LGR - Unboxing a New 1980s Amdek Monochrome Monitor
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- This is a new old stock Amdek 310A display built in 1988! Amdek made some lovely TTL monitors in the 80s and I've wanted one for ages, so I bought this one still sealed. Exploring the history of the company and testing the CRT with an IBM PC AT!
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Midnight Vibe, Not That Serious 3
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Monitor after sitting for 31 years in a box: "AT LAST!"
*XT LAST
I couldn't resist.
"After 10,000 years I'm free!!! It's time to Conquer Earrrrrth!"
I've found that the amber displays were always much more visually appealing than the green phosphor displays.
Dunno. More appealing maybe but also a bit dark
Wouldn't they be lighter on the eyes as well?
Yellow is a less energizing wavelength, less energizing wavelengths are usually less straining, it is the reason why some computers have red text since it is less straining on the eyes.
I know some people may say that red hurts their eyes, but the reality is that the eyes themselves are not strained as hard as green or blue, it is a placebo effect that makes them feel like red strains their eyes more.
Wow, I love amber version for intro C:\> Lazy Game... 👏🏻🤣
Please, use it more! 😊
It´s pure gold.
It's so sexy... AHHHH!!! New Vegas vibes!
I totally agree
I didn’t notice!!
It reminds me of those old Compaq Luggable monitors.
You take random old tech that I have no nostalgia for and often little understanding of and turn it into fascinating entertainment. Thank you!
*The Amdek 12" video monitor - (Fallout New Vegas edition)*
beat me to it
Dammit me as well XD
i would love to get my hands on a monitor like this!. Someone could build a custom os for the raspberry PI! ohboy i cant wait.
you played new vegas i thought no one played it anymore oh and good reference
I see you are a man of culture as well! ;)
I was born in the 90s but i remember seeing a monitor like this at a train station when i was a kid and i asked to the guy working there why is your screen orange? and the guy said i don't know kid i hate all this modern technology why can't we just use paper like in the 70s i hope its not broken we only got this 15 years ago.
lmao this comment is so cute
@@Featherogue "Only 15 years ago"
I'm 15 and I've never felt so young
@@aidancommenting Lmao!!
Take your story time lies to reddit
Watches movie on projector: wHY CANt We JUst USE papeR
I think the specialness in old displays is because they really do effect how everything looks with your computing experience. Something like Windows can look completely different just by using a different monitor. Display technology really ties the experience to a certain era.
One of my first Windows 3.1 computers had a white monochrome monitor. No idea what brand. And it was indeed a very different experience, yet perfectly usable for most of what people used Windows for back then.
Yeah. Quite true. I still have the memory of a green monochrome display burned into my mind.
As well as the various white phosphor displays of our first PC and the Mac Classic we'd briefly borrowed from my mother's work a few months before that...
I'm actually using a Plasma display right now, for older computers, and as a secondary monitor, and among the many things buried in it's menus is a colour calibration tool that lets you show a single colour channel at a time.
Sadly you can't permanently enable it, it's strictly for calibration, but showing an image in monochrome through just one channel did hit a pretty strong wave of nostalgia for me. Especially when viewing the green channel only...
Of course, what you CAN get to stick, usually, (especially in this case, since it's a hybrid monitor/TV) is turning off colour entirely, giving a monochrome image in greyscale...
For that... Semi-retro experience. XD
I know! I was surprised about these types of computers. I think they must have testing this out in real time for a tech competition so something went different inside these computers. :-)
As someone that works with monitors from CRT to Digital, I can agree.
Can you run Fallout New Vegas on an amber monochrome? Really bring out those oranges in the game :P
Dont think it'd look any different
Jea, the FONV colour scheme was really great.
For a moment I thought it was a microwave on the thumbnail
Real1Gaming I thoguht it was a toaster oven (no joke)
Real1Gaming initially thought it was an LGR Foods video
same. lol
YES. Thank you, I wasn't the only one who thought this was a microwave.
THANK YOU! I was thinking exactly the same, now I know it's not just me being weird!
Ah, that takes me back. My first PC had an amber monochrome monitor with Hercules graphics. For games without Hercules support, I'd run SimCGA for graphics.
I still remember when I upgraded to vga. I couldn't afford a color vga monitor, so I got a black & white vga. It was pretty classy!
Hard not to get excited when I get an LGR notification.
Me: has super large extra-thin high-resolution color monitors with vector fonts and GUI software development environments at my disposal
Also me: uses vim on a terminal emulator
Same!
My 25" 1440p monitor screen and inside my tiny 80x25 gnome-terminal using vim instead of gedit. :p CLI still charming even in 2021.
@@alexandrebouvier7731 the *nix cli is as powerful as a thor's hammer thrown by a nuclear explosion and as precise and delicate as a one-atom thick diamond scalpel. And everything in between.
I found one of those in a thrift shop for really cheap, but it had real bad burn-in of some spreadsheet program. There was a green monochrome one next to it, with lets say "suggestive" Ascii-art burnin. *cough*
Thanks, now you've got me wondering why someone would have to have erotic ASCII art open for so long it burns into the monitor.
jk, but that mental image though...
On the art?
@@DanielLopez-up6os Sure, you can talk about the art if you want.
Amdek also had a white phosphor version of these monitors -- but it was not "paper white" phosphor like many monochrome VGA monitors. It was the old-fashioned black & white TV phosphor, with a slightly blueish tint.
White phosphorus?
"New Amdek monitor - now shipped with a potential war crime!"
@@Pijawek I had a color 300 as well, at least thats what i think it was.
no....it was a color 3. I still have the box complete with the rma number i had when i had to send it in for service. Just looked at the box 2 minutes ago....LOL
I think these games look even more amazing in monochrome. I can only imagine the looks on people's faces back in the 80's when they first layed eyes on technology like this and imagined the possibilities.
Uh, I remember my first Kings Quest 4 on a amber monochrome Monitor... Great experience till I had to look for a golden ball under the Bridge... 🤔
OOF.wav
I quite liked the warmth the monitor had when you were playing King's Quest. Even through the camera it just looked like a very nice experience.
This brings back some memories. At college in the late 80s we had some 'portable' PCs, which were really regular PCs on trolleys. They all had amber monitors like this. They also had (gasp!) 20MB hard drives, and, being portable, before you could switch them off, you had to run the 'park' command to park the hard drive heads! Great days!
That amber intro is comfy.
New Vegas LGR.
Here’s the funny thing, Clint. I grew up with these but never actually had one. When I was a kid I thought they might as well have been green. Noticed that they were a different color then went on my way. NOW, however, I feel as you do that these things are just plain awesome and I’d like to experience one first hand myself. Strange how much they grow on you!
Know what I miss about old color monitors? Degausing.
Was anything more satisfying?
Harry Warburg a monitor with degause? Typically they would degause upon turning on.
If you mean the PCs boot and post. That's a satisfying crunch as well
TUUUNG
Oh man! Now I need to find a crt just so I can press that button
(Goes off to hunt for RUclips videos of monitors being degaussed)
Oh yeah! I also used to enjoy smacking the side of them unnecessarily.
I find such a warm comfort in staring at a black DOS screen, no matter what other color the video output is, especially in the dark. Watching the games run with the sound down a little and zoning out to the clacking of a mechanical keyboard, it's like ASMR for me or something.
as soon as i saw the orange intro my immediate thought was, "Oh no i accidentally downloaded New Vegas again"
Color Me Twisted so you dont keep it on your PC and dont always have it downloaded and ready to play?
got that upgraded internet babeeeeeeey!
Thanks. This is so nostalgic to me as this kind of amber monochrome display was in my youths computer which began everything pc computer related to me.
This looks just like the first monitor I can remember having.
Cannot be Tamed
showin yer age there ;)
My first monitor was definitely an amber monochrome monitor, but I don't think it was an Amdek. It was replaced by an IBM 5153 pretty quickly.
Was about to say something similar. The first PC compatible we had was an XT clone, and graphics on it looked exactly like on this monitor. Since we had that computer well over mid 1990's, I was envious for years to my friends who eventually had 486's with VGA and sound cards... Yet now in sort of a perverted nostalgic fashion I'd really want to own an amber monitor again to use with my Hercules card, and I feel sad that our old XT clone is probably scrapped a long time ago already.
You used to have that monitor? When did you first see it?
Did you start gaming when you were like 2 years old?
Ah, memories of using these very same monitors at my local public library to search their digitized card catalog system. May have been built in the '80s, but they kept the same UX and underlying system through the late '90s. Incredible.
LGR: New Vegas
lasarousi He said early Bethesda-era Fallout. That means the first Fallout games by, well, Bethesda, that being 3 and partially New Vegas
Wasnt NV made by Obsidian?
Mr Mürk Indeed it was, which is why I said "partially." Bethesda distributed the game, provided the engine and made a lot of the assets, including the computers and such, Obsidian wrote the story and the game.
fair enough, sir
Ah, nothing like that classic amber and green on those old monitors to bring me back to the late 80s and my IBM AT; good to have you here clint to show us the hardware that is still fascinating to this day.
Nice twist for the intro to go along with the Amber monitor!
Fervently researched and executed. I am extremely impressed, Clint.
Orange-ya glad LGR posted this video today? 🍊 ... I'll see myself out.
That's right GET OUTTA HERE!
Badumm-Tsss!
Uh Uh you don't tell someone to get outta here because you have no right to tell this person what to do, do you understand me? Now then you're gonna leave this person be, back off and stay away from here or else I'll see to it you are thrown out of here so fast that you'll wake up in an emergency room in another nation mainly England or wherever you'll end up at.
Boo hiss
*claps loudly...slow clap* wait for me, I’m right behind you.
My very first PC display was a green mono.
I was able to run the mono video card right next to my CGA card and use both monitors simultaneously in my mighty 7mhz and use a TSR to copy text from the main display to the mono display. This allowed me to collect local dial-up BBS phone numbers to call.
I still have a soft spot for a good green or amber mono display.
Clint you rock as always!
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.
11:30 I used to play games using such a screen as featured here back in 1987. I still play games and it blows my mind just how much graphics and sound (you should install an Adlib or something in that old pc) have advanced in over 30 years.
My first x86 computer was a clone of the IBM PC XT and had an Hercules graphics card with a Samsung amber monochrome monitor 😃
That orange tint on the intro text... nice touch there Clint.
I loved how in Fallout 3 you could make your Pip-Boy amber monochrome. It's what I've used in every Fallout game that' had the option.
The puzzle game MHRD is set in the 1980s and its interface is entirely monochrome, like you're using a period computer to write your hardware-description language. It's got an option for the colour of the display. The game's audio is just the fan of the computer, so put on some music if you don't like working in silence.
Holy crap! I think I used to use one of those in my keyboarding class in high school in the late 1980s. Either that or we had them when I worked in the service desk at a supermarket around that same time. Those monitors didn't die.
"Oi, mate! You wanna buy a monitor?"
"I don't know........is it any good?"
"'Course it is! Good as new!"
Welp, I'm in love. I could stare at that screen for hours. Excellent pick up, Clint!
Amber monitors please me so much.
It's why I want to add an amber backlight to a GameBoy Pocket.
You could probably sell these. That's a great idea...
I know Handheld Legend sells orange backlights for the original DMG and the Game Boy Pocket, mostly wanna do it to the pocket though because of it's more energy efficient circuitry and because of the clearer screen.
I have no idea what you're talking about but yet I can't stop watching. Great video as always, Clint.
Test Drive 2, amber Hercules monitor.. A brief summary of my youth!
Amazing find. Back in the day my monitor would span multiple systems. They were made to last and the technology was mature. Now monitors are built like crap and obsolete as soon as you open the box. Honestly I'd have no problem returning to CRT based monitors. They still have the best color around.
I love these new old stock things, it's interesting that stuff can sit in a warehouse untouched and packaged for so long.
not gonna happen with todays garbage.. planned obsolescence went a long way.
WOW! I remember having the Amdek Amber monitor for my first 286 PC in 1988!
I recall back then of ppl having eyestrain problems with the green monitors in the workplace. The administration department of my company had a PC with an amber monitor, and it was noted that those working on that PC had less eyestrain, including me. So, when I ponied up around $2,500 for my first PC for home use, the Amdek amber monitor was the choice for me.
As a kid I spent so much time playing with my IBM XT clone trying to make it run games on a display not so different from this one. My Hercules clone display adapter could be set to CGA 40 or CGA 80 with jumpers (figured out by literally messing with everything inside my PC). Running commander keen, jill of the jungle, test drive and so many other CGA games on it felt like such an achievement. The family PC was a 486 DX4 100 with 16mb of RAM and a 2mb graphics card but I spent far more time messing with the old XT I got from my school on auction :D
A few months on I got a box of old XT "junk" from the guy who sold us our family PC and managed to get a 10mb MFM hard drive working by combining the PCB from one with the mechanicals from another identical drive (both were dead). My love for tech only grew from there.
That just looks so pretty in graphics mode, like wow.
my first monitor was an amber, we upgraded to a white.
I definitely missed it afterwards.
I always think of the library when I see these amber displays. The branch next to my elementary school kept these around for sooooooo long, mostly for the computerized card catalog.
I need to see that Pen Plotter in action.
I'd love to get one to demonstrate. Plotters are rad.
People today, have made pen plotters that are compatible with the old devices.
Very impressive to watch in action. It is made to print CAD vectorized things. It follows each lines and bezier curve as it was drawn in the actual file, not necessarily in a logical, machine wise, way.
While visiting my grand father at its work, I loved to watch them plot things. I even requested prints of compressor heads, cylinders, crankshafts to watch them print things.
I also remember badly burned up amber screen of their stock management terminals. The HP server running the system had an uptime calculated in YEARS when it was finally disconnected.
Wish I could had salvaged things, but everything was thrown away...
Paul Rickards, the guy who made the WiFi232, recently got a Roland plotter, and has been using it to good effect. twitter.com/paulrickards/status/1019408192395206656
I just picked up an xy plotter yesterday, but I believe it's only analog.
Nice detective work Clint. Certainly jogged my memory regarding guitar effects pedals back in the day.
Defocus the camera slightly to get rid of the moire pattern.
I thought that caps of all electronics go bad after 15-20 years. I am glad this doesn't seem to be the case with this one.
Thank you for sharing this cool video.
In the early 80s I had access a couple of times to a similar setup and always liked the look. Databases look stunning in this scheme.
Oh man I got a 301A at a thrift store a while back. Thing's sharp as hell.
Also, the "anti-glare coating" isn't really a coating, it's a sheet of thin pantyhose-like fabric over the screen.
Wonderful! I had an Amdek composite color monitor that we used with our Apple IIe (and later our Sega Master System). The image was a little crooked and it was rather blurry, but it didn't matter. Going from green/black monochrome to color was mind-blowing at the time. Keep up the great work!
There's something so charming about these monochrome monitors.
Smelling that is so weird...yet so understandable great content thanks bro. Keep it coming
Ah, and I thought the Amber color option in fallout was just a theming thing for New Vegas.
I spent a lot of hours in front of the composite version attached to my Franklin Ace when I was a kid. Great memories.
imagine playing new vegas with that display...
Oh, man! Played a ton of TD2 the Duel on my ZX Spectrum back in the day! Awesome vid, Clint! Thanks for sharing!
With how much you fondle your electronics, I'm surprised RUclips doesn't take the video down immediately! Also, I wonder how Fallout New Vegas would look on this...
It really does look nice. Amber on black is such a good combination, very pleasing to the eyes.
You need to hook that bad boy amber screen up to a modern system and see how far you can push it... Amber doom.
It was a pure joy to watch this video. I always loved those amber monitors.
I think i've seen one of these before. It was in the late 2000s with some old system that was still being used because it still worked just fine, they were using it to measure reflexes or something for a research study I was in. It was such a beautiful display. I've always loved amber phosphors.
I have lived in the Silicon Valley my entire life and seeing this video brought back memories of all the tech companies that use to dot the city. Sadly, all are just little more than a memory now.
The effort LGR puts into a simple unboxing video is phenomenal! Outstanding video as always.
This is the same model as my first monitor. I ran it on an 8088 that I built with 256k RAM, no HD, 2x 5.25" floppy drives and DOS 2.01. That was my monitor for years until I got a Leading Edge Model D with CGA. Thanks for the flashback!
a salt lamp?
Helps keep the amber mood?
NotSoGoodGamer18 good Fung shui
low-pressure sodium lamp? (LPS?)
@@aretard7995 severely underrated comment
BAN A SALT LAMPS NOW!
Welcome back! Man I love these types of videos it brings me back to my childhood and the my first computer from 1985 🙈
Nice, that monitor gives such a unique looking image. I did experience EGA, but not something like this. I'm not sure I would want to play games like this, but it was really neat seeing such a monitor in action!
PhilsComputerLab I did a lot of gaming on my old Mac with a 9 inch black and white screen. This seems like it'd relieve some eyestrain..
I'd play Lands of Lore, Ultima, or Xcom on it.
When I started watching this video I was not expecting to find the name for The Duel Test Drive 2 which was a name I couldn't recall. Thanks!
orange/amber?
how very New Vegas.
I had that exact monitor back in the late 80s. I miss it sometimes, they were easy on the eyes.
Coffee and a LGR video, thanks life
Tincho West I also have a bowl of cereal. A nice breakfast, sitting outside with a beautiful morning, and a new LGR video. Life is damn good to us sometimes. It's the little simple things sometimes that make life worth living... :)
Tincho West exactly my thoughts
Tincho West exactly my thoughts
You just released vintage sealed air from the 80’s upon opening that monitor. Breathe in the nostalgia! Lol!
dos looks good on that monitor
When I was a kid, my town's library used terminals with amber phosphor monitors for library catalogs. I thought those things were amazing, and they stuck around all through the '90s, even after they started bringing in more modern machines for patron use.
They were removed some time after my family moved away; I visited the library during my last trip home, and I was a little sad I didn't see those amber phosphor monitors.
Ahhhh the memories. And Amber > Green all day!
I agree! Never owned an amber monitor growing up but always loved them.
The hours and hours and hours (3am waiting for the linker to finish :-/) I spent sitting in front of Amdeks monitors programming Fortran and C using Epsilon and writing documentation using Final Word.
I watched this video a few months ago and went on a hunt for one of these. Mine wasn't sealed, but it was in original packaging. It was unused for eons but works amazingly and looks beautiful.
5:10-5:25
Definitely the funniest part!
I'm always getting good mood when LGR boss sniffs and adores those old cables :D Thanks for the great and informative video!
I had that exact monitor for a clone pc back in the day. Loved it. I actually never owned a green phosphor display.
I used to play, I think, Reader Rabbit and Little People Firehouse Rescue games on this. Man, this is _ancient_ :P
LGR is the only guy who can somehow make me enjoy watching a video on something that I've used before, genuinely dislike, and absolutely have no nostalgia for, hahaha. I didn't remember until he busted the thing out about 5 min into this video and mentioned the anti-glare coating, but then my brain was like, "Oh yeah those things? Pffffttt", but then you still watch the rest because _he_ enjoys them so much it just makes you think _you're wrong_ , haha. 6:44 "There's nothing special about it at all... but it's special _to me_" - XD
You *know* you're good at what you do when you have that effect on the people, LGR ;)
I know right? Back when we had monochrome monitors, most of us hated them and wanted a color monitor but typically couldn't afford one, or work wouldn't buy us one. They were a necessary evil. But lo-and-behold, when you spent a long time using something and then see it again 30 years later, it's a cool feeling.
I love see all your old hardware pretty awesome
I remember only having a Herc card, needing to run cga.com emulator to run allycat from IBM
I miss getting extremely excited from seeing computers like these, like I did in my childhood years...
I always think of the end credits to portal when I see a monochrome display like this.
Ah. Hercules and TD2 takes me back... I can't tell how many hours was spent playing that. Our first "family" computer was Osborne 286 with Zenith amber monochrome display and Hercules graphics card. It was my dad's work computer and it had Hercules, because in CAD he used you got much higher resolution.
These monitors were the shiznit back in the day. Amber instead of green, about half the price of an IBM monitor but still well-made and reliable. Every computer in the office that I worked in during the late '80s and early '90s had one of these. Excellent monitors for the text-based applications of the day.
I had an open frame amber monitor I picked up at an electronic surplus store in Minneapolis. Had it connected to my Commodore COLT. Aside from the danger of electrocution, it was pretty cool.
6:58 Impressive collection of earwax you have there.
And it's glowing.
Using Amber CRT playing Test-drive, brings back so many memories
Amber gives me a cold and clinical vibe because I only ever saw them running work programs. Green seems so alive and amber seems so desert-like.
I have the opposite opinion. Green is what seems cold to me. It also is kinda harsh on the eyes, imo.
Our second computer (after a TI99/4a) was a Apple iic. After the original green monitor died we got a Amber/black Magnavox Computer Monitor 80, which I still have today. The monochrome was clean and didn't detract much from games. It was only when my schools and friends started getting some IBMs and Tandys that I realized we were getting outdated. That and all my essays were printed on a dot matrix printer. I remember asking my teacher what a "font". Was since my printer only had one. Lol
Does it smell new?
Get a room!! Lol seriously love how much you love this stuff. I enjoy your channel immensely!!
4 dislikes? Hmm, maybe they were disappointed at not seeing 'Farts' written in amber text.
This was the best unboxing i have ever seen!