I got a D9400!

[Ummon]

I'll preface this by saying that after having a 27" flat tube monitor for the last two and half years, it's really weird at first sitting in front of a bare 27" curved tube. Feels like it's reaching out toward me. (Videodrome....not quite.)

I got this recently from bgspot. Great guy. I offered to pay for packaging and packing, but he went out and got a box and plenty of stuff at no charge. He still had the original bag wrap for the monitor - then he wrapped bubble wrap around it, encased it in styrofoam and rubber foam pieces, and used some pre-form foam pieces to bolster it. Sent separately, and paid postage for, the ArcadeVGA that came bundled with it.

I paid the shipping for the monitor, of course. I have a Fedex account, and I scheduled a pick-up, which is about ten bucks on top of shipping, and the total from Louisiana to AZ came out at about fifty or sixty dollars. (I'm not sure yet, cos they haven't fully billed me, but I ran an estimate before I scheduled the pick-up and guessed 95 pounds, which came out at about $42. They weiged it in at about 92 pounds.) I got it today, actually; shipped last friday. One weird thing was that their online record showed they had picked-up from the Fedex facility and delivered it to him - until after it was delivered today, and then it showed the whole, correct shipping history.

So I fired it up. Looked a little grainy, but after a good hour it was very crisp (for a monitor with max res of 800x600). Great color. Convergence is off a little, but it's been moved around a bit an all. Overall geometry is fine.

A cool thing about this monitor is that it is truly 15-38khz. (Specs say 15.75, but it will go lower.) You'll notice by some of the pictures below that it'll do 18 and 19khz, just like my Billabs. In fact, I used the same clock data in my testing using Advancemame and advcfg, and it generally performs the same. I like my Billabs a little better because the color seems a little richer, and it plays better with Advancemame (the D9400 has some issues with moving a single line at the top and putting it at the bottom; or for example Blasteriods doesn't display properly), but in general the D9400 looks good. I haven't yet tried it out with the AVGA or soft15. I'll post that in a little while.

[Ummon]

Note: there is a slight discoloration in the lower right corner which is noticable in white screens in Windows, but isn't noticable in-game.

[Ummon]

Some update: it works fine with Advancemame. I switched computers, and it worked just fine....I thought maybe it just didn't jive with the card in my main rig....but then I noticed the VGA cable I'd been using for that monitor (not the same one that goes to the Billabs) was HOT. Now why would a VGA cable get hot?

Also having an issue with the AVGA, but I'll have to do some research and see if it hasn't already been experienced.

[MonMotha]

Watch out for ground loops.  There can be fairly large ground potential differences in some cases where you'd least expect them.  Both your PC and your monitor reference their DC power/signal ground to their idea of earth ground, but the only thing linking them is a tiny little wire on a connector designed to handle maybe an amp or so at best.  Even a small ground potential difference can cause several dozen amps to flow between the two units over those signal lines.  Things will work, but the current flow will cause heating.

Taking very large (I use AWG16 for this) wire and creating a single point ground for all your stuff can help with this if this is indeed the problem.  This is common practice in arcade cabinets.  Another solution is to plug both units into the same power strip.  This usually works, but it isn't quite as good as a true single point ground setup.

Another possibility is just leakage current from the monitor.  Now, any leakage current high enough to get a cable like that hot would be cause for concern from a safety point of view, but make sure you do have the monitor frame grounded to earth ground properly.  If it's otherwise ungrounded, AC leakage could find its way to earth ground via your PC.

There's a few other reasons for a cable like that to get hot, but they're not overly common.  Just how hot does the thing get?

[Ummon]

Just how hot does the thing get?

I've never felt a cable warmer than my hand, and this was a bit. But only that one. Others are fine.

By the way, the frame on this thing is a beast. Very strong, doesn't hardly flex, yet is pretty light. Vectors look great on it at 640x480. Also, it seems to switch more smoothly than my Billabs.

[solid12345]

nevermind wrong topic

[Ummon]

Okay, so the shipping came out to almost sixty bucks from LA to AZ. Not bad. Definitely still a good deal, considering the monitor (including arcadeVGA) was $250.