Oh man, that manual is quite descriptive. I wish they could add a schematic or two there. But anyway, as others have suggested, be careful with CRT, but I guess you already know that. Next is from the circuit description, it seems like the display accepts some form or VGA signal without the color. You can see Ben Eater video to learn more about it, especially the line sync and vertical sync signal part
Question about driving some 80's CRTs
Submitted 2 days ago by Oha@lemmy.ohaa.xyz to askelectronics@discuss.tchncs.de
Comments
bitfucker@programming.dev 1 day ago
Oha@lemmy.ohaa.xyz 1 day ago
VGA might be a good idea. Do you think that these are just regular 640x480 displays? Can I damage them with a wrong resolution?
AbidingOhmsLaw@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
The service manual says they were made for an F55 video terminal. 1980s video terminals had video driver boards in them to con vert the TTY signals to video. That driver boards varied wildly on the output signals, some would output composite video leaving the monitor to control the raster scan, sync, horizontal & vertical sweeps but some would output all of that and there would be minimal circuits in the monitor cage. Hopefully you have ones tharpt take composite video. can you get pictures of the back and sides?
Oha@lemmy.ohaa.xyz 1 day ago
AbidingOhmsLaw@lemmy.ml 20 hours ago
A3.2 and B2.1 in the manual show you the pinouts of that jack and the expected signal, unfortunately section 6.1 schematics and sec D timing diagrams seem to be missing. You’re going to need to find a suitable driver circuit. Without looking at the timing it might accept input from an old MDA adaptor.p or similar.
fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Those look like CRT units without cases, which is slightly terrifying. Be careful.
What’s on the back of it (i.e. connectors) and what country are you in? (i.e. PAL, SECAM, NTSC)
Likely connectors are RF aerial, BNC, component, composite. Maybe s-video?
Assuming they still work and power on safely, you may find the issue is in generating a signal that they accept, with modern equipment. This depends a little on what you’re planning on using them for, and therefore what you want to connect them to.
Sadbutdru@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking, and I probably don’t know the answer anyway, but I felt compelled to add a safety warning for anyone working with these.
The CRTs themselves can hold a high voltage for a long time, please be very very careful.