9 ms·

Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness

139 points by LluisGerard 7y ago

Nr7 7y ago
LGR has a couple of related videos on YouTube. Regular old B&W TV connected via HDMI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMiMz1uGCXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMiMz1uGCXI A tiny 1/2 inch CRT used as a display: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY7olqQF8iM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY7olqQF8iM
cm2187 7y ago
Also a good way to damage your eye sight given the low refresh rate. One thing I don't miss from CRT monitors from the 90s.
- deadwing0 7y ago
  How does a low refresh rate damage eyes? Got a link? Legit question, not looking for an argument.
  - somethingnot 7y ago
    Not necessarily lasting physical damage, but flickering CRTs, or for that matter flickering fluorescent or LED lights can cause headaches, nausea, ... I've certainly noticed it myself, using 75 Hz CRTs made me feel tired after a few hours, unlike 85 Hz. > In 1989, my colleagues and I compared fluorescent lighting that flickered 100 times a second with lights that appeared the same but didn’t flicker. We found that office workers were half as likely on average to experience headaches under the non-flickering lights. https://www1.essex.ac.uk/psychology/overlays/1989-82.pdf https://www1.essex.ac.uk/psychology/overlays/1989-82.pdf
  - VLM 7y ago
    The counter proof is TV viewing skews extremely old, and there's plenty of elderly who've been staring into 60Hz screens for multiple decades with no obvious TV related illnesses.
    - cm2187 7y ago
      You are typically not watching them at the same distance either, and the fact that TV screens are interlaced might also affect the flickering effect (I understand 1990s monitors weren't). I remember that my 67Hz macintosh monitor was really stressing my eyes as a teenager, while I never had this problem with a TV.
      - mnw21cam 7y ago
        You're misunderstanding interlacing. Interlacing was a way to still keep 50Hz (or 60Hz in some parts of the world) while having twice as many rows. It didn't give you a higher refresh rate than that.
        LocalH 7y ago
        No, but the difference in scanning pattern does provide a quite stark perceptual difference between 15KHz interlaced and 31KHz progressive at 60Hz. The scanning of fields seems to provide a higher chance that field 1's bottom lines won't have disappeared by the time the monitor is scanning field 2's bottom lines. Of course, it's largely dependent on a monitor's specific phosphor persistence, and why high-persistence monitors were so common in the earlier days of personal computing.
      - cr0sh 7y ago
        My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer 2. Neon green screen with "black-ish" text, 32 col x 16 rows. Cursor was a rainbow flashing block. I'm still not certain whether someone with epilepsy couldn't be triggered into a seizure by that screen... Want an idea? Look at this: https://www.haplessgenius.com/mocha/ https://www.haplessgenius.com/mocha/ Now imagine being 10 years old, and having that in front of your face while coding in BASIC, glowing from a 19" TV mere inches in front of you...hehe. That was me! I won't claim one way or the other to not have suffered damage of some sort - I'm really not sure. Strangely, my mom always complained to me about "sitting to close to the TV" - but had no problem when I was in front of this thing for hours on end, typing away, etc.
    - LocalH 7y ago
- Crinus 7y ago
  I have a bunch of computer CRT monitors and the only way to get bad refresh rate that you actually notice is to set them at 60Hz. At 70Hz or above (most can do 85Hz, any good CRT monitor should be able to go above that) you wont have any issues. Also while this can cause eye fatigue (which depends from person to person), i could never find any proof (and i just did a quick search) that there is any sort of permanent eye damage.
  - Tepix 7y ago
    PAL Amiga monitors were the worst with their 50Hz refresh. I'm somewhat surprised my eyes didn't suffer more.
    - mnw21cam 7y ago
      No, they were worse when you used an interlaced mode, and had alternating black/white rows. 25Hz headache zone.
    - cr0sh 7y ago
      You didn't get yourself a "flicker fixer" - ie, a piece of dark tinted transparent 6mm acrylic sheet?
- HyperTalk2 7y ago
  I always worry about what those jarringly bright LED brake lights with a low refresh rate (the ones that leave highly distracting dotted red trails across your field of vision when you move your eyes) are doing to my eyes and everyone else's.
whenchamenia 7y ago
I still use a CRT. Works great, no fuss. Its just heavy to move, which I don't do often. People comment on how rich the colors are. 85hz refresh solves the 'flicker' issue.
- simias 7y ago
  I reluctantly discarded my last CRT a few years ago. They're not just heavy to move, they also take a lot of room on my desk and they generate a lot of heat. For a long time LCDs really couldn't compete with CRTs. They had bad resolutions, terrible viewing angles and terrible colors (and especially horrendous blacks). Resolution is (finally) no longer an issue, colors and viewing angles are still meh but steadily improving. Hopefully we'll get OLED or something similar in the near future that will solve that once and for all. I decided that it was good enough to finally make the switch definitively.
  - Jeema101 7y ago
    I also stuck with CRTs long after everyone else abandoned them for TFT panels which I mostly hated. The widespread availability of IPS panels with decent viewing angles finally convinced me to switch, though.
  - jerf 7y ago
    "Resolution is (finally) no longer an issue, colors and viewing angles are still meh but steadily improving." Are you buying good LCDs? There's a whole range of types: https://pcmonitors.info/articles/lcd-panel-types-explored/ https://pcmonitors.info/articles/lcd-panel-types-explored/ The worst LCDs today are crap, but the best ones are going to be hard to tell apart from a CRT without putting it next to one. Since the only CRTs made today are high quality CRTs because there's zero market for bad CRTs anymore (and only barely a market for CRTs at all), a modern CRT may still outclass the best LCD, but mostly because of the fact that if the CRT couldn't outclass the best LCD it wouldn't exist at all. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to buy a good LCD screen. Monitors you may have to dig into relatively technical reviews of to find out (generic tech magazine reviewer may not tell you), and finding out what specific kind of screen a laptop has can be very difficult sometimes. Manufacturers don't really want to talk about it as they tend to benefit from being fuzzy about exaggerated specs, and a lot of "reviewers" aren't really aware enough of these issues to make a point of it in their review. I'm not an expert but I'd swear even in the TN space there's a lot of variation. I once accidentally bought a latop that basically literally didn't have a viewing angle; even at the "optimum" angle only the vertically-middle 50% of the screen was correct and the top and bottom were already showing major brightess drop-off and color inaccuracy. I don't just mean "I don't like to admit it but sometimes I can be a bit of a videophile" sort of complaints, either, I mean more like "literally can't read the word 'Start' on the Start Menu because the text and the background have both color shifted that much". Ironically, sold as a media laptop that only the most casual casual would have wanted to actually watch movies on. Dumped that one right quick. And this particular laptop was priced in the range where it really should have had a decent screen. By contrast, I'm coding on what is almost certainly a TN monitor, and I really don't care. I wouldn't want it on my personal laptop, the Macbook screen driving it is much, much better by comparison, but I don't do anything color sensitive at work. There's very minimal viewing angle distortion and that's all I really need. (I mean, push comes to shove, I could pretty much do my job on a monochrome monitor and only be somewhat annoyed.)
katzgrau 7y ago
At about the age of 14 I somehow came into ownership of 5" black and white TV. I wasn't allowed to have a TV in my bedroom, but this thing probably looked useless to my parents so they didn't say anything. Little did they know, while they were at work, I went up into the attic and ran a coaxial cable from a splitter down into my room and into the back of the VCR, all neatly tucked behind my desk. I spliced an old mono 1/8 jack onto an RCA component for the video (ext.ant to VCR) and did a similar splicing for the audio, but I had to run it through an old 8 track player to amplify the audio. It may be obvious that I collected a lot of old junk and cables (I still do). I did this all so I could primarily watch Conan O'Brien... which was available on channel 4 anyway (accessible via antenna) but I just wanted to watch the show in the highest definition possible. Having my first kid soon, I'm curious if he'll be as determined to work around the rules.
- ahje 7y ago
  He will. Kids try to find loop-holes in every single rule, and they will deliberately misinterpret everything you say in order to use it against you later on. :)
  - benj111 7y ago
    I don't know why you've added a smiley, my 2 year old is already displaying the trait grr :(
    - ahje 7y ago
      Simply because I can afford the luxury of looking back at it in the rear-view mirror. :)
      - benj111 7y ago
        Yes I got that. Ps how did you make your 2nd smiley so smug? :P
    - g00s3_caLL_x2 7y ago
      Wait till he's 14 and you find his bong.
linker3000 7y ago
Yep, been there, done that. Just knocking up a VGA to composite circuit similar to the one linked below (AD724 chip) to put my laptop onto a 21" Philips colour TV from the 1990s: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/403637/vga-to-composite-circuit-does-it-work https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/403637/vga-t...
dmhimanshu 7y ago
good one
justanegg 7y ago
cool, permanent terminal window?
fock 7y ago
came here for the FPGA and got instructions on buying premade-adapters
- kennyadam 7y ago
  Yep, a blog post that teaches you nothing except 'adapters exist' and is also poorly written. Not sure what the criteria are for making the front page is, but I'm baffled how this could meet them.
g00s3_caLL_x2 7y ago
This was not so pointless 'back in the day' when and old black and white was all you had access to and not a real computer monitor. Times was hard for some of us! ;-p
- Finnucane 7y ago
  I was lucky--we had a spare little _color_ TV I could use as a monitor.
dawsob 7y ago
Now you can buy Xiaomi Mi Box S Android TV Media Streamer coneced to you TV and you will able to watch Netflix. But quality will be hard to watch :)
dfxm12 7y ago
"Retro" isn't the right word here. I thought this was going to be about building your own monitor, not simply using an old one...
- mnw21cam 7y ago
  Okay. For my first-year university physics project, I made a jumble of wires attached to the parallel port of a computer on one end and the X/Y inputs of an oscilloscope on the other end, and could get it to display vector graphics. (Badly. Very badly. There was far too much stray capacitance in the circuit.)
mnw21cam 7y ago
Yeah, so mumble years ago my second monitor was a B&W workstation monitor that I picked up for next to nothing. It was actually slightly higher resolution than my other "proper" monitor, and much sharper. I had to make a converter from a VGA output on my video card to a single coaxial signal for the monitor. Luckily the monitor just wanted pull-to-ground for the blanking signals (both of them), so I could make a passive converter with just a few resistors (to mix the three colours) and a couple of transistors (to pull the signal to ground when blanking).
- cr0sh 7y ago
  Waaay back in the day of PCs (late 80s, early 90s) the way to get "high res graphics" and "dual screens" was to hook up to your PC (which was usually an actual IBM machine) a CGA monitor for regular usage, and then add a Hercules card and monitor for the "second display". Downside was that the Hercules - while being very high resolution for the day - was only monochrome, and amber. But it was a common solution for many CAD systems (with a price to match of course). IIRC, it was also a setup that some later game programmers used (I may be wrong, but IIRC, Carmack used something like this?) - because they could run the debugger on the monochrome Hercules, while outputting the game on the color monitor (CGA/EGA/VGA). This was well after better solutions came around for CAD, so the Hercules setup was a relatively inexpensive upgrade.
  - malkia 7y ago
    I had Hercules for my first "IBM PC" computer, while everyone else either had CGA, EGA or even VGA! - It was the computer that my uncle left, before leaving for US - And yes, it was meant to run AutoCAD - lol Being bored of not too many games working, I decided to take matter in my hands. Early on, I got into making various resident applications - and made one (used Turbo Pascal with inline assembly), where I would "convert" the 320x200 VGA buffer into Hercules bits. It was not taking care of what the palette was, but just happened to work by accident for some of the games (like Trolls). I also had to hack Trolls to first ignore the fact that I did not have VGA, then hack it instead of using 0xA0000 as VGA buffer (the standard address for an VGA adapter), but I would hack that location with my own buffer. It kind of worked, real slow - I've got about - I dunno - maybe 5-10fps - lol. Fun fact of trolls that I've found, but could not completely understood it back then (I was probably 9th or 10th grade, english is my secondary language) was this: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/trolls/trivia https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/trolls/trivia "This game was written on a very slow schneider 10mhz 286 with lots of wait states. If for some reason on your very fast xxxx 25mh 486 this game seems to be fast or unplayable, do no blame us for it was a penny pinching boss who would not buy us reasonable pc's to work on. signed THE PROGRAMMERS OF FLAIR SOFTWARE" So having hercules card made me - lol - did a bit of fun hacking :)
anonymfus 7y ago
I think that this TV is from the 1990s, not from 1980s, because design screams it. Also there is no brand name anywhere, so the manufacturer is not proud of this cheap device, the front panel captions are screen printed, DC barrel connector has the modern polarity sign with a negative sleeve.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Interestingly, you can buy similar ones on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Coby-CX-TV1-Black-White-Tuner/dp/B00006I56A/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1563904426&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_two_browse-bin%3A7070353011&s=electronics&sr=1-1 https://www.amazon.com/Coby-CX-TV1-Black-White-Tuner/dp/B000...
  - loser777 7y ago
    Probably wouldn’t have a digital TV tuner, right?
  - jacobush 7y ago
    I wonder if you really would get one though
iamdead 7y ago
I know someone who converted one of these into a home-made terminal, so they could connect to the computer at school and work from home. They drilled a hole into the TV, added a socket for video input which bypassed the antenna/demodulator, and hooked it up to a home-made 8-bit computer. 32 columns!
- cr0sh 7y ago
  Sounds like Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Typewriter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Typewriter
thelazydogsback 7y ago
Sounds like I need to hook up my 2" Sinclair MTV1 or Seiko wrist TV watch, both of which have just been gathering dust. However, neither have any sort of input -- is there a USB or HDMI ultra low power VHF or UHF transmitter so I can go total Terry Gilliam in the house with multiple displays??
- cr0sh 7y ago
  The TV watch is all-in-one? I thought those usually had an external tuner that plugged into the wrist "monitor" via a cable of some sort? If so, then find the pinout and type of connector it is, and try to hack it that way. Whatever you do with that TV watch, though, don't destroy it. It might not be right now, but someday in the not-too-far future it could be worth some serious cash by a TV collector. Honestly, it might be that way now - so check into that before jumping into something like this.
  - asd 7y ago
    > The TV watch is all-in-one? The Seiko T001 does have an external tuner and routinely go for $400-500+ on eBay, depending on condition. https://monochrome-watches.com/seiko-t001-mother-smart-watches/ https://monochrome-watches.com/seiko-t001-mother-smart-watch...
  - thelazydogsback 7y ago
    Yes, external battery box / tuner. I'm not sure if the tuner to display interface is actually video, or is basically a proprietary LCD driver at that point. This one is NIB, so I'd probably get another to experiment with first...
stronglikedan 7y ago
Hah! I had one of these hooked up in my car around the turn of the century! Mounted under the dash, with a micro (mini?) atx computer in the trunk, all powered by an inverter. I controlled it with a thumb ring trackball, and a mini keyboard that I would stow under the driver's seat. Once I got going, I only needed the trackball, since I was just using it with Winamp to play my mp3s. No wireless anything back then (at least not reliable). It looked cool enough that someone broke my window to steal it!
sangnoir 7y ago
Ha, I got the same model 5" portable TV from Goodwill - the composite input work perfectly with the Raspberry Pi's composite output (some basic soldering is required on the RPi Zero). My plan was to make it a self-contained old-school PC (with green cellophane film on the monitor for aesthetics) and internally mounting the RPi inside the shell, but I'm being held back by my fear of the high-voltage circuitry of the CRT, and a couple of stripped screws.

139 points by LluisGerard 7y ago

Nr7 7y ago

LGR has a couple of related videos on YouTube. Regular old B&W TV connected via HDMI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMiMz1uGCXI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMiMz1uGCXI A tiny 1/2 inch CRT used as a display: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY7olqQF8iM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY7olqQF8iM

cm2187 7y ago

Also a good way to damage your eye sight given the low refresh rate. One thing I don't miss from CRT monitors from the 90s.

deadwing0 7y ago
How does a low refresh rate damage eyes? Got a link? Legit question, not looking for an argument.
- somethingnot 7y ago
  Not necessarily lasting physical damage, but flickering CRTs, or for that matter flickering fluorescent or LED lights can cause headaches, nausea, ... I've certainly noticed it myself, using 75 Hz CRTs made me feel tired after a few hours, unlike 85 Hz. > In 1989, my colleagues and I compared fluorescent lighting that flickered 100 times a second with lights that appeared the same but didn’t flicker. We found that office workers were half as likely on average to experience headaches under the non-flickering lights. https://www1.essex.ac.uk/psychology/overlays/1989-82.pdf https://www1.essex.ac.uk/psychology/overlays/1989-82.pdf
- VLM 7y ago
  The counter proof is TV viewing skews extremely old, and there's plenty of elderly who've been staring into 60Hz screens for multiple decades with no obvious TV related illnesses.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    You are typically not watching them at the same distance either, and the fact that TV screens are interlaced might also affect the flickering effect (I understand 1990s monitors weren't). I remember that my 67Hz macintosh monitor was really stressing my eyes as a teenager, while I never had this problem with a TV.
    - mnw21cam 7y ago
      You're misunderstanding interlacing. Interlacing was a way to still keep 50Hz (or 60Hz in some parts of the world) while having twice as many rows. It didn't give you a higher refresh rate than that.
      - LocalH 7y ago
        No, but the difference in scanning pattern does provide a quite stark perceptual difference between 15KHz interlaced and 31KHz progressive at 60Hz. The scanning of fields seems to provide a higher chance that field 1's bottom lines won't have disappeared by the time the monitor is scanning field 2's bottom lines. Of course, it's largely dependent on a monitor's specific phosphor persistence, and why high-persistence monitors were so common in the earlier days of personal computing.
    - cr0sh 7y ago
      My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer 2. Neon green screen with "black-ish" text, 32 col x 16 rows. Cursor was a rainbow flashing block. I'm still not certain whether someone with epilepsy couldn't be triggered into a seizure by that screen... Want an idea? Look at this: https://www.haplessgenius.com/mocha/ https://www.haplessgenius.com/mocha/ Now imagine being 10 years old, and having that in front of your face while coding in BASIC, glowing from a 19" TV mere inches in front of you...hehe. That was me! I won't claim one way or the other to not have suffered damage of some sort - I'm really not sure. Strangely, my mom always complained to me about "sitting to close to the TV" - but had no problem when I was in front of this thing for hours on end, typing away, etc.
  - LocalH 7y ago
Crinus 7y ago
I have a bunch of computer CRT monitors and the only way to get bad refresh rate that you actually notice is to set them at 60Hz. At 70Hz or above (most can do 85Hz, any good CRT monitor should be able to go above that) you wont have any issues. Also while this can cause eye fatigue (which depends from person to person), i could never find any proof (and i just did a quick search) that there is any sort of permanent eye damage.
- Tepix 7y ago
  PAL Amiga monitors were the worst with their 50Hz refresh. I'm somewhat surprised my eyes didn't suffer more.
  - mnw21cam 7y ago
    No, they were worse when you used an interlaced mode, and had alternating black/white rows. 25Hz headache zone.
  - cr0sh 7y ago
    You didn't get yourself a "flicker fixer" - ie, a piece of dark tinted transparent 6mm acrylic sheet?
HyperTalk2 7y ago
I always worry about what those jarringly bright LED brake lights with a low refresh rate (the ones that leave highly distracting dotted red trails across your field of vision when you move your eyes) are doing to my eyes and everyone else's.

whenchamenia 7y ago

I still use a CRT. Works great, no fuss. Its just heavy to move, which I don't do often. People comment on how rich the colors are. 85hz refresh solves the 'flicker' issue.

simias 7y ago
I reluctantly discarded my last CRT a few years ago. They're not just heavy to move, they also take a lot of room on my desk and they generate a lot of heat. For a long time LCDs really couldn't compete with CRTs. They had bad resolutions, terrible viewing angles and terrible colors (and especially horrendous blacks). Resolution is (finally) no longer an issue, colors and viewing angles are still meh but steadily improving. Hopefully we'll get OLED or something similar in the near future that will solve that once and for all. I decided that it was good enough to finally make the switch definitively.
- Jeema101 7y ago
  I also stuck with CRTs long after everyone else abandoned them for TFT panels which I mostly hated. The widespread availability of IPS panels with decent viewing angles finally convinced me to switch, though.
- jerf 7y ago
  "Resolution is (finally) no longer an issue, colors and viewing angles are still meh but steadily improving." Are you buying good LCDs? There's a whole range of types: https://pcmonitors.info/articles/lcd-panel-types-explored/ https://pcmonitors.info/articles/lcd-panel-types-explored/ The worst LCDs today are crap, but the best ones are going to be hard to tell apart from a CRT without putting it next to one. Since the only CRTs made today are high quality CRTs because there's zero market for bad CRTs anymore (and only barely a market for CRTs at all), a modern CRT may still outclass the best LCD, but mostly because of the fact that if the CRT couldn't outclass the best LCD it wouldn't exist at all. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to buy a good LCD screen. Monitors you may have to dig into relatively technical reviews of to find out (generic tech magazine reviewer may not tell you), and finding out what specific kind of screen a laptop has can be very difficult sometimes. Manufacturers don't really want to talk about it as they tend to benefit from being fuzzy about exaggerated specs, and a lot of "reviewers" aren't really aware enough of these issues to make a point of it in their review. I'm not an expert but I'd swear even in the TN space there's a lot of variation. I once accidentally bought a latop that basically literally didn't have a viewing angle; even at the "optimum" angle only the vertically-middle 50% of the screen was correct and the top and bottom were already showing major brightess drop-off and color inaccuracy. I don't just mean "I don't like to admit it but sometimes I can be a bit of a videophile" sort of complaints, either, I mean more like "literally can't read the word 'Start' on the Start Menu because the text and the background have both color shifted that much". Ironically, sold as a media laptop that only the most casual casual would have wanted to actually watch movies on. Dumped that one right quick. And this particular laptop was priced in the range where it really should have had a decent screen. By contrast, I'm coding on what is almost certainly a TN monitor, and I really don't care. I wouldn't want it on my personal laptop, the Macbook screen driving it is much, much better by comparison, but I don't do anything color sensitive at work. There's very minimal viewing angle distortion and that's all I really need. (I mean, push comes to shove, I could pretty much do my job on a monochrome monitor and only be somewhat annoyed.)

katzgrau 7y ago

At about the age of 14 I somehow came into ownership of 5" black and white TV. I wasn't allowed to have a TV in my bedroom, but this thing probably looked useless to my parents so they didn't say anything. Little did they know, while they were at work, I went up into the attic and ran a coaxial cable from a splitter down into my room and into the back of the VCR, all neatly tucked behind my desk. I spliced an old mono 1/8 jack onto an RCA component for the video (ext.ant to VCR) and did a similar splicing for the audio, but I had to run it through an old 8 track player to amplify the audio. It may be obvious that I collected a lot of old junk and cables (I still do). I did this all so I could primarily watch Conan O'Brien... which was available on channel 4 anyway (accessible via antenna) but I just wanted to watch the show in the highest definition possible. Having my first kid soon, I'm curious if he'll be as determined to work around the rules.

ahje 7y ago
He will. Kids try to find loop-holes in every single rule, and they will deliberately misinterpret everything you say in order to use it against you later on. :)
- benj111 7y ago
  I don't know why you've added a smiley, my 2 year old is already displaying the trait grr :(
  - ahje 7y ago
    Simply because I can afford the luxury of looking back at it in the rear-view mirror. :)
    - benj111 7y ago
      Yes I got that. Ps how did you make your 2nd smiley so smug? :P
  - g00s3_caLL_x2 7y ago
    Wait till he's 14 and you find his bong.

linker3000 7y ago

Yep, been there, done that. Just knocking up a VGA to composite circuit similar to the one linked below (AD724 chip) to put my laptop onto a 21" Philips colour TV from the 1990s: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/403637/vga-to-composite-circuit-does-it-work https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/403637/vga-t...

dmhimanshu 7y ago

good one

justanegg 7y ago

cool, permanent terminal window?

fock 7y ago

came here for the FPGA and got instructions on buying premade-adapters

kennyadam 7y ago
Yep, a blog post that teaches you nothing except 'adapters exist' and is also poorly written. Not sure what the criteria are for making the front page is, but I'm baffled how this could meet them.

g00s3_caLL_x2 7y ago

This was not so pointless 'back in the day' when and old black and white was all you had access to and not a real computer monitor. Times was hard for some of us! ;-p

Finnucane 7y ago
I was lucky--we had a spare little _color_ TV I could use as a monitor.

dawsob 7y ago

Now you can buy Xiaomi Mi Box S Android TV Media Streamer coneced to you TV and you will able to watch Netflix. But quality will be hard to watch :)

dfxm12 7y ago

"Retro" isn't the right word here. I thought this was going to be about building your own monitor, not simply using an old one...

mnw21cam 7y ago
Okay. For my first-year university physics project, I made a jumble of wires attached to the parallel port of a computer on one end and the X/Y inputs of an oscilloscope on the other end, and could get it to display vector graphics. (Badly. Very badly. There was far too much stray capacitance in the circuit.)

mnw21cam 7y ago

Yeah, so mumble years ago my second monitor was a B&W workstation monitor that I picked up for next to nothing. It was actually slightly higher resolution than my other "proper" monitor, and much sharper. I had to make a converter from a VGA output on my video card to a single coaxial signal for the monitor. Luckily the monitor just wanted pull-to-ground for the blanking signals (both of them), so I could make a passive converter with just a few resistors (to mix the three colours) and a couple of transistors (to pull the signal to ground when blanking).

cr0sh 7y ago
Waaay back in the day of PCs (late 80s, early 90s) the way to get "high res graphics" and "dual screens" was to hook up to your PC (which was usually an actual IBM machine) a CGA monitor for regular usage, and then add a Hercules card and monitor for the "second display". Downside was that the Hercules - while being very high resolution for the day - was only monochrome, and amber. But it was a common solution for many CAD systems (with a price to match of course). IIRC, it was also a setup that some later game programmers used (I may be wrong, but IIRC, Carmack used something like this?) - because they could run the debugger on the monochrome Hercules, while outputting the game on the color monitor (CGA/EGA/VGA). This was well after better solutions came around for CAD, so the Hercules setup was a relatively inexpensive upgrade.
- malkia 7y ago
  I had Hercules for my first "IBM PC" computer, while everyone else either had CGA, EGA or even VGA! - It was the computer that my uncle left, before leaving for US - And yes, it was meant to run AutoCAD - lol Being bored of not too many games working, I decided to take matter in my hands. Early on, I got into making various resident applications - and made one (used Turbo Pascal with inline assembly), where I would "convert" the 320x200 VGA buffer into Hercules bits. It was not taking care of what the palette was, but just happened to work by accident for some of the games (like Trolls). I also had to hack Trolls to first ignore the fact that I did not have VGA, then hack it instead of using 0xA0000 as VGA buffer (the standard address for an VGA adapter), but I would hack that location with my own buffer. It kind of worked, real slow - I've got about - I dunno - maybe 5-10fps - lol. Fun fact of trolls that I've found, but could not completely understood it back then (I was probably 9th or 10th grade, english is my secondary language) was this: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/trolls/trivia https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/trolls/trivia "This game was written on a very slow schneider 10mhz 286 with lots of wait states. If for some reason on your very fast xxxx 25mh 486 this game seems to be fast or unplayable, do no blame us for it was a penny pinching boss who would not buy us reasonable pc's to work on. signed THE PROGRAMMERS OF FLAIR SOFTWARE" So having hercules card made me - lol - did a bit of fun hacking :)

anonymfus 7y ago

I think that this TV is from the 1990s, not from 1980s, because design screams it. Also there is no brand name anywhere, so the manufacturer is not proud of this cheap device, the front panel captions are screen printed, DC barrel connector has the modern polarity sign with a negative sleeve.

scarejunba 7y ago
Interestingly, you can buy similar ones on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Coby-CX-TV1-Black-White-Tuner/dp/B00006I56A/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1563904426&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_two_browse-bin%3A7070353011&s=electronics&sr=1-1 https://www.amazon.com/Coby-CX-TV1-Black-White-Tuner/dp/B000...
- loser777 7y ago
  Probably wouldn’t have a digital TV tuner, right?
- jacobush 7y ago
  I wonder if you really would get one though

iamdead 7y ago

I know someone who converted one of these into a home-made terminal, so they could connect to the computer at school and work from home. They drilled a hole into the TV, added a socket for video input which bypassed the antenna/demodulator, and hooked it up to a home-made 8-bit computer. 32 columns!

cr0sh 7y ago
Sounds like Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Typewriter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Typewriter

thelazydogsback 7y ago

Sounds like I need to hook up my 2" Sinclair MTV1 or Seiko wrist TV watch, both of which have just been gathering dust. However, neither have any sort of input -- is there a USB or HDMI ultra low power VHF or UHF transmitter so I can go total Terry Gilliam in the house with multiple displays??

cr0sh 7y ago
The TV watch is all-in-one? I thought those usually had an external tuner that plugged into the wrist "monitor" via a cable of some sort? If so, then find the pinout and type of connector it is, and try to hack it that way. Whatever you do with that TV watch, though, don't destroy it. It might not be right now, but someday in the not-too-far future it could be worth some serious cash by a TV collector. Honestly, it might be that way now - so check into that before jumping into something like this.
- asd 7y ago
  > The TV watch is all-in-one? The Seiko T001 does have an external tuner and routinely go for $400-500+ on eBay, depending on condition. https://monochrome-watches.com/seiko-t001-mother-smart-watches/ https://monochrome-watches.com/seiko-t001-mother-smart-watch...
- thelazydogsback 7y ago
  Yes, external battery box / tuner. I'm not sure if the tuner to display interface is actually video, or is basically a proprietary LCD driver at that point. This one is NIB, so I'd probably get another to experiment with first...

stronglikedan 7y ago

Hah! I had one of these hooked up in my car around the turn of the century! Mounted under the dash, with a micro (mini?) atx computer in the trunk, all powered by an inverter. I controlled it with a thumb ring trackball, and a mini keyboard that I would stow under the driver's seat. Once I got going, I only needed the trackball, since I was just using it with Winamp to play my mp3s. No wireless anything back then (at least not reliable). It looked cool enough that someone broke my window to steal it!

sangnoir 7y ago

Ha, I got the same model 5" portable TV from Goodwill - the composite input work perfectly with the Raspberry Pi's composite output (some basic soldering is required on the RPi Zero). My plan was to make it a self-contained old-school PC (with green cellophane film on the monitor for aesthetics) and internally mounting the RPi inside the shell, but I'm being held back by my fear of the high-voltage circuitry of the CRT, and a couple of stripped screws.