After years of searching last week I was fortunate enough to purchase a Mitsubishi AM-3501R presentation monitor from my local university auction here in Lexington.
Only pic I could find:
For those who are new to these types of monitors they are really really big CRT PC monitors. They usually have RGB or VGA connections on the back along with myriad of other inputs. Many of them can sync to 15khz, and that makes them useful for gaming applications.
Basically they are huge arcade monitors that come in a case with all the adjustments conveniently placed on the front and they are digital multisync.
Here are the specs on my particular model:
Model: AM-3501R
Max Resolution: Officially 640 x 480, will sync to 800x600 but I wouldn't recommend it
Sync Type: Separate, Composite, Sync on Green all supported
H Freq/ V Freq: 15-35 Khz / 40-75 Hz
Tube Manufacturer: Mitsubishi
Monitor Type: Multisync/Multiscan
Tube Model: Unknown (round tube)
Tube Size: 35 (33.5 viewable)
Connector: CMPTR, S-video, VTR, BNC composite, 25 pin D-sub, 9 pin TTL, BNC RGBHV, Phono (RCA) audio on all inputs
Weight: 385 lbs!
It took 4 men to move it from the University surplus. There are no handles, but the whole monitor is just one big rectangular cube so it's pretty easy to move around.
When I got home I connected several systems and a PC and the image was very very good but a too dark for my tastes. Very very carefully I took off the back of the monitor, discovering in the process there are about six cooling fans mounted in the back, and began to try to recalibrate it.
There were 3 controls. 2 focus controls and one screen control. I tinkered a bit with the screen control and saw that I could increase the brightness of the screen considerably. I got out a copy of the T2 DVD which has a THX testing program included and used the contrast, brightness, and color tests til I felt it was adjusted perfectly. In the end I only had to turn the screen control about 3mm but it made a world of difference.
The focus was already really good, but I figured as long as I had the monitor out I might try to make it a little better. I only adjusted the top control but I felt it also made a small improvement. Total time for this "repair" job was about 1 hour. But it completely restored the image quality.
Now, on to performance. Put simply it's the the best arcade monitor I've ever seen. Easily as good as anything I've seen from Betson, Wels Gardner, or Sanwa. Color and contrast can fill the entire set of contrast bars on test patterns I've used. The only flaw I've detected is a darkening of the blue color at the very dark levels. I have never noticed this in game though.
The dot pitch of this monitor is something like .7mm to .8mm. I haven't been able to find detailed information or a manual so I'm not really sure. I know the XC series of monitors from Mitsubishi all have .7mm dot pitches and this one is very similar. Dot pitch is important when it comes to arcade monitors because it determines how sharply detailed the individual pixels of a games artwork will be. Even if a monitor can display a game in it's native resolution if the dot pitch is too high then the scanlines will be very thick and the game will look very blocky. A dot pitch of .7mm is pretty much identical to an old arcade monitor.
All the controls for H-size, V-size, H-pos, V-pos, contrast, and brightness are right on the front of the monitor. Additionally it remembers these settings between resolutions. I think it can store 5 resolutions.
Setting up MAME was very easy. I used an Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 in my pc and Soft 15khz. This monitor has RGBHV connectors in the back so I just used a VGA to RGBHV cable and it worked first try.
I connected two arcade sticks to my computer via USB and I sit about 3 or 4 feet in front of the monitor on the floor and play. This approximates to playing on a showcase cabinet. Kind of hurts your back after a little while though. I was worried when I bought the monitor that sitting that close the image would not be good and the scanlines would be too noticeable. This has not been my experience. I think the monitor is just barely small enough to get away with this at 33.5 viewable inches. On vertical games this works out to about 24" of viewable space which is very nice.
Consoles also look very good. I play my PS3 on it via the AV/Multi-out setting in 480p. This required an adapter from Ultimarc though. I was very surprised to learn that all PS2 and PS1 games can be played in progressive scan via this method.
I highly recommend these monitors to any MAME enthusiast who is looking for a big screen to play on. They take up about as much floor space as a cab, but they are flat on top so you get some back. I have a set of pc speakers and a ps3 on top of mine. This monitor could easily serve as game room tv, multimedia monitor, and MAME set-up at the same time. Movies and anime looked very good at 640x480.
More pics upcoming. My digital camera is broken right now but I plan to update with pictures of color bars and games running.
A couple issues remain I would like to get sorted out.
#1 There are controls on the front of the panel that say "Purity Level" with a setting of 1 or 2. It was set to 2 when I got it. There appears to be very little difference between the two settings. 2 may be slightly brighter. What does this control do?
#2 If I were to connect an actual arcade PCB to this monitor would I need a video amp?
#3 Advancemame works well on this monitor, but I can never get the image centered properly. It is always to far off to the right. I am using the exact settings for the monitor in the custom PC settings of advcfg, but it still doesn't seem to work right. What kind of things should I try?
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Topic: Finally! I now own a presentation monitor. (Read 6421 times)
