You'll find that MANY of the 19" monitors are optimized for odd formats.
This is particularly true of DEC monitors. In fact, DEC seemingly made
certain their monitors would be totally useless for anything other than
their intended application by choosing some odd geometries e.g. 1152x831,
and the like, and by using very strange sync combinations and wierd
front-porch/back-porch timing.
I have invested a great deal of effort into attempting to adapt various
surplus fixed-frequency monitors to PC-use, and, under the best of
circumstances, found only one, out of the dozen or so combinations of
adapter card and monitor that I tried out, could be made to work adequately.
The card was a Photon board with a customized BIOS ROM that made it work OK
with a SONY GDM 1950, which is a very common and popular model, but some of
their other attempts at setting the BIOS parameters to work as a
general-purpose monitor tended to interfere with other functions, e.g. tape
drive, mouse, etc.
I've concluded that the best thing to do with a fixed-frequency monitor
that's not made for your particular application is to give it away or toss
it.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: Adrian Graham <agraham(a)ccat.co.uk>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2000 4:12 AM
Subject: RE: Back to the A1097C monitor again
As you can
see, there's ample opportunity for lots of work.
When you're done, however, you still have a fixed-frequency monitor,
though a nice one, and need another monitor and an A/B switch box
to switch the signal to the multisync monitor for text and other uses.
Like I said . . . it's a pain in the gluteus maximus.
A pretty decent 20" Sylvania multisync monitor with
really bright and sharp, as well as linear, image costs $279
at Costco.
Thanks for that, but TBH it's not worth the effort. I've got schematics
for
an SVGA-5 BNC box that I might build sometime, but
before I even do that
I've got to sort the monitor itself out.
a