Picked up this beast from a friend for $50. Totally worth it. It's quite old (1998) but he picked it up from a studio about 4 years ago and never used it, so the tube is quite healthy. The antiglare film isn't scratched either.
At first it had some real nasty horizontal convergence issues, which seemed odd as the monitor had no top/bottom convergence controls, the ones in the menu only dealt with "balance" ie i could make the top or bottom right but not both. Nothing inside either, the top of the deflection assembly had two vertical convergence controls and that was it. Well, tapping that assembly made the issue go away, so it's likely that it simply got knocked during transport.
With that convergence issue gone, the picture quality is phenomenal. I don't think i've ever seen a CRT set get even close to this degree of definition. A resolution of 1600x1200 is very well possible - i used to run 1440x1080 on my 19" Nokia, but it had some uncorrectable convergence issues which made the overall picture "bearable" but not more than that.
The SMPS transformer in this thing is HUGE btw, the monitor itself is only rated for 200-something watts but it looks like the core could do 1kW. Next to it there's a 470uF 400 volt Rubycon capacitor which makes it look even more impressive.
It does still have some minor issues which i would attribute to aged capacitors. First of all, the picture size changes a little. It enlarges a few millimeters, then goes back. It doesn't happen all the time and it is only noticeable if i look at it. Second, very high contrast items leave a little bit of trail on their right. Only noticeable on white background.
I don't have a service manual for the thing so any ideas on what area to recap would be welcome. The usual suspects IMO would be the ones around the flyback but i would like a second opinion. Other than this it is a truly awesome display and it'll have a place on my desk for many years to come. I have my reasons why i don't like LCDs, i mean sure, my laptops have nice screens but they have their flaws.
At first it had some real nasty horizontal convergence issues, which seemed odd as the monitor had no top/bottom convergence controls, the ones in the menu only dealt with "balance" ie i could make the top or bottom right but not both. Nothing inside either, the top of the deflection assembly had two vertical convergence controls and that was it. Well, tapping that assembly made the issue go away, so it's likely that it simply got knocked during transport.
With that convergence issue gone, the picture quality is phenomenal. I don't think i've ever seen a CRT set get even close to this degree of definition. A resolution of 1600x1200 is very well possible - i used to run 1440x1080 on my 19" Nokia, but it had some uncorrectable convergence issues which made the overall picture "bearable" but not more than that.
The SMPS transformer in this thing is HUGE btw, the monitor itself is only rated for 200-something watts but it looks like the core could do 1kW. Next to it there's a 470uF 400 volt Rubycon capacitor which makes it look even more impressive.
It does still have some minor issues which i would attribute to aged capacitors. First of all, the picture size changes a little. It enlarges a few millimeters, then goes back. It doesn't happen all the time and it is only noticeable if i look at it. Second, very high contrast items leave a little bit of trail on their right. Only noticeable on white background.
I don't have a service manual for the thing so any ideas on what area to recap would be welcome. The usual suspects IMO would be the ones around the flyback but i would like a second opinion. Other than this it is a truly awesome display and it'll have a place on my desk for many years to come. I have my reasons why i don't like LCDs, i mean sure, my laptops have nice screens but they have their flaws.
And for some reason Sony's trademark Trinitron is what i like to call it. Has the trademark two horizontal wires as well. AFAIK Mitsubishi called it Diamondtron, i used to drool at those monitors in stores back when i was a kid and all i had was a 15" monitor named "Axion". Yes, like the dishwashing product...
Comment