VOGONS

Packard Bell CRT Monitor Resolution and Attached Speakers

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First post, by BlueyDragon

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I have a couple of CRT monitors I've trying to decide between to use with both a Windows ME machine and a Windows XP machine with a KVM switch. I'm partial to Packard Bell monitors, but the one I have (model 1402S) only seems to be capable of 800x600 resolution, which is a bit lower than what I'd like to shoot for. Is there any way to improve the resolution, like messing with the H-phase and V-phase dials on the back, or installing a driver, etc? So far the only driver I've been able to find is a program called pbmon.exe which doesn't seem to actually do anything, at least not on Windows XP.

The other monitor I have is a RIC model X-450, which does go up to 1024x768 (although no further, but that's enough for ME and XP games). It also, weirdly, has mounting holes for Packard Bell speakers. Originally I was going to ask if all Packard Bell speakers had a fault where the left speaker would stop working, but I actually found out today that was due to the XP machine's sound card and not the speakers. Does anyone know what size screws the Packard Bell monitor-mounted speakers take? I have a set to mount the speakers on the RIC, but they're just a tad too wide so they don't screw in all the way. So maybe I just need to know how to measure screws and then go just one size smaller in diameter.

Any advice or guidance on the maximum resolution of a Packard Bell 1402S or the screw size for the attached speakers would be appreciated.

Reply 1 of 3, by chinny22

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Which monitor driver are you using?
For the standard monitor driver, I found that sometimes you had to go one setting up then what you wanted so 1600x900 to unlock 1024x768

Reply 2 of 3, by Tiido

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Getting higher resolution out the monitor is not really going to happen, it is a relatively low end offering that was never meant to go beyond ~40kHz line rate. It needs to reach close to 50kHz for 1024 x 768 and that's a big ask. There may be some playroom with custom resolutions but you're gonna have to live with some odd (read low) refresh rate or maybe even interlacing, neither which are particularly nice experiences unfortunately.

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Reply 3 of 3, by dionb

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This is a low-end 30-year old monitor, a re-labeled Tatung CM14SP from 1994.

Accurate specs are hard to find, but be realistic: a 14" screen has a 13" viewable area, but more relevantly low-end screens had a very big dot pitch, 0.31mm was common and absolute best you could expect would be 0.28mm. At 13" viewable, you would need 0.24mm dot pitch to actually have enough phosphor dots to support 1024x768 resolution. Even if the electronics can direct the gun to form a suitable image, that image will be fuzzy on a screen like this.

If the monitor has 0.31mm dot pitch, even 800x600 is actually too high for a sharp image, so you should target 640x480. If the monitor has 0.28mm dot pitch, 800x600 is spot on with a viewable area of 13". I can't find clear specs for the CM14SP/1420S, but it won't be sharper than 0.28.

If you want sharp 1024x768 on CRT, then you want at least a 15" monitor (14" viewable area) with 0.26mm dot pitch. That's high-end, but it does exist, at least later in the 1990s. Now, I'm fully aware a lot of people ran 0.28mm dot pitch 14" and 15" screens at 1024x768 in the day. It was awful and fuzzy, even if you were able to boost refresh rates to >70Hz. I know, as after dumping my awful 14" 'Sunshine" monitor (comparable to this PB thing) around 1999 I was using an IBM G50 15" with 0.28 dot pitch. Its electrics could do 1024x768@75Hz but it always looked a bit dim and vague.

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