From: "Jules Richardson" <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 9:35 PM
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: boosting CRT heater voltage
Hi all,
I suspect some folk here have done this before.... :-)
My desktop CRT (over 10 years, but not what I'd consider vintage!) has
been ailing for some time, with the picture getting darker and darker
despite having the brightness at 100%. It's still good for high-contrast
stuff such as black text on white background, but forget trying to pull
details out of most photos, for instance.
Heater voltage seems good at 6.4VDC / 350mA (it's derived from the PSU in
this monitor rather than the flyback section), but I'm considering
boosting it a little and see if it improves things, obviously shortening
the life of the tube in the process.
Question is, what's a sensible amount to over-run things by? Say I aimed
for around 10%, is that too much and going to kill the heaters in next to
no time, or so little that unlikely to really make any useful difference?
cheers
Jules
Hmmm, I guess the specified heater voltage would be 6.3V (common value).
I do not know how much you can increase that and how much it will shorten
the life of the CRT. May be some "regeneration" of the tube will help, but I
have no idea how to do that. There are/were gizmos that did just that.
When the brightness went down because of loss of emission of the cathode,
I do not know how much increasing the heater voltage will help anyway.
- Henk.