<In any case, if there was no other problem, feeding it a mistimed signal <would most likely result in something on the screen - maybe not locked, <probably not centred. But there would be _something_. Therein lies the problem. First the levels form most of the 1861 based designs are poor or sloppy. The front and back porches are a bit wide. Likely the problem will be solved when the said cosmac get's it's circuit fixed. FYI: I have a cosmac design that has the 1861, the driver for the video circuit was an emitter follower with a series resistor and no load to ground. When hooled to a hign impedence input monitor (or with with the 75ohm load switched off) it produced no useable output. The fix was chnge the output stated to have the correct DC offset and self completing. This in the end was not a VR201 <or any other monitor> problem just a design that deliberately minimized cost/components with attendant side effects. Allison