Woo Hoo! Suprise found when setting up monitor!

[SirPeale]

Back in '97 I was working for a bank as a temp.  One day, when leaving the building, I noticed an old PS/2 computer and a monitor by the door.  I watched it for a couple weeks, and it never moved.  I finally asked the building owners about it, and they said it was going to be tossed.  I asked if I could have it, and they said yes.

The PS/2 worked for 20 minutes, just long enough to play a game in QBasic (the monkey throwing banana game) and then it just stopped working.  Don't know why.

The monitor, OTOH, a Princeton Graphics model 1400, worked very nicely.  I wasn't going to really use it, except perhaps as a second monitor for a server, or something.  Who knows?  It was a working monitor.

Never did do anything with that monitor.  It sat around, thru three moves, and finally ended up in the attic of our current residence.

I'm (attempting) building a bartop cabinet right now, and moving slowly on the woodworking part, as I don't have a plan, per se.  So I've been working on the guts to it.

A year ago I found a monitor up the street from me.  It worked, so I figured I'd use it eventually.  Fired it up a week ago, no joy.  The picture just rolls and rolls...probably why it was on the street to begin with.  Don't know how it was ever working.

So, anyway, was in the attic a couple days ago, and ran across the Princeton.  Figured, 'what the heck,' took it downstairs and decased it.  Had a very nice bracket holding everything together, it looked like I had found a nice unit for the bartop.

This unit is going to be running some very, very old hardware, as it's going to use VAntAGE.  I started with a 486 DX 133 (which I can't get over 100, no matter what I do).  I'm going to upgrade it to at least a P133 as I can't play Galaga at full frame (or anywhere near it, really, unless I throttle)

The front end is ArcadeOS.  Took me quite a while to figure out how to get it to recognize the games in VAntAGE.

As I was going thru the options in VAntAGE, I noted that it could output directly to an arcade monitor.  For giggles, I checked it as going to an arcade monitor, and fired it up.  I figured if anything were to happen, I could just hit [ESC] and kill it before anything bad really happened.

To my absolute suprise, not only does it display a perfect picture, it's got scanlines and is perfectly centered!  When I was running it at 60Hz, it had a border around it, now it uses the entire screen.

I noted a label on the tube - Hitachi.  Now I'm jazzed, I want to try my 19" Hitachi monitor on it now, and see if I can get similar results.  I'm optomistic.

[paigeoliver]

Hmmm, I have an old monitor that has a border as well (goes up to 800x600) I wonder if that one will do that as well?

[SirPeale]

The only reason I tried it at all was because I was reading about which older monitors could possibly accept a 15Hz signal.  Something was mentioned about the VGA pinout, and this has a very strange pinout.  Standard VGA on the computer side, explodes to a serial type Sub-D on the other.

[SirPeale]

Hel-lo!  Found this while better researching my monitor:

Link To Monitor Listings

Quite a few monitors in there that seem to be arcade friendly!

[paigeoliver]

Heck yes, the Mitsubishi Diamond Scan I have is on the list. Now I just need to buy it back from my buddy who I gave it to.

But since he already offered it back to me, and $10 for a nicer 15" that I had, then it shouldn't be a problem.

And of course now my Time Pilot cocktail is going to need even more rewiring to deal with the new non-isolation transformer monitor.

But, I couldn't have read this at a better time, since tommorrow I was planning on buying something with a 13" monitor just for the monitor.

[jerryjanis]

That's friggin' amazing!  nice one.

[RandyT]

This is pretty common with the older monitors.  I also have a Mitsubishi 14" that will scan down to 15.75khz.

Something else to keep an eye out for is old Amiga monitors.  The simple ones will do 15.75khz, but the ones designed for use with the "de-interlacers" usually have a range similar to the Diamondscans.

And the cool part is that most of the time these can be had for a song.

RandyT

[Nerd Of Nerds]

is there any way that i could put a bigger tube into one of thems monitors? if i was careful... a lot...

[paigeoliver]

is there any way that i could put a bigger tube into one of thems monitors? if i was careful... a lot...

One word answer.

No.

One sentence answer.

Computer monitors aren't like TVs and arcade monitors where the tubes mostly all just match up, they are mostly all different, and are not really compatible with each other.

Longer more detailed answer.

Yes, assuming you are an electronics genius that can attach a large tube with the wrong pinout to a 13" chassis, and then properly upgrade the monitor boardset to not only work with the larger tube, but provide the higher amount of HV needed for the larger tube. Given the know how, several dozen donor tubes, and the proper tools, it shouldn't take more than 100 hours of labor and a couple hundred in parts.

[Nerd Of Nerds]

i meant like one of those atari computer monitors... i thought they used arcade resolution.

just curious...

EDIT: is it some kind of rule that you need to be a smart ass to a bit of a noobie? crap, i just asked a simple curiosity question.

(i'm flipping you off on the inside where it counts!!!)

[IceCold]

I tried this with two of my 14" monitors.  The one will display it, sort of.  the image is way too big and is like doubled up, but I can at least recognize the game.  The other one doesn't display at all(I couldn't get it to work with any of the games in vantage though...).  I also tried it with my 17" and it said something like "sync out of range"

BTW - is there any way to change the resolution or anything, and possibly get my 14" monitor to work right(the one that would display it, sort of)?  I'll try my other 14" pretty soon.  If I could get a monitor that would display like that, I could play real arcade games on it, right?  That'd be sweet!

[SirPeale]

I dunno Ice...you haven't told us what kind of monitor it is.  I haven't been clairvoiant since I was 4.  

Also what kind of controls it has on it.

How about a picture of the screen in action?

[paigeoliver]

Ok, I just opened up the monitor cable and spliced in the relevant wires for the connection. I also made it where the original VGA plug is still there (in case it doesn't work).

I am at work, and still have about 6 hours before I can get home and test this in my time pilot. So I downloaded the Vantage emulator and set it to display at 15khz, and loaded up Space Invaders.

It had a great picture, scanlines and all, but there was a large amount of wraparound horizontally (vertically as far as Space Invaders is concerned). I am hoping that it is just because of the videocard in the work computer (not on the list of supported cards to output 15 khz properly).

[SirPeale]

You can 'tweak' the display in VAntAGE a bit.  It might help with what you're talking about.

But...glad the monitor works for you!

[paigeoliver]

Ok, I couldn't tweak the image right in Vantage, and it also displayed overlapped using the Time Pilot pcb as well. I even opened up the monitor to get at all the hidden adjustment knobs inside.

Oh well, at least I have a small test monitor now. Not good enough to use in a game, but easy enough to hook up to a boardset to test it out.