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I did break a beautiful compaq 21" CRT by setting an unconventional modeline to play gradius in mame in its original resolution. It was glorious. But it dropped
by msk-lywenn 2y ago
I did break a beautiful compaq 21" CRT by setting an unconventional modeline to play gradius in mame in its original resolution. It was glorious. But it dropped a big brown screen from time to time. Until I understood why/when it turned brown. But it was too late.
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoWait CRTs can be bricked?
- msk-lywenn 2y agoA modeline is not like reprogramming a firmware or anything, it’s just settings on how to move the electron beam. I don’t know what I did, but it probably moved too far or something, It wouldn’t show anything else but brown
- linksnapzz 2y agoYes; trying to drive a refresh rate higher than what’s rated can do it-I think it had something to do with the flyback transformer? Some (later) crts had guards against this, and ddc more ore less prevented it.
- drivers99 2y agoI was thinking too low of a frequency. Probably high or low can cause problems. I searched and found this: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/6614/can-the-wrong-sync-frequency-really-destroy-a-crt-monitor https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/6614/can-... "At the too low horizontal frequency, the period the switch is open becomes too long, that causes the following" [various bad things explained]