A Miraculous little monochrome Super VGA CRT monitor, as last seen in my IBM ThinkPad "Halftop" video in 2009: • IBM ThinkPad "halftop" #retro #crt #pc
@@markarca6360 I think it meant a more personal affair. Dismantled a hairdryer from 1981, had a simple label signed by hand telling of the tech who assembled and tested it. Also saw a very old Sony TV broken on the sideway, the tube had a stamped and hand signed japanese QA sticker with serial. You actually had names and faces attached to QA.
Little monitors are cute, I have a 9 or 10" (not measured it!) RGB monitor branded as a "Torch", which was a British computer company that mostly made peripherals for the ubiquitous BBC Micro line of 8-bit computers, and they had a go at making their own known as the"Triple-X", and used a Sony Trinitron monitor chassis in their own outer shell, and using a DIY cable, I have it working nicely with my Amiga 600, after spending an age trying to get the monitor to actually power up of course, which was a PITA of a process!!! :P
I feel that you should hook it up to a PS1-PS5. ツ Also, this guy should hook his Miracle monitor to a PS4 or something or a gaming system. See how many FPS/latency that old CRT could get.
If they were produced until 2002 - you shouldn't have been surprised to find one in 2012 - aftet that they probably woul've worn out if being in use the whole time.
@@rkan2 they’re probably sold off in liquidation sales when that store closed down nearly a decade ago, I know they long replaced those CRT registers with the flat screen IBM or the NCR registers.
I absolutely love it. Pre-youtube footage for sure, thanks so much VWL for sharing that - really was so cool to see. Reminded me of the newly released Depeche Mode 101 now in HD. A lot of people from my youth now seen in high def.
Now that's fairly easy enough to do if you are specie or even HDMI depending on what the computer supports but as you know you can go to two HDMI from other types of ports of course with the right Hardware that is.
It is surprising how many people didn't know about that these monochrome VGA monitors existed. I had one, my first VGA monitor that I used with msdos and Windows 3.11. I think it did max VGA, 640x480 but its image was clear, sharp, very beautiful. And did not tired the eyes. Mine was something 12", I remember it being smaller than the next one, a 14" color SVGA monitor. I think they were used in banks, offices as a low-cost alternative for more expensive - at the time - color monitors. I still want to find one but those I found are quite expensive and are very rare.
@@chucku00 Around 2007-2008, in a supermarket I noticed that all the old yellowed beige terminals were gone, replaced with new LCD terminals. When I went out, near a rear door I saw them. A big pile of monitors, boxes, mouses and keyboards. So, I chose a full set. At home, connected all together and on the screen appeared only a prompt complaining that could not connect the main network or something like that. The monitor was a 7" monochrome, connected to a box that I understand to be a network computer. It had 4M of memory (72 pin SDRAM), no HDD, floppy or interfaces for them, a 286 CPU and no extension slots except two PS2 ports for keyboard and mouse. At first I thought that is a monochrome Hercules but the fine dots on the screen made me think that was indeed VGA. It blowed the PSU when trying to connect the thing to my main XP computer via a RS232 serial port. The monitor and the main computer were powered by a single PSU in the monitor and the cable between them was not detachable. It was the cutest monitor I ever saw. I still have the keyboard because is a special one with all the keys custom definable.
In the days before the internet I had a customer who used these for information display all over the office. The signal was TTL 5v and as time passed, they were getting harder and harder to find, ordering from computer magazine catalogs when they died. Man, I miss those days sometimes when you had to be alive and not just point and click without thinking.
It's amazing how far technology has progressed and how quickly. Just one human generation ago it was a perfectly reasonable question to ask if a monitor was colour or not. And if it was colour then that meant whatever company or individual owned it must have been doing reasonably well financially. Last time I saw any monochrome monitor in actual use was about a decade ago for an old CCTV system and it was replaced at that time.
About those newer systems and older monitors btw-- On any modern nVidia GPU with a VGA-out (or converted) you can still use nvidia control panel today to create and force any interlaced or custom-refresh rate resolutions, and get those old beasties working just fine!
@@amystery5238 My RTX2060 has a fully functional DP-to-VGA converter currently driving a 46" TV at 1080p, but I promise the good old CRT also outputs just fine, interlaced modes included :) either way some F1 2021 on it shows no noticeable delay with the hdmi monitor it's cloned to, responsiveness is great.
I beg to differ, your a miracle! I remember seeing this on that old "half top". I also remember your earliest videos. What you had to endure in your coming out video. Your growth as a man and a RUclipsr! I've seen it all, and I am proud of you!
It's good to see Vwestlife not forgetting his non-English-speaking viewers when he converts the weight of this monitor to kilograms (1:32 on the video) 👍. The imperial system seems so weird for countries where metric system is used. As always a good video, "true black and white" as monochrome monitor seems rare on my country, I've seen orange or green tint monitors instead.
FWIW: Even though I am an American citizen -- and proudly so 🇺🇲 -- I prefer using metric measurements at least when it comes to hobby and model work in the millimeter or centimeter ranges. Why? Because *FRACTIONS HATE ME.* So I do my best to *HATE THEM BACK.* 😊 My brain seems to be able to handle decimals and percentages much better than fractions.
@@dennisneo1608 See 1:32 on the video you will understand, metric system is the norm outside USA and UK, so it's good to see Vwestlife converting between the 2 systems. United States customary units are sometimes confused with imperial units, but the result is the same for someone who lives in a country where the metric system is the norm: he will not understand anything about these American units of measurement, so it is preferable for a youTuber who has an international audience to favor the system metric.
I still use green and amber themes in my linux terminal today.... Maybe it is just me, but even on more modern TFT monitors or laptops it is easier to read* green or amber text on black background. /*typo corrected. It was "red" before..
There's two Sanjin, one that makes karaoke machine since 1994 and another one unrelated (?) founded in 1997 clearly a state owned electronic supplier to the Chinese military. Maybe they still have these cutsy monitors flickering somewhere in a tank or a submarines...
The pinouts and high voltage needs may be identical, but your computer monitors will have a much tighter dot pitch than even the best TV tube. (For VGA, .31mm dot pitch is just "good enough", while a high end TV might have a .75mm dot pitch tube, and most are worse.) I used to see a lot of similar tiny color CRT monitors hooked up to computers in gas stations and convenience stores. Those too seem to have been made well into the early 2000s. I had one that would run 1024x768 at higher refresh rates, with microcontroller based adjustments and an outstanding color picture...until it fell off a computer and that was the end of the CRT heater. I'd like to find another at some point... Funny you'd upload this today, as I just so happened to rescue a brand new in box IBM 8503 monochrome VGA monitor for PS/2s.
Monochrome CRTs don't have a dot pitch, although there is still a difference between "TV-grade" black & white phosphor (which is more blueish and has a short persistence) and "computer-grade" B&W phosphor (which is "paper white" and has a slightly longer persistence to reduce flicker). And as I mentioned, computer monitors typically have an anti-glare coating, while TVs generally do not.
Yeah, they've always been liars but they are out of control now. Every exterior pic I see is altered to show every room lit, every light on and you can tell they go crazy with the smudge tool. They look ridiculous. Realtors are now basically doing to houses what girls do to their dating profile pics. Not sure how realtors can get away with that, when you go to look at the house you see cracks and imperfections that aren't present in the photos. Remember when they discovered the fisheye lens?
I bought a brand new version of this a couple of years ago for about £22, I've put it in a mac classic case I bought empty with a G4 mac mini running os9.
There were Miracle brand B&W TTL monitors too. A few years ago when I needed a TTL monitor for my IBM PC AT 5170 I picked up a new in box Miracle MT102S. It appears to work with either MDA or CGA style video (I'm not sure about EGA), which makes it very useful for 80s PCs and clones.
I wish someone still made new small VGA color CRTs that can do the 70 Hz modes used in DOS games. At some point the old monitors will die and then there's no good way to do retro gaming anymore.
Are new LCDs having trouble with DOS resolutions? I just bought an ultra-wide, and granted I've only used it with a Mac so far, but all of my other monitors do 720x400 @ 70Hz just fine. There's always the OSSC and friends as well.
@@nickwallette6201 OLEDs are the only technology since CRTs that have acceptable contrast. Unfortunately many models don't scan natively at 70 Hz, but just "resample" to 60 Hz or 120 Hz which both results in jittery scrolls instead of the buttery smooth 70 Hz VGA with analog CRTs, perhaps the newer ones do now. Other technologies like LCDs are basically unusable in my opinion, because the image is not at all faithful with poor contrast and many other issues. Pixel perfect scaling with analog VGA doesn't generally speaking work well and the signal quality being converted from analog back to digital is basically never as good as direct analog interface to CRT, all kinds of small noise and interference there even with high end ADCs. With FPGA that emulates the entire PC in principle perfect results can be accomplished, but so far there isn't an FPGA that does pixel perfect native 4K 70 Hz and the FPGAs can only do some 486 level stuff for the moment anyway, and there are bugs in the cores as well. FPGA with OLED supporting native 4K, 70 Hz and P2 level hardware could in principle be nearly perfect solution if it existed, but CRTs still give in some ways more genuine experience. Even if FPGA solutions were perfected, there is still a minor issue in that modern displays cannot match CRT because to accomplish true pixel perfection the X- and Y-scalers need to be integer multiple of the original resolution while matching the aspect ratio or else there are scaling artifacts. Avoiding the artifacts is theoretical impossibility otherwise. This in general results in resolutions that don't fill the entire screen even in vertical direction and a lot of screen real estate is wasted and black border are not nice. Basically at the moment there is no good way to plug in a Pentium 2 era DOS machine to modern OLED and achieve the same level of perfection one can do with CRT. I'm pretty happy where FPGAs are going, but there will always be some need for CRTs with people really into retro.
@@amystery5238 Indeed. CRTs were and still are a wonderful technology. The era between CRTs and OLEDs was a sad one. Nothing came even close to CRT before OLED. Built-in scalers still kind of suck though and ADCs don't do proper justice to VGA signals. FPGA with scanline based minimum latency scaling + low latency OLED is kind of bridging the gap finally, but we are not there yet and I think there will always be room for the genuine CRT experience because of the aspect ratio if for no other reason.
@@amystery5238 When you go to 144Hz or even 240Hz - the latency is definitely no longer an issue even if you can still slightly feel it compared to a 120Hz CRT.
Also I remember seeing that same monitor in use when you tested your IBM 5150 after the cap in the videocard exploded back in 2008/2009 if my memory serves me
I almost forgot these existed. There used to be a bunch of these at a local Bed Bath & Beyond several years ago. I haven't seen any of these tiny monitors recently however :(
I had somewhere a simple resistor circuit for combining RGB into monochrome, but I cant seem to find it now. That would allow all VGA outputs to work with proper grey scales.
Some 25 years ago, when I worked for a company doing a lot of Linux server installations and services we had a bunch of those and we loved them! They were brilliant when you needed some temporary console output from a server.
I have a very similar Canon monitor, it's a bit larger but other than that it's extremely similar to this one down to the power button and front controls being virtually identical. Really hoping to get more use out of it but the only resolution I've managed to properly drive it at takes up only about 50% of the display. It's from around 1996 as well, originally came with a Canon "desktop publisher" thing that I desperately need to take some more pictures of since it seems pretty obscure.
I still have a black and white monitor that is still in its original box and hardly used. I got it with a Hercules video card back in the early nineties as part of a PC XT from a digital electronics repair course I took back then. It was from the now defunct NRI school of home studies in electronics. It was a fantastic course and I was saddened when NRI closed its doors for good back in 1999, I believe. You just don't find great home study courses like that anymore. They gave me TONS of electronic stuff AND equipment like an oscilloscope with my course and the teachers were great! Now, everything is just done online by reading and you have to supply your own stuff if you actually want "hands on" study. It's a giant step backwards in learning, I feel. 😕 PS: My late mom helped me to pay for that course back then. Thanks mom! I miss you! See you and dad one day again in the future..... ❤❤
I played Need for speed 1 in a black and white monitor back in the late 90s. It is in a computer lab of the school where my father worked as a teacher. Good times
I realize there are people who have been alive 20 plus years who have never seen a black and white screen like this of any kind. Maybe a calculator but nothing like this. I remember when color screens of any kind were a premium tech item. Now eve toasters have animated color screens.
It seems that this monitor was made at about the same time that I turned 18 years old. My 18th birthday was on May 11th, 2002. So this year I'll be 38. Also, it looks like that Windows XP PC is running some of the sidebar gadgets from Windows Vista.
The Culture Club song was originall called _It's America,_ but they decided to change it. When you sing it with the original title, the lyrics actually make sense.
nice review VW...I still remember briefly running an Apple II through a 9" B&W TV with a pixie-verter. For some reason that seemed much clearer to me than a 12" green or amber monochrome monitors for text
These monitors, intalled in cash registers, have always attracted my attention, so I wanted one. But I was not lucky, in thrift stores they weren't available and my friend, who professionally repaired these cash registers, told me he was not gonna sell me older one for some 15 bucks, while he could earn more with it. Many years later I found one in scrape yard, but with cash software GUI heavily burnt into the phosphor, so I didn't even bother to pick it up. These were used till death.
I recently built a Windows XP PC for old games and I have GTX 460 SE installed in it, it only has DVI-I ports but I have it connected to my HDMI capture card, but I noticed there is a possibility for an interlaced mode for some resolutions, but I don't have an CRT monitor, so I can't really test the analog output properly.
Also, that keyboard PC, you wouldn't happen to know where to get a disk image of that thing? I completely screwed mine up (and also deleted the restore partition to freeup space on the tiny eMMC storage, without backing it up first!!!) and now it's just a little black lemon of a door wedge... :S
remember seeing a load of these for sale years ago after a shop clearance, probably mostly from cash registers... they were like $5 a pop... wish I had actually bought a couple
That little monitor is still pretty cool! And yes, I also saw them mostly at POS machines. And dang! Now that's lazy! Voice activated coffee maker! Gawd! Reminds me of this gem, ruclips.net/video/qB_I1YBAozE/видео.html
I used to run a 12" B&W TV for my Commodore 64 as I couldn't afford a colour TV. the add you showed around the 2.40 mark looked like an old DSE or Dick Smith Electronics one.
These 9 inches CRTs were also produced in huge numbers for the Minitel (around 10 million units), telematic terminals used in France from 1982 to 2012.
Back in the late 1980's & early 1990's, I needed a PC monitor. However, they were all still relatively expensive, from $200 or $300 usd & up. But the one kind of monitor that was cheaper was the black & white version. I could find them for less than $200, maybe $150. Usually they were called "paper white" monitors. Fortunately I did not buy one, as all my monitors that I have since kept are color. Since XGA interlaced was also mentioned in the video, I do have one from the early 1990's, which maxxes out to 1024x768 interlaced at 43hz. It is an Edison brand, probably bought at Incredible Universe when that store was still around. If you have an old Cirrus Logic GD type video card, those can have drivers for 43hz interlaced. I still have those videocards & that was the setup I had in the 1990's & early 2000's for at least one PC. Unless I am forced to, I prefer not to view on XGA interlaced anymore, as that is just one pixel away from getting eye strain (again).
I will say, those 14-inch IBM-branded monitors had really nice color saturation. I usually picked a PS2 rather than a 386 in the computer labs for this reason. I'm not sure if they could even get 800X600, though most of us were running WordPerfect 5.1 and CShow in those days.
7:30 I distinctly remember being able to set the display to interlaced mode if you go to advanced graphics options -> list all modes -> then it should show the option for interlaced modes.
Sears used the little CRT monitors on their point of sale devices but i thought those monitors were proprietary or at most MDA compatible.... never thought to look for one..... and ooh boy does that 1024x768@43hz interlaced mode bring back blurry memories... used it with a samsung syncmaster 3... the flicker was visible only when things moved, but trust me, its there... and it gets old after a while... edit: on 'newer computers' you can usually tell linux to use the 43hz mode... i have no idea how to in windows...
CRT manufacture for the US market was banned in the late 2000's due to the lead necessary to shield the user from the tube's radiation output. NOS and used CRTs are still legal to resell. I understand that CRTs are still manufactured in India and China for markets where they are still legal. With the low price of modern CRTs (In the US I can buy a new 32 inch LED television for about $120, I bought the same brand and size in early 2016 and am still using it right now in February 2022, it actually makes a decent monitor) I can't see how a CRT could be any cheaper, though. Smaller LED televisions and monitors are as low as about $80 new and are twice the viewable image size as the monitor in this video. CRTs also use twice (or more) the electricity of even one of the older LCD flat screen TVs/monitors. There is a place for CRTs but for most people they simply aren't practical or economical.
@@mharris5047 Another aspect of them is heat. Perhaps not an issue if there's only one or two in the room or in countries with a cold climate but I've worked in a control room with a whole wall full of them. Suffice to say the heat given off was quite something and really warmed the place up.
Bring back memories. I had a 13" monochrome VGA in the early 90s, unfortunately I don't recall the name but it started with an "M". And no, not Magnavox.
Наука
That's actually a cute little display
Back when “QC Passed” stickers actually meant something.
Shots fired... nope never mind it misfired
@@JohnSmith-xq1pz Hah I see what you did there.
@@markm0000 lol
It means that the device passed quality control inspection.
@@markarca6360 I think it meant a more personal affair. Dismantled a hairdryer from 1981, had a simple label signed by hand telling of the tech who assembled and tested it. Also saw a very old Sony TV broken on the sideway, the tube had a stamped and hand signed japanese QA sticker with serial.
You actually had names and faces attached to QA.
Little monitors are cute, I have a 9 or 10" (not measured it!) RGB monitor branded as a "Torch", which was a British computer company that mostly made peripherals for the ubiquitous BBC Micro line of 8-bit computers, and they had a go at making their own known as the"Triple-X", and used a Sony Trinitron monitor chassis in their own outer shell, and using a DIY cable, I have it working nicely with my Amiga 600, after spending an age trying to get the monitor to actually power up of course, which was a PITA of a process!!! :P
I feel that you should hook it up to a PS1-PS5. ツ Also, this guy should hook his Miracle monitor to a PS4 or something or a gaming system. See how many FPS/latency that old CRT could get.
Black and white CRTs are always so sharp looking because you don't have the colour mask. Great stuff
Those miracle B&W CRT monitors were used at stores, I used to work at Rite Aid and we were still using those monitors in the 2000s!
If they were produced until 2002 - you shouldn't have been surprised to find one in 2012 - aftet that they probably woul've worn out if being in use the whole time.
@@rkan2 they’re probably sold off in liquidation sales when that store closed down nearly a decade ago, I know they long replaced those CRT registers with the flat screen IBM or the NCR registers.
The last time I recall seeing those monitors still in use in stores was in 2013.
@@jimdayton8837 probably because those monitors are really reliable.
God the halftop. Thats a throwback. I almost forgot about it!
I absolutely love it. Pre-youtube footage for sure, thanks so much VWL for sharing that - really was so cool to see. Reminded me of the newly released Depeche Mode 101 now in HD. A lot of people from my youth now seen in high def.
Now that's fairly easy enough to do if you are specie or even HDMI depending on what the computer supports but as you know you can go to two HDMI from other types of ports of course with the right Hardware that is.
It is surprising how many people didn't know about that these monochrome VGA monitors existed. I had one, my first VGA monitor that I used with msdos and Windows 3.11. I think it did max VGA, 640x480 but its image was clear, sharp, very beautiful. And did not tired the eyes. Mine was something 12", I remember it being smaller than the next one, a 14" color SVGA monitor.
I think they were used in banks, offices as a low-cost alternative for more expensive - at the time - color monitors. I still want to find one but those I found are quite expensive and are very rare.
14 B&W monitors were also used in the 90's in big supermarkets when Wyse terminals were replaced with light clients PCs using Windows NT.
@@chucku00 Around 2007-2008, in a supermarket I noticed that all the old yellowed beige terminals were gone, replaced with new LCD terminals. When I went out, near a rear door I saw them. A big pile of monitors, boxes, mouses and keyboards. So, I chose a full set. At home, connected all together and on the screen appeared only a prompt complaining that could not connect the main network or something like that.
The monitor was a 7" monochrome, connected to a box that I understand to be a network computer. It had 4M of memory (72 pin SDRAM), no HDD, floppy or interfaces for them, a 286 CPU and no extension slots except two PS2 ports for keyboard and mouse. At first I thought that is a monochrome Hercules but the fine dots on the screen made me think that was indeed VGA. It blowed the PSU when trying to connect the thing to my main XP computer via a RS232 serial port. The monitor and the main computer were powered by a single PSU in the monitor and the cable between them was not detachable.
It was the cutest monitor I ever saw. I still have the keyboard because is a special one with all the keys custom definable.
In the days before the internet I had a customer who used these for information display all over the office. The signal was TTL 5v and as time passed, they were getting harder and harder to find, ordering from computer magazine catalogs when they died. Man, I miss those days sometimes when you had to be alive and not just point and click without thinking.
If i was ever going to see one of these again, I knew I could count on your channel to be the one to show it off!
Monochrome displays were everywhere in offices back in the day because they were cheaper but also sharper and clearer than CGA colour monitors.
It's amazing how far technology has progressed and how quickly. Just one human generation ago it was a perfectly reasonable question to ask if a monitor was colour or not. And if it was colour then that meant whatever company or individual owned it must have been doing reasonably well financially.
Last time I saw any monochrome monitor in actual use was about a decade ago for an old CCTV system and it was replaced at that time.
About those newer systems and older monitors btw-- On any modern nVidia GPU with a VGA-out (or converted) you can still use nvidia control panel today to create and force any interlaced or custom-refresh rate resolutions, and get those old beasties working just fine!
@@amystery5238 My RTX2060 has a fully functional DP-to-VGA converter currently driving a 46" TV at 1080p, but I promise the good old CRT also outputs just fine, interlaced modes included :) either way some F1 2021 on it shows no noticeable delay with the hdmi monitor it's cloned to, responsiveness is great.
I beg to differ, your a miracle! I remember seeing this on that old "half top". I also remember your earliest videos. What you had to endure in your coming out video. Your growth as a man and a RUclipsr! I've seen it all, and I am proud of you!
It's good to see Vwestlife not forgetting his non-English-speaking viewers when he converts the weight of this monitor to kilograms (1:32 on the video) 👍.
The imperial system seems so weird for countries where metric system is used.
As always a good video, "true black and white" as monochrome monitor seems rare on my country, I've seen orange or green tint monitors instead.
FWIW: Even though I am an American citizen -- and proudly so 🇺🇲 -- I prefer using metric measurements at least when it comes to hobby and model work in the millimeter or centimeter ranges.
Why? Because *FRACTIONS HATE ME.* So I do my best to *HATE THEM BACK.* 😊
My brain seems to be able to handle decimals and percentages much better than fractions.
Non English??? What does that have to do with weights and measures?
@@dennisneo1608 See 1:32 on the video you will understand,
metric system is the norm outside USA and UK, so it's good to see Vwestlife converting between the 2 systems. United States customary units are sometimes confused with imperial units, but the result is the same for someone who lives in a country where the metric system is the norm: he will not understand anything about these American units of measurement, so it is preferable for a youTuber who has an international audience to favor the system metric.
@@techmaster-ch5yd actually it's the norm outside the USA period. the UK mostly uses metric, except in a few areas like food and road signs
Had that monitor, used it until far into 2005 as a console for a (home) server
What a lovely picture! I love monochrome displays, especially green and amber.
I still use green and amber themes in my linux terminal today.... Maybe it is just me, but even on more modern TFT monitors or laptops it is easier to read* green or amber text on black background.
/*typo corrected. It was "red" before..
There's two Sanjin, one that makes karaoke machine since 1994 and another one unrelated (?) founded in 1997 clearly a state owned electronic supplier to the Chinese military. Maybe they still have these cutsy monitors flickering somewhere in a tank or a submarines...
You can convert RGB to just luminance by connecting the RGB lines to specific value resistors.
The pinouts and high voltage needs may be identical, but your computer monitors will have a much tighter dot pitch than even the best TV tube. (For VGA, .31mm dot pitch is just "good enough", while a high end TV might have a .75mm dot pitch tube, and most are worse.)
I used to see a lot of similar tiny color CRT monitors hooked up to computers in gas stations and convenience stores. Those too seem to have been made well into the early 2000s. I had one that would run 1024x768 at higher refresh rates, with microcontroller based adjustments and an outstanding color picture...until it fell off a computer and that was the end of the CRT heater. I'd like to find another at some point...
Funny you'd upload this today, as I just so happened to rescue a brand new in box IBM 8503 monochrome VGA monitor for PS/2s.
Monochrome CRTs don't have a dot pitch, although there is still a difference between "TV-grade" black & white phosphor (which is more blueish and has a short persistence) and "computer-grade" B&W phosphor (which is "paper white" and has a slightly longer persistence to reduce flicker). And as I mentioned, computer monitors typically have an anti-glare coating, while TVs generally do not.
@@vwestlife I had forgotten that and stand corrected.
Real estate agents probably used something similar to make small rooms appear huge in photos.
Yeah, they've always been liars but they are out of control now. Every exterior pic I see is altered to show every room lit, every light on and you can tell they go crazy with the smudge tool. They look ridiculous. Realtors are now basically doing to houses what girls do to their dating profile pics. Not sure how realtors can get away with that, when you go to look at the house you see cracks and imperfections that aren't present in the photos. Remember when they discovered the fisheye lens?
@@peterjszerszen It’s a good time to be a real estate agent now. They’re making stupid amounts of money.
I loved that little video with the coffee maker
I knew you'd sample a bit of Boy George lol
Also, I do remember the Halftop... God I'm getting old.
I bought a brand new version of this a couple of years ago for about £22, I've put it in a mac classic case I bought empty with a G4 mac mini running os9.
I bet that's a fun little machine!
There were Miracle brand B&W TTL monitors too. A few years ago when I needed a TTL monitor for my IBM PC AT 5170 I picked up a new in box Miracle MT102S. It appears to work with either MDA or CGA style video (I'm not sure about EGA), which makes it very useful for 80s PCs and clones.
I had a "H H Scott" branded SVGA B&W monitor in the early 90s...
I wish someone still made new small VGA color CRTs that can do the 70 Hz modes used in DOS games. At some point the old monitors will die and then there's no good way to do retro gaming anymore.
Just learn to repair them. The only really irreplaceable part is the picture tube, and even those can have extra life dragged out of them.
Are new LCDs having trouble with DOS resolutions? I just bought an ultra-wide, and granted I've only used it with a Mac so far, but all of my other monitors do 720x400 @ 70Hz just fine.
There's always the OSSC and friends as well.
@@nickwallette6201 OLEDs are the only technology since CRTs that have acceptable contrast. Unfortunately many models don't scan natively at 70 Hz, but just "resample" to 60 Hz or 120 Hz which both results in jittery scrolls instead of the buttery smooth 70 Hz VGA with analog CRTs, perhaps the newer ones do now. Other technologies like LCDs are basically unusable in my opinion, because the image is not at all faithful with poor contrast and many other issues. Pixel perfect scaling with analog VGA doesn't generally speaking work well and the signal quality being converted from analog back to digital is basically never as good as direct analog interface to CRT, all kinds of small noise and interference there even with high end ADCs. With FPGA that emulates the entire PC in principle perfect results can be accomplished, but so far there isn't an FPGA that does pixel perfect native 4K 70 Hz and the FPGAs can only do some 486 level stuff for the moment anyway, and there are bugs in the cores as well. FPGA with OLED supporting native 4K, 70 Hz and P2 level hardware could in principle be nearly perfect solution if it existed, but CRTs still give in some ways more genuine experience. Even if FPGA solutions were perfected, there is still a minor issue in that modern displays cannot match CRT because to accomplish true pixel perfection the X- and Y-scalers need to be integer multiple of the original resolution while matching the aspect ratio or else there are scaling artifacts. Avoiding the artifacts is theoretical impossibility otherwise. This in general results in resolutions that don't fill the entire screen even in vertical direction and a lot of screen real estate is wasted and black border are not nice. Basically at the moment there is no good way to plug in a Pentium 2 era DOS machine to modern OLED and achieve the same level of perfection one can do with CRT. I'm pretty happy where FPGAs are going, but there will always be some need for CRTs with people really into retro.
@@amystery5238 Indeed. CRTs were and still are a wonderful technology. The era between CRTs and OLEDs was a sad one. Nothing came even close to CRT before OLED. Built-in scalers still kind of suck though and ADCs don't do proper justice to VGA signals. FPGA with scanline based minimum latency scaling + low latency OLED is kind of bridging the gap finally, but we are not there yet and I think there will always be room for the genuine CRT experience because of the aspect ratio if for no other reason.
@@amystery5238 When you go to 144Hz or even 240Hz - the latency is definitely no longer an issue even if you can still slightly feel it compared to a 120Hz CRT.
Also I remember seeing that same monitor in use when you tested your IBM 5150 after the cap in the videocard exploded back in 2008/2009 if my memory serves me
Yes, that's it.
Ah, I remember this. Thought it was long gone by now, but it seems Miracles never cease.
Haha! Loved the Culture Club cut in!
2:28 I remember a shop that had IBM POS systems with little CRT monitors like that!
glad to see that you are still making videos, the last time ive watched you was 4 years ago. love your content!
I loved the coffee guy video you played 😀. Great video today!
thats a really cool little monitor!
I miss that Haftop, and the name of this Miracle monitor got me so unprepaired that I laughed a lot when I noticed that hahahahahahaha
What a cute display!
I almost forgot these existed. There used to be a bunch of these at a local Bed Bath & Beyond several years ago. I haven't seen any of these tiny monitors recently however :(
Clicked on this video expecting a Culture Club/Boy George reference and I wasn't disappointed😄
I had somewhere a simple resistor circuit for combining RGB into monochrome, but I cant seem to find it now. That would allow all VGA outputs to work with proper grey scales.
Some 25 years ago, when I worked for a company doing a lot of Linux server installations and services we had a bunch of those and we loved them! They were brilliant when you needed some temporary console output from a server.
I have a very similar Canon monitor, it's a bit larger but other than that it's extremely similar to this one down to the power button and front controls being virtually identical. Really hoping to get more use out of it but the only resolution I've managed to properly drive it at takes up only about 50% of the display. It's from around 1996 as well, originally came with a Canon "desktop publisher" thing that I desperately need to take some more pictures of since it seems pretty obscure.
I still have a black and white monitor that is still in its original box and hardly used. I got it with a Hercules video card back in the early nineties as part of a PC XT from a digital electronics repair course I took back then. It was from the now defunct NRI school of home studies in electronics. It was a fantastic course and I was saddened when NRI closed its doors for good back in 1999, I believe. You just don't find great home study courses like that anymore. They gave me TONS of electronic stuff AND equipment like an oscilloscope with my course and the teachers were great! Now, everything is just done online by reading and you have to supply your own stuff if you actually want "hands on" study. It's a giant step backwards in learning, I feel. 😕
PS: My late mom helped me to pay for that course back then. Thanks mom! I miss you! See you and dad one day again in the future..... ❤❤
I played Need for speed 1 in a black and white monitor back in the late 90s.
It is in a computer lab of the school where my father worked as a teacher. Good times
love these displays, got one too
I realize there are people who have been alive 20 plus years who have never seen a black and white screen like this of any kind. Maybe a calculator but nothing like this. I remember when color screens of any kind were a premium tech item. Now eve toasters have animated color screens.
it's good to see things again now in HD.
It seems that this monitor was made at about the same time that I turned 18 years old. My 18th birthday was on May 11th, 2002. So this year I'll be 38. Also, it looks like that Windows XP PC is running some of the sidebar gadgets from Windows Vista.
The Culture Club song was originall called _It's America,_ but they decided to change it. When you sing it with the original title, the lyrics actually make sense.
I remember that pic of the 380Z! I didn't know it was yours but cool to learn that!
thanks for getting that culture club song stuck in my head
I'll be waiting for you to review that voice activated coffee machine now...... thanks for the upload! :)
Wow! Bring back memory
It's so cute on top of that small PC, I want to pet it.
With the title I was expecting Barry Manilow's take on miracle but okay fine Culture Club (;
Miraculous!
50 shades of grey
At least 64, in the case of monochrome VGA.
In our office we had a 21” monitor, the tube made it very heavy and it extended well back.
I used to run into small monochrome displays in factories on test fixtures
I work at a computer recycler, and I just found one of these exact monitors brand new in box.
I kinda want to keep it, but I might sell it.
Iirc these monitors were (or are) still in use in *some* older supermarkets / malls where I live. And that's around 3-5 years ago idk...
I forgor 💀
Nice video, Kevin.
Man...I kinda love that halftop idea. I have an old Toshiba Satellite with a long dead screen that may have to meet that same fate.
nice review VW...I still remember briefly running an Apple II through a 9" B&W TV with a pixie-verter. For some reason that seemed much clearer to me than a 12" green or amber monochrome monitors for text
the culture club song popped into my head as soon as i read the video title lol!
it has a very charming picture quality
I do believe in Thursday Kevin miracle video day. Nice video my friend you rock.
There was a guy selling these as new old stock in the UK not too long ago, I was gonna get one but they sold out before I had a chance.
What was the small keyboard you showed? My best guess is an SIIG MiniTouch
Yes, that's it.
CRT monitors were the first to go when Crystalline displays came to play. Then the living room tv's.
These monitors, intalled in cash registers, have always attracted my attention, so I wanted one. But I was not lucky, in thrift stores they weren't available and my friend, who professionally repaired these cash registers, told me he was not gonna sell me older one for some 15 bucks, while he could earn more with it. Many years later I found one in scrape yard, but with cash software GUI heavily burnt into the phosphor, so I didn't even bother to pick it up. These were used till death.
I recently built a Windows XP PC for old games and I have GTX 460 SE installed in it, it only has DVI-I ports but I have it connected to my HDMI capture card, but I noticed there is a possibility for an interlaced mode for some resolutions, but I don't have an CRT monitor, so I can't really test the analog output properly.
Also, that keyboard PC, you wouldn't happen to know where to get a disk image of that thing? I completely screwed mine up (and also deleted the restore partition to freeup space on the tiny eMMC storage, without backing it up first!!!) and now it's just a little black lemon of a door wedge... :S
useful little monitors, i have one very similar.
remember seeing a load of these for sale years ago after a shop clearance, probably mostly from cash registers... they were like $5 a pop... wish I had actually bought a couple
That little monitor is still pretty cool! And yes, I also saw them mostly at POS machines. And dang! Now that's lazy! Voice activated coffee maker! Gawd! Reminds me of this gem, ruclips.net/video/qB_I1YBAozE/видео.html
That song is gonna be stuck in my head again xD
I used to run a 12" B&W TV for my Commodore 64 as I couldn't afford a colour TV. the add you showed around the 2.40 mark looked like an old DSE or Dick Smith Electronics one.
These 9 inches CRTs were also produced in huge numbers for the Minitel (around 10 million units), telematic terminals used in France from 1982 to 2012.
Aww its so cute!
Back in the late 1980's & early 1990's, I needed a PC monitor. However, they were all still relatively expensive, from $200 or $300 usd & up. But the one kind of monitor that was cheaper was the black & white version. I could find them for less than $200, maybe $150. Usually they were called "paper white" monitors. Fortunately I did not buy one, as all my monitors that I have since kept are color. Since XGA interlaced was also mentioned in the video, I do have one from the early 1990's, which maxxes out to 1024x768 interlaced at 43hz. It is an Edison brand, probably bought at Incredible Universe when that store was still around. If you have an old Cirrus Logic GD type video card, those can have drivers for 43hz interlaced. I still have those videocards & that was the setup I had in the 1990's & early 2000's for at least one PC. Unless I am forced to, I prefer not to view on XGA interlaced anymore, as that is just one pixel away from getting eye strain (again).
i love these tiny monitors! i would love one. surprised it was manufactured in 02
I will say, those 14-inch IBM-branded monitors had really nice color saturation. I usually picked a PS2 rather than a 386 in the computer labs for this reason. I'm not sure if they could even get 800X600, though most of us were running WordPerfect 5.1 and CShow in those days.
i like the funny talk of yours
I have one of these, but with a black case. Great monitor. And it'll happily run up to 960x600.
I really want one now
♪ ♫ ♬ It's a miracle we need, the miracle
The miracle
Peace on earth and end to war today ♪ ♫ ♬
I owned a fairly small (12"?) gray-scale VGA monitor many years ago.
I was quite fond of it, for some reason.
All my love for you because you used an inch&cm measuring tape.
It's very common for rulers and measuring tapes here to have both inches and cm.
Starting at about 07:40 in this video: I already have an _"Echo Dot."_ I *DO NOT* need my coffee maker talking to me too...😊
It would have been interesting to see if you could use it with a Mac, using one of those adapter dongles.
Reminds me of the black and white monitor for the Atari 1040 st.
I want a talking coffee maker.
Thanks for the video, Kevin.
7:30 I distinctly remember being able to set the display to interlaced mode if you go to advanced graphics options -> list all modes -> then it should show the option for interlaced modes.
That depends on your graphics card. Many later ones don't support interlaced output.
using cru i got a gt 1030 hooked to a ibm monitor via a cheap inland vga adapter, to display 1024 x 768 interlaced at 43 hz
Sears used the little CRT monitors on their point of sale devices but i thought those monitors were proprietary or at most MDA compatible.... never thought to look for one..... and ooh boy does that 1024x768@43hz interlaced mode bring back blurry memories... used it with a samsung syncmaster 3... the flicker was visible only when things moved, but trust me, its there... and it gets old after a while...
edit: on 'newer computers' you can usually tell linux to use the 43hz mode... i have no idea how to in windows...
I have one branded viewmagic
I mean, how many of these I was surrounded by in 1991 and now itʼs a miracle. Sorry, Miracle
CRT manufacture for the US market was banned in the late 2000's due to the lead necessary to shield the user from the tube's radiation output. NOS and used CRTs are still legal to resell. I understand that CRTs are still manufactured in India and China for markets where they are still legal. With the low price of modern CRTs (In the US I can buy a new 32 inch LED television for about $120, I bought the same brand and size in early 2016 and am still using it right now in February 2022, it actually makes a decent monitor) I can't see how a CRT could be any cheaper, though. Smaller LED televisions and monitors are as low as about $80 new and are twice the viewable image size as the monitor in this video. CRTs also use twice (or more) the electricity of even one of the older LCD flat screen TVs/monitors. There is a place for CRTs but for most people they simply aren't practical or economical.
@@mharris5047 Another aspect of them is heat.
Perhaps not an issue if there's only one or two in the room or in countries with a cold climate but I've worked in a control room with a whole wall full of them. Suffice to say the heat given off was quite something and really warmed the place up.
I wasn't aware there even were interlaced modes on the PC, yet alone SVGA interlaced :D
hm , my graphics card from 2018 supports interlaced modes ! no direct vga out though
Bring back memories. I had a 13" monochrome VGA in the early 90s, unfortunately I don't recall the name but it started with an "M". And no, not Magnavox.
There was also the Taiwanese company MAG (Innovision).
I wanted to get one of these in amber back when I still had a Deskpro 286 with an amber Compaq dual-mode monitor, but I could never find one.
Had a monitor like this years ago
Kudos for Boy George!