you can do for yourself. Having done it though as an every day activity for both recreational and later work-related pursposes for 20+ years, I can assure you my ears have not turned green yet 😀

I wouldn't worry about any game looking pixelated on my larger crts...

Well... it has been quite some time when I played 320x games on a large CRT. But there was a reason why the industry went to higher resolutions and one was definitely because of less pixelated look on a larger displays. The same reason is why emulators for game systems use different algorithms to smooth the pixels. And this was quite sometime before LCDs came around. LCDs need this badly, while CRTs in its nature makes a picture less sharp - adds a little blur to soften the pixels.

What about health issues ? Isn't sitting close to a big CRT bad for your eyes?

Big CRT displays are actually better for your eyes... you need to move the eyes and head more to see all the area of the screen - but you mustn't exaggerate with the too high resolutions, then fonts get to small. It is another question about radiation that CRTs emit.

2002 IBM G78 17". So much better than these pics. This one is total eye & finger candy.

Tried adjusting it today. I always felt it should be a bit brighter and a bit sharper. It's not bad, it just doesn't have that 'snap' that a great display has. The colour balance and dark-light range are impeccable, though. Top notch there. In the end I couldn''t make it snappier, and the inspection sticker inside had actually gave this one a grade of "Medium".

My most favorite monitor that I'll never get to use. 1991 IBM 5081 16.

Destined for Mechwarrior.


Little Icon says 1280x1024.

Final pic. They're not kidding about this. It weighs dangerously more than my 55lb 19" Viewsonic.

kixs wrote:

Some good 15" CRT is ideal for old games. I have 14" and 17" CRTs. Although I like the design of this 22":

Awesome monitor! That's the one I'm looking forward to hunt down next 😲

Someone was selling it for 55€ ... don't know if he sold it. The picture is actually from his add from the "local" ebay variant. The model is Mitsubishi Diamond Pro DP2070SB.

It's not only the price, which is not cheap... but the space... I don't have the spaaaace 😉

pewpewpew wrote:

My most favorite monitor that I'll never get to use.

Why so?

kixs wrote:

Why so?

Basically this one doesn't fit anything but IBM RISC AIX systems. IIRC even the rare and expensive sync-on-green vid cards for PC didn't work with this particular IBM because it has 3 BNC instead of 4. But it's gorgeous so I'm happy to have it as sculpture.

=EDIT=
Since this page will now show up for any poor fool searching IBM 5081, here's a couple of links that may still exist or at least will be useful in the waybackmachine.
http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_SyncGrn3.html
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~brians/comp/fixedfreqpc.html

AFAIK you'll find the occasional reference to how one might connect a 5081, but no one will directly claim to have done it.

Ah. I didn't pay attention on how many BNC connectors are there 🙁

Would a Playstation 2 work with this monitor? The PS2 VGA cable (from the linux kit) only works with monitors that supports sync-on-green.

I have used this simple circuit successfully to run a SoG workstation monitor from a VGA card for years, it's so simple/cheap to build it's worth a try. The only thing to keep in mind is that both sync signals must be negative for the circuit to work properly, but that shouldn't pose a problem. Current video cards have gotten very good at generating custom resolutions.

A PlayStation 2 set to RGB and progressive scan should work too as it outputs SoG when set like that, and you don't even need the VGA cable, just a plain component video cable and three RCA to BNC adapters. Even a plain component video signal (like from a DVD player) should work in a pinch as that carries composite sync in the Y channel. The resulting picture will have a heavy green tint but IMO it'd be the easiest video source to get for testing - if the DVD player supports progressive scan you could test both 15kHz (480i) and 31kHz (480p) scan rates.

Hopefully it's not a fixed-sync monitor. I had an Intergraph InterVue monitor at one point, which unfortunately was fixed-sync, and thus nearly useless as a general-purpose monitor.

This was some years ago, mind you. I guess these days you could run it at its fixed resolution and use the video card's scaling functionality to run all sorts of stuff. Oh well. 🙁

Memory says these were fixed-sync. Those who used them had to pre-configured their boxes to boot straight into Windows.

These days it is no longer a 'big free monitor' of course, but an overweight 16" that likely won't compare well in quality to just about everything else I have. And is only larger than my Amiga 1080. And now that I've read that warning against using Class A kit in "residential environments", I must say I am very much less interested in experimenting with it.

But it's still beautiful. I'll get appropriate casters for it and use it as an end table.

kixs wrote:

Well... it has been quite some time when I played 320x games on a large CRT. But there was a reason why the industry went to hig […]
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I wouldn't worry about any game looking pixelated on my larger crts...

Well... it has been quite some time when I played 320x games on a large CRT. But there was a reason why the industry went to higher resolutions and one was definitely because of less pixelated look on a larger displays. The same reason is why emulators for game systems use different algorithms to smooth the pixels. And this was quite sometime before LCDs came around. LCDs need this badly, while CRTs in its nature makes a picture less sharp - adds a little blur to soften the pixels.

What about health issues ? Isn't sitting close to a big CRT bad for your eyes?

Big CRT displays are actually better for your eyes... you need to move the eyes and head more to see all the area of the screen - but you mustn't exaggerate with the too high resolutions, then fonts get to small. It is another question about radiation that CRTs emit.

Since I just got one 19" I'm adding this two pictures for Size VS Quality comparision. One picture is from 19" Samsung 957DF and the other is from 14" Siemens VGA. Guess which is which 🤣

But it's not a really good comparision because I took the pictures on the 14" closer to get only the screen. I should have taken pictures from the same viewing distance then the 14" looks even better but smaller. For that matter even this 19" has really bad picture. In Windows only 640x480 is conditionally usable - it's totally out of focus and can't be corrected. In 800x and 1024x the fonts are just a blur. Maybe a good 19" would be even worse in low res. The scanlines are really visable on 19" - not much so on this "low" res uploaded picture.

As said I'd go for one good 15" CRT for old games. For me, back then, it was the biggest WOW when I changed 14" (maybe it was really 13") VGA color monitor for 15". When I switched to 17 and 19" in a few years I wasn't that much impressed.