IBM 5151 (MDA display) - common faults / gotchas?

[Jules Richardson]

On 11/07/2014 07:00 PM, Jules Richardson wrote:
>
> So, my local bookstore guy has an IBM 5151 monitor for sale

Well, I ended up picking it up yesterday - and it works fine :-)

I'd forgotten about the long persistence phosphor in the CRT until Tony 
mentioned it - is it highly temperature-dependent? I was running the 
machine in a cold room (~57F/14C) and it was taking close on 20 seconds for 
an image to decay completely. I've no problem with that, because the 
brightness tails off quickly at first and so it's perfectly usable - I just 
don't remember it taking anything like that long on the 5151 I had over in 
England (where I don't think I would ever have run that one at so low an 
ambient temperature)

cheers

Jules