Setback

[SavannahLion]

 
I keep TODO parts to my cab in the shed. Parts that need repair or too dirty go out there along with all my spare monitors. My wife wasn't to impressed with a cracked flyback a couple of years ago and banned all TODO monitors to the shed until they're fixed.

I go out to the shed to grab a tool and find a box of circuit boards, network hubs and HDDs scattered all over the floor.  WTF? My first thought was the bratty neighbor kid has been in my shed again (I left a permanent footprint on his skinny ass) , but if it was him I figured the damage would be far worse. I'm still not sure what knocked the box down or bow it managed to hit the monitors but as I'm cleaning the mess I realized two of my 21" tubes are destroyed. The neck on one is shattered and the pins on the other are bent out of whack and some appear to be missing. The plastic ring for the pins is in bits too.

I am seriously bummed. I got one working again last year and started work on the second one recently. That's all of my working monitors. The rest are outside of my current repair skills.

Guess I'll be hitting up Craigs again...

[ChadTower]

That sucks.  I have finally conceded that for raster games that are not primarily black backgrounds I have started with WG LCDs.  They drop right in... they actually work... it's just so nice to be able to buy a new monitor.

[Howard_Casto]

Or you know, just an lcd tv so you aren't over-charged for it.  Get it way too big, let the game's bezel crop it to 4:3 (who cares if some of the screen is wasted, you got it for half the price) and you are done. 

I'm finding fewer and fewer reasons to use crt's at this point.  There are some mind you, but not a lot. 

[SavannahLion]

Howard, I'm not aware of any LCD TVs that can replace the arcade monitors without additional circuitry. But you have a good point, last I checked, the LCD arcade drop-ins are pretty pricey.

[Howard_Casto]

Well you didn't specify that you were using them for arcade pcbs. 

There are converter boxes that do a good job though (sorry my google-fu fails me atm).  They are pricey but then again lcd drop-ins are so pricey that you'd still probably come out to the good in the end.

Believe it or not though some tvs might actually sync to 15khz....  I know some will sync to the NES's puny 240p with rgb mods.   

[ChadTower]

There are converter boxes that do a good job though (sorry my google-fu fails me atm).  They are pricey but then again lcd drop-ins are so pricey that you'd still probably come out to the good in the end.

They have very inconsistent results.  I easily converted a Berzerk to use one a few years ago.  I spent two weeks this year trying to get a Pole Position II boardset to work with those converters and just could not get it to sync properly.  By the time I gave up on that method I had bought a converter and a 20" Dell Ultrasharp that are now sitting idle.  Yeah, the WG drop in LCD was $280 shipped, but it dropped right in and was working in ten minutes.  Even the bolt holes lined up properly.

This is just my situation but these days I don't have time to hack everything to get it done on the max cheap.  That whole weekend I spent trying to get that converter working in this case was worth more to me than the $140 I would have saved vs the new drop in LCD.

[Howard_Casto]

Well pole position is pre-jamma.  The really old games have weird syncs sometimes so that's to be expected. 

[ChadTower]

Well pole position is pre-jamma.  The really old games have weird syncs sometimes so that's to be expected.

Definitely true.  I spent quite a while battling the beaten up 4600 in that game before giving up on it.  Many of those monitors are just *toast* now and people are hoarding them.  It's even getting hard to find 19" VGA CRTs.  Don't even ask about vector monitors.  Nowadays people won't even admit to owning any spare vector monitors.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah I'm thankful that a good shader system is finally in place in mame.  Vector simulation isn't quite there yet, but it's close and pretty soon it'll be simulation or nothing.

[ChadTower]

It would be really nice to see a strong setup for that in person.  I have too many vector games here and once their monitors are truly dead I'm not sure what I'll do with them.

[ChadTower]

Oh, and to head off the inevitable "pics or it didn't happen":