Monitors on Ebay

[picasso]

Not sure if anyone is interested in this but:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=13718&item=6192204776&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

I am curious if these are very good monitors.

[AlanS17]

Those don't look like any arcade monitors I've ever seen, but I bet you could get one to work. They look like mountable video monitors.

I've got no use for a 27" monitor right now. Otherwise I'd probably be interested. Shipping would be killer, though. Those are some big heavy boxes.

[Ken Layton]

Those look like the Pentranic monitors made for "video walls".

[AlanS17]

Those look like the Pentranic monitors made for "video walls".

I would agree, but aren't those usually cubical? These have a tapered rear end.

[richms]

The ones I have seen are tapered, so they can be stacked around corners. The mounting hardware to stick them together is seperate and you get it for how you want them stacked.

[AlanS17]

Oh I hadn't seen that before. I stand corrected.

[testicle187]

How would you go about hooking up a monitor with a BNC connection to an arcade setup?

[richms]

If its RGB on BNC's like older high end computer monitors all you need is 3 or 4 bits of coax with a BNC on the end connected to the arcade board should do the trick. The BNCs are higher bandwidth then just bare wires of an arcade board or the rubbish d-sub 15 plug that  plug that PCs have on them.

thats unless its taking a composite video signal over BNC in which case its a TV for all purposes. I have seen seperate Y and C plugs for svideo on some old video monitor once too.

[LePic]

I have contacted the vendor about the connector and he quickly replied to me.  As follow:

Got in contact with Pentranic to see if they could send me any manual, info, spec sheet...Anything... Will forward it to you when I get it. Meanwhile here are some photos of the connectors (2 x BNC) and the main board and connector board inside a broken monitor we had. Hope this is of some help in the meantime. thanks. Bernard Adams.

I will post photos for you (next few posts).  MY QUESTION: How hard is it to connect these monitors to an ArcadeVGA card from Ultimarc?  Can anyone help me on this?  I am really interested in the monitor, but I must know how to connect them before I buy.

Thanks to all

CP

[LePic]

More photos of Pentranic 1127 connector.

[LePic]

Last 2 pics

Again: if anyone knows how to wire this to an arcadeVGA card, let me know.  I would really appreciate.

Thanks again.

CP

[richms]

The 2 BNCs are actualy so you can loop thru to other monitors, the switch is to enable termination for if its the last in the line or the only one.

As the input to that board is externally accessable, and the ground on the board will be contiguous thru to the rest of the display its fairly safe to say that the monitor is isolated.

Easiest way to get this working will be from a TV out of a computer, unless you want to start hacking into that cable.

The board at the back will be handy if you want to put a console into the cab, or one of those x in 1 joystcik games since it will take a normal composite feed.

[LePic]

As pointed out to me by Dan_R, the tan board on the bottom should have a molex connector near where I circled. It should be 5 pins, 3 then a blank then 2.  What do you think?

LePic

[nwhutt]

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it does indeed look like the separate board that someone is holding is just a composite to RGB conversion board.  If you look carefully it looks as though you have a separate Red, Green, Blue, Black and White wire coming off of it.  This could be your RGB feed direct into the monitor, you will probably find that the black wire is video ground and that the white wire is Video Sync, the others should be your red green and blue inputs.

[Terminatedrone]

Alright, I promised someone who emailed me that I would post in the thread.

I've purchased one of these monitors and have been using it with a simple S-Video to Composite BNC cable I made (Just put a 47uF cap on the chrominance pin, and from that wire both pins into one BNC plug and it works just fine).

I'll open up the monitor this weekend, and decide whether or not there are seperate color signals. If there is I can wire up a circuit to go from seperate color signals to VGA. Somthing like this should work.

I'll keep you updated.

[Terminatedrone]

I opened it up. But havent had time to attempt anything.

LePic:

There is a 6 pin molex connector as you guessed, but it is actually 5 wires then a blank (from rear to front [blank is at front side of monitor] colors are red, green, blue, black, white), not 3 then a blank, then 2.

Those pins quickly get lost on the daughter-board though. I'm much more interested with the board with the composite inputs on it. Red Green Blue Black and White are all back again, into a 5 pin molex. The black goes to ground, R G B go through the circuit (leading to the composite input), and White takes a different circuit.

I think its a safe assumption now that R G and B are color signals, while White is the sync. But does this necessarily mean that it is convertable to VGA? Think I could just remove the converter board completely, and use the color signals with sync straight from the chasis? Oppinions?

If you'd like to see a picture of anything specific, just ask.
Hopefully I'll have time tomorrow to start getting to work.

[LePic]

Terminatedrone: thanks a lot for your reply.  You kept your words.

Unfortunatly, I am not good at all with video signal and your findings are probably better than any guess I could make.  Hopefully, someone else on the msg board will be better suited than me and will take time to give a solid opinion.

I am travelling to Montreal this week and if time permit, I will stop to see the seller and maybe find a tech there that knows more about the monitor.  In the mean time, keep us posted on your findings.  I'll do the same.

LePic

[Terminatedrone]

Yeah, at this point I'm pretty sure it's an RGB signal.

This is actually great news, I think I'll ditch the TV-Out and convert it to VGA.
I just need to order a few parts.

I wont forget to update. But no promisses when I might get around to it.

[Giovanni]

Hello everyone, first off as a n00b to these forums, THANK YOU for all the great information!

I purchased a bunch of these Pentranic monitors and got inside my first one this past weekend.

[Macros]

It looks like the Composite to VGA adapator actually has a D-SUB 9 "CGA" connector spot on it.  I am betting you could probably wire directly into there or put an external connector on it as well and convert the 15 pin VGA to a 9 pin CGA.  Though perhaps it is digital (16 color) CGA instead of analog as it goes through their converter.

I bought a few of these monitors and shipped them freight to Toronto. I checked out the rgb to video board and the 9 pin d-sub does indeed carry rgb+sync and ground. It is actually labeled. I'm going to wire 15pin female vga connector to the cga socket and mount it on the back with the other connectors.

[Macros]

I just realized these monitors are perfect for guncon light guns since they have a composite sync available from the bnc connector. A simple bnc to rca adapter is required.

[Macros]

Update:

I soldered a hacked vga cable to video encoder board and connected that to an Arcade Vga card with amp. Without the amp the video was very dark and lacked contrast. It looks great except there is noise in the background noticeable on black screens like asteroids. It's not actually what I would case noise it looks like a scanline or sync pulse that is being drawn horizontally left to right top to bottom in a zig zag pattern bouncing off the edges of the raster. I'm not sure what the problem is but I think it might  have to do with the composite encoder board. I may have to bypass it all together and feed the rgb signal to the main chassis. I wonder if it would help to terminate the bnc connectors with 75ohm terminators?

[Macros]

Hmm, figured out I'm seeing retrace lines which means hopefully I can turn down the screen pot to get rid of them.

[Stobe]

Sorry to dig this one up, but the same guy is selling a bunch more of these monitors right now on ebay again.   I read all the posts here, but still am a bit fuzzy on the best hookup.

Would it be possible to go straight to this monitor with a TV-out card, just like you would a TV?  Is there any disadvantages to this versus using an ArcadeVGA card?

Also, is there anyone in the Virginia area that would want to grab one or two of these?  He quoted me a price for shipping, but said it would cost about the same to ship 4 of them.  Doing the quick math, it would be ballpark $130 shipped for these if someone wants to pick them up from me (if I grab some of course).

-Stobe

[Cuba]

These monitors are still around on Ebay, and although ive read through this thread a couple times, im still a little confused.

Terminatedrone made himself an S-Video to Composite BNC cable, which seems to work.

I saw that Giovanni got his monitor to run off standard arcade boards, nice job.

Macros did some work and got his to work with an arcadevga and a video amp, excellent.

If you guys read this (and are still interested in this topic at this point ), could one of you recap whats the best way to get one of these babies hooked up?  Arcadevga seem to work (with the amp), svideo seems to work, and standard jamma boards work.  Has anyone got a standard vga videocard to work? Is it possible?

Please bear in mind that while im reading to increase my knowledge in this area, Im not nearly as proficient with monitors as most of you.  MY experience is limited to decasing/discharging regular TVs with svideo input.