Chuck Guzis wrote: It depends on the application (graphics? text?) and the LCD (what exact make and model?) LCDs are not made equal and I have seen some pretty crappy LCDs in the last year. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

On Sunday 02 December 2007 17:23, Chuck Guzis wrote: I dunno but I've been staring at this laptop screen for a number of months now, while I search for which box has the boards that were in my workstation that I need to rebuild. I expect I'll get that round tuit one of these days and then I'll have a side-by-side comparison as well. This is my first extensive use of other than a monitor, so it should be interesting going back again. I do know that Sony stuff does seem to work very nicely overall. I have a tv in the room here that I brought with me when I left NYC -- back in 1978! The tube is a bit worse for wear, but it mostly works just fine. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Likewise. I put up with this 19" behemoth because the colour is so nice. ObClassicCmp: starting to see more Commodore users at festivals with LCD monitors, like Larry. I still prefer a 1702 any day, but you can't beat it for convenience. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- BOND THEME NOW PLAYING: "The Living Daylights" -----------------------------

On Sunday 02 December 2007 23:57, Jim Leonard wrote: It does? I've only ever used the composite output on C64s. I can't find any references to a C65 having a TTL video output, only composite, Y/C, and an RF modulated output. And, who said "C64"? :) Maybe Cameron meant Amigas, C128s, etc... Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

On Sun, Dec 02, 2007 at 10:57:12PM -0600, Jim Leonard wrote: I have an HP 2035 right at my elbow that has composite input. Some LCDs will probably even have S-Video. Not all LCD monitors are limited to just DVI and VGA inputs. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 3-Dec-2007 at 05:10 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -27.4 F (-33.0 C) Windchill -40.3 F (-40.2 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 3.4 kts Grid 67 Barometer 678.4 mb (10689 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

Given the amount of stuff around with composite or S-video outputs, I would be very suprised if nobody makes a composite/S-video to DVI converter. -tony

I agree, a good CRT beats a good LCD. However, when restricted to the price ranges I can afford, LCDs beat CRTs all hollow. That's why I'm using LCDs - especially since most of the stuff I do has more need for the things LCDs are good at than the things they're bad at. (Well-defined pixels and non-washed-out thin vertical lines, for example, count for more for me than high-precision colour fidelity or a really dim black level.) I haven't tossed my CRTs, though. True. For a long time I used a 1600x1280 mono Sun monitor, and it was a real joy. But years ago it dimmed into unusability, and it looks as though the next thing I'm going to be able to afford that can approach it for crispness is probably going to be some kind of flat-panel. Yes, I'd rather have a good CRT instead. But money talks loudly here. :( Perhaps I just haven't found a good source for CRT screens.... /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

Depends on various factors, such as your local power rates, which I don't know. For me, it probably is not, since for much of the year the electricity is free (my place is heated with electricity, meaning that during the heating season it makes no difference to my electricity bill how much power the computers pull - if the computers don't convert that power to heat, the big resistor at the bottom of the wall will). I don't know; power consumption is totally not on my radar when selecting a display device for my desktop computers. I can tell you that the flat-screen I'm using right now (an Acer AL1716 B) is marked 100-240V, 50/60Hz, 1.0A, and, according to my clip-on ammeter, is actually pulling about 0.3A (at 120V, according to the voltage scale on that same meter). The Sun GDM 17E20 that's the one I'd use if I wanted to use a CRT is marked 100-240V, 50/60Hz, 1.7-1.2A, and, according to the same meter, draws from 0.6A (black screen) to 0.95A (white screen) at 122V. (Given how the technology works, I didn't bother comparing current draw for the flat-panel for black vs white screen.) So, it appears that the CRT draws two to three times the current, based on a sample of one CRT and one flat panel (is it LCD? probably, but I don't really know - I don't know what all the flat-panel technologies are). Since each one apparently uses a switching power supply, I do not expect there to be any corrections necessary to convert the difference in current into a difference in power, so I feel reasonably confident saying that the CRT draws two to three times the power, too. As for usability with classic machines, well, each one works with my SPARCstations. The CRT is better in that it can handle more of the resolutions the machines can provide, but that's not intrinsic to the technology - it's just a question of the driving electronics. This is a cheap flat-panel; it can't letterbox coarser resolutions than its native 1280x1024, which is a minor pain. The CRT does beat it in that regard. Depending on what you're planning on driving it with, this may or may not matter to you. But if I were to go looking to buy the CRT, a GDM 17E20 would doubtless cost me more than the flat-panel cost; the principal reason I bought the flat-screen is that work changed out the CRT for a flat-panel for my work desktop and it took only a day or two for the pixel distinctness difference to win me over. But, as I said upthread, I'm not tossing my CRTs, either. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On Monday 03 December 2007 12:20:08 Doc Shipley wrote: Yeah. Since switching from a Targa 19" CRT to a Belinea 22" LCD, it's been bloody freezing in the computer room. I've had to move to a house with better central heating. Gordon

I had no idea there were LCD's on vintage computers. Wow.

der Mouse wrote: And let's not forget the IBM PC Convertible with its pea-soup-green screen. Peace... Sridhar

On Monday 03 December 2007 09:43, Jay West wrote: TRS-80 Model 100? :) Oh, and I dare say you'll piss Evan off for saying something like that, and I know you definitely wouldn't want to do that. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

In article <01af01c835ba$e311c180$6400a8c0 at BILLING>, "Jay West" <jwest at classiccmp.org> writes: The Random Colleague is a vintage VT100 clone that is a portable laptop terminal with an LCD display. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

Jay West wrote: There are. There just aren't color ones. There are also plasma screens on classic computers, only not color ones. Peace... Sridhar

Jules Richardson wrote: Wise-ass. 8-) Peace... Sridhar

:-) More seriously, at one time, black, white (and therefor I assume grey) were not regarded as colours, since they involved all visible light wavelenghts. In the same way, at one time '1' was not classed as a number (!), -tony

Rumor has it that Jay West may have mentioned these words: You saw one on my CoCo3 almost a year-n-a-half ago! ;-) Admittedly, the LCD wasn't vintage. Technically, neither was the gizmo that makes it work... ;-) Which, BTW, if you'd ever used Tandy's CM5 or (not as bad, but still not great) CM8 monitors, you'd realize that an RGB->VGA upconverter run into a 17" LCD display running a "stretched" 640x480 into the native 1280x1024 _still_ looks much better, with less eyestrain! Most of y'all had access to nice workstation stuff earlier than I did - I worked with 106 columns on a nice, fuzzy .42mm dot pitch 13" CRT. That'll give ya headaches after a while! Tandy's CM5 (.51mm dot pitch) IMHO wasn't suitable for even 80-column use! I *love* my VGA & SVideo upconverters for my CoCo. Much better than the alternative! =-=-=-= Wasn't there a vintage color LCD available (but expensive) for the Apple ][ c or e series? I thought there was mention of that fact on the list in the past... but I haven't searched the archives, and I never really got into the Apples other than working on the ones the school had at the time. Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers zmerch at 30below.com Hi! I am a .signature virus. Copy me into your .signature to join in!

Rumor has it that Cameron Kaiser may have mentioned these words: I personally haven't (I purchased my CM-8 as soon as they were available... it still works!) but I know others have.... but the Sync's need to be inverted, IIRC. Googling quick shows this post, but for the other way 'round (Using a CM8 on a Miggy): http://five.pairlist.net/pipermail/coco/2007-July/031195.html I have all the stuff to build a couple cables to go from the CoCo3 to the Atari SC1224 (13-pin DIN, I have 2 of 'em) but haven't taken the time to build them as my VGA & SVideo converters work well, and my CM-8 *just* *won't* *die.* ;-) BTW, Roy Justus makes the CoCo3->VGA upconverter, and Chris Hawks makes the CoCo3->SVideo upconverter; both are on the CoCo mailing list over at www.maltedmedia.com. HTH, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | A new truth in advertising slogan SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy... zmerch at 30below.com | ...in oxymoron!"

I was lucky enough to snag an Apple ][c with LCD display about 5 years ago at a Goodwill. I think I ended up paying $40 for both. I was extremely lucky and now need to dig it out and play... Wasn't the best LCD diplay but for the day it was pretty neat. George Rachor

Jay West wrote: We have year 2000 Sun-branded LCD monitors with that funky Sun video connector native on the monitor, connected to machines that fit the bill of this list (ultra 2, etc). So yes, they are out there. Nice try, SarcasiMaster! :-) -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

On Monday 03 December 2007 23:23:01 Tony Duell wrote: I spotted this and thought "Aha, capacitor? Usually a resistor going high in my experiece! I'll reply and set this person straight". Then I spotted it was Tony, and now I'm keen to see what bizarre set of circumstances he diagnosed where a failing cap caused this. I really hope it's nothing as prosaic as a failing smoothing cap in the A2 supply... ;-) Gordon

On Wed, 2007-12-05 at 23:25 +0000, Tony Duell wrote: It seems particularly common with highish value resistors (more than a few hundred k) used at high voltages, even if the current through them is fairly tiny. It's *incredibly* common in old Sun monitors, I've found. Gordon

From: "Mr Ian Primus" Er, you guys *are* using the LCD's at their native resolution, I hope. Otherwise the monitor is interpolating on top of whatever your O/S is doing to scale and draw the image. In my experience, the monitor does a lousy job of this, so you definitely need to run an LCD at it's native resolution. Maybe you can set it up to letterbox the display from your classicmp gear :-). (I'm on a 24" Samsung LCD in 1920x1200 and liking it a lot, but it's *way* off topic :-).) Vince

It's amazing to me how people can go on for days about completely off-topic stuff like whether or not LCDs give people headaches, but completely ignore thread(s) about trying to fix classic gear. Pat On Sunday 02 December 2007 23:45, Vincent Slyngstad wrote: -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

On Monday 03 December 2007 22:40, Doc Shipley wrote: I wasn't picking out anyone in particular, just observing a trend... The post last night is what about 9 hours of troubleshooting this weekend has revealed. Unfortunately, none of the 4 RM02s I have seem to work with the controller, but I've only had the LA hooked up to one so far. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

The drive isn't just standard SMD; see Ethan's previous stories about not being able to de-decify an RM02/03 in the past. And, I'd rather run them as massbus drive than as SMD drives with a 3rd party controller if I can. I've got an RH11, and massbus controller for my 11/750 and 11/780, and no UNIBUS SMD controllers... Pat On Monday 03 December 2007 23:09, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

My experience is that the sharpest picture of all is produced by a properly-set up (and with proper exernal circuitry) delta gun CRT. Mabybe becuase the 3 phophor areas associated with a given pixel are closer together in that sort of CRT than in an in-line gun type (including the Trinitron). However, the problem with the delta gun CRT is that it has to be set up in the position it is going to be used. Stray magnetic fields really cause nasty convergence errors. That, I suspect, is why it fell out of fashion, it was not suitable for portable TVs/monitors, and it was not suitable for sets sold by 'box-shifters' I find this is another example of a very common trend. With consumer-grade stuff (I am not talking about top-end things), it seems that 'progress' means increased convenience and often lower quality. The flat-panel monitors/TVs might well be more convenient that the older CRT ones, but they dont' give such good results. There are plenty more really off-topic examples of this, which I won;t mention. I stick with CRTs for another (obvious if you know me) reason. I understand how they work, I can get most spares down to component level. WIth the LCD and plasma displays, the cmallest part the manufacturers supply to anytone is a complete PCB, and often they're only avaialble to service agents. No thanks!. I'll stick to BU208s, TDA1170s and the like ;-) -tony

Brad Parker wrote: Yep. Most Sun monitors where I work are Trinitrons. ...which is good, because you have to pay over $400 for an LCD that does better than 18-bit color. (Many advertise 24-bit but only process 6 bits per component internally) -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

On 3 Dec 2007, at 02:11, Doc Shipley wrote: I'm not sure if you're comparing your laptop's screen with a Mac connected to a Dell monitor, or a Dell PC generally. If it's the latter case then you shouldn't because fonts are handled differently between Mac & PC systems (although fonts under XP (and Vista?) should be sharper than OS X (up to 10.4, anyway)). Stroller.

On 5 Dec 2007 at 2:15, Teo Zenios wrote: I assume you mean "color" CRT. The resolution of a monochrome CRT is pretty close to infinite (at least limited by dot size, phosphor grain size and electronics). Isn't the highest-resolution color obtained with field-sequential systems? I seem to recall a Polaroid color photo setup for the PC that used a color wheel and a white (monochrome) CRT. (I also recall seing an octal socket on the back of some old 50's CBS color receivers tagged for the addition of a color wheel setup, but that's OT). Cheers, Chuck

Grant Stockly wrote: I'm reasonably certain the IBM T221 was 22.2". If memory serves, it was sold by IBM, Viewsonic and Iiyama. Peace... Sridhar

Stroller wrote: Yeah, I realized after sending that that I left off about half of what I meant to say. I was comparing my powerbook laptop screen to a Dell laptop screen of the same size and better resolution. The Mac wins hands-down. I also have a Mac G5 connected to a Samsung 172t LCD and a Dell 2007FP LCD. I'll grant that a $500 LCD won't do a couple of things as well as a $2500 CRT (my 21" SGI), like black blacks and fast motion neither of which is important to me. Otherwise, the Dell easily equals the SGI tube. And, to drag this sort-of on-topic, the Dell has composite-in that works fine with my Amigas and C128, although 40 columns at 20" is kind of scary. I couldn't speak to that either way. The only Windows systems I spend time with are classroom systems, and they're invariably cheap 17" LCDs. *Those* are perfectly awful. Doc

Patrick Finnegan wrote: I haven't, but it most certainly should be because modern LCD monitors usually have better comb filters than older units... -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

On Wed, 5 Dec 2007, Tony Duell wrote: I would certainly never claim that it is pleasant to use, nor even practical, but I have seen 80 column text (CGA) on some color NTSC displays that are "READABLE". B&W composite monitors are "usable" on CGA, in either mode 2 or 3.

Chuck Guzis wrote: Personally I find that LCDs give me a headache - I can use the one on this Dell (*spit*!) laptop for a couple of hours, but for every desktop one I've seen so far I can't get more than an hour out of it before I need a good, long break. Maybe I've just never used the LCD equivalent of the high-end Sonys and Iiyamas in the CRT world that I've always been used to? I find the extra sharpness of an LCD to be a drawback except for very specific kinds of work - for a lot of typical applications I just find everything too crisp for comfortable use (which may be related to the headache issue above). A *good* CRT I find to be about spot-on - sharp enough for everyday use but not too sharp as to be annoying. Problem is, a lot of people have poor CRTs to begin with, or don't do any adjustments over the years, all of which gives them a bad name. Oh, I also *like* the bulk of a CRT - for the bigger 19" and 21" screens, there's a useful place on top of the display to park paperwork and things (without blocking the vents, of course!). With an LCD, I'd still need it the same distance from my chair, keyboard etc., but it's not really practical to go stuffing things behind it. Despite the smaller volume, I actually lose functional space. Sadly a CRT won't win out on the power front. As for longevity - remains to be seen. But with routine maintenance CRTs of ten years ago are still fine (and of course we all have much older ones on our vintage gear). Plus I feel better about reusing an existing product and keeping it out of landfill than I do buying a new product (with all the manufacturing 'impact' involved). I certainly like the discussions around modern practices vs. old. (I keep meaning to mention how I actually seem to have *less* useful real-estate in my modern email client than I did in something running on a 80x25 display of 15 years ago :-) 'Progress' is a strange old thing... cheers Jules