24" Widescreen CRT (FW900) From Ebay arrived,Comments.

Most obvious advice would be to look for bad capacitors. Some can be bad without showing visible bulge at the top unfortunately but usually they do. Some times bulge is at the bottom.
Just be sure to read about CRT repairing safety precautions. Getting shocked by one is apparently able to kill you if it interferes with your heart rhythm too much.
 
Greetings! New member here looking for help.
Recently I was able to get a cheap HP A7217A (basically a Sony FW900) which is in a really bad shape. As it can be seen on the photo below, the monitor displays only half the image while the other half of the screen stays black. I don't know if it is a separate problem but also when I try to connect it to a computer the monitor immediately turns off.

Any ideas on how to fix these problems?

View attachment 249756

Good luck on this, the case looks in excellent shape.
 
Greetings! New member here looking for help.
Recently I was able to get a cheap HP A7217A (basically a Sony FW900) which is in a really bad shape. As it can be seen on the photo below, the monitor displays only half the image while the other half of the screen stays black. I don't know if it is a separate problem but also when I try to connect it to a computer the monitor immediately turns off.

Any ideas on how to fix these problems?
The monitor isn't only displaying half of the display, the "missing" half is actually retracted in a tiny area in the center. Don't let it on for too long like this, the bright line in the center may mark the phosphors.
 
Cheap HDMI to VGA adapters should support bandwidth up to around 166MHz. Maybe not quite there and maybe even higher. It depends on the model. I guess it is similar story with DP to VGA converters but maybe those can go higher than that.
800x600@200Hz is about 150MHz so it should work just fine.
It should also support 1280x960@85Hz (150MHz) for desktop. This resolution was actually always good choice for 4:3 CRT's giving nice and sharp picture.
Thanks, I ended up buying it since I could just return it if it doesn't fit my needs for now. It runs 1600x1200 fine and high refresh rates at lower resolutions fine as well. However, this may not be a problem with the adapter, but more so the monitor, it seems like on my CPD-520GS there is something of a ghosting effect with moving objects of bright colour. Example: moving cursor around on black background shows a ghosting sort of effect, as if it has a trail (not "duplicates" that you normally see on high refresh rates"). Is there any way to fix this? Or is this just the sign of an old monitor?

Regardless, even with this ghosting effect, I perform similarly/the same as I do on my 240hz monitor, I wouldn't say it necessarily "looks" the same as 240hz, but it does have similar levels or better of motion clarity, which is the only thing I care about. It makes tracking fast moving targets much easier. Super excited to try more monitors.
Keep in mind, there are two "Titan X's". One is Maxwell, one is Pascal. You want the one on the Maxwell architecture, since it has DVI-I. Pascal is digital only like the 1080. Not do be confused with the Titan Xp, which is yet another card in the pascal architecture.

But really, it's only a few percentage points faster than the 980Ti, if I remember correctly, but the 980Ti is MUCH cheaper on ebay.

But in my opinion, none of that really matters since we know of a few DAC's that mostly get the job done on digital-only cards. So no need to limit yourself to 900 series cards.
I agree, thanks for the info. I won't be buying anything besides DAC's right now, for me the 62967 should fit my needs, and if I need to I'll buy the DPU3000.
hi jei. i have a gtx 1080ti paired with sunix dpu3000 to fw900 crt and my experience with it have been fantastic so far, however this adapter is tricky to setup some resolutions / refres rate combos correctly to avoid some issues this adapter use to get when using some resolution as they are detected by default, , for more info search this thread words like "sunix" "dpu3000" "delock" also i suggest to search for user Derupter posts in this thread, this user have done a very helpful research about good quality adapters to use with modern graphics cards and high end crt monitors.
Thanks, will be going through his posts.
 
Thanks, I ended up buying it since I could just return it if it doesn't fit my needs for now. It runs 1600x1200 fine and high refresh rates at lower resolutions fine as well. However, this may not be a problem with the adapter, but more so the monitor, it seems like on my CPD-520GS there is something of a ghosting effect with moving objects of bright colour. Example: moving cursor around on black background shows a ghosting sort of effect, as if it has a trail (not "duplicates" that you normally see on high refresh rates"). Is there any way to fix this? Or is this just the sign of an old monitor?

the kind of "phosphor trail" in a bright moving object agains a black backgrounds is normal on crts, all crts (tvs and monitors) i have owned produce that so its normal on them as long as it vanishes fast and is only notable on bright object agains a black background, however cheap hdmi to vga adapters can introduce that kind of artifacts as well and make them worse, for example i also have a cheap brandless hdmi to vga adapter and it lefts a kind of ghost blurry replicate next to the object being displayed unless i use a low resolution refresh rate combo, like 640 x 480 60hz even if the object is not againts a black background it is notable, an issue that does not occur when coneccting the monitor straigth to analog ports or to the dpu3000.

my advice would be. if posible to connect your monitor to a native analog port for example your integrated vga motherboard port if availble to make sure your adapter is not causing that.

in case you adapter is the issue and return it, i remember a cheap Benfei brand HDMI to VGA adapter being tested here up to 1920x1200 95 Hz (320mhz)

more info here: https://hardforum.com/threads/24-wi...ived-comments.952788/page-408#post-1044094096
 
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Thanks a lot for the replies.

The monitor isn't only displaying half of the display, the "missing" half is actually retracted in a tiny area in the center. Don't let it on for too long like this, the bright line in the center may mark the phosphors.
I sure won't be leaving the monitor working like that. Thanks for the advice. Any idea on how should I fix this problem?

I have replaced all the capacitors on the D board and resoldered all the joints on the A board because they were looking really bad(many of the joints had tiny little cracks when looked through a microscope). Should I just keep replacing caps and re-soldering joints on all the boards hoping that the problem would be fixed that way? By the way I measured the old caps from the D board ant they are all good.
 
I sure won't be leaving the monitor working like that. Thanks for the advice. Any idea on how should I fix this problem?

I have replaced all the capacitors on the D board and resoldered all the joints on the A board because they were looking really bad(many of the joints had tiny little cracks when looked through a microscope). Should I just keep replacing caps and re-soldering joints on all the boards hoping that the problem would be fixed that way? By the way I measured the old caps from the D board ant they are all good.
I can't say for sure but the issue isn't likely to be (electrolytic) capacitor related.

It might be a contact issue with one of the 2 flat cables linking the N and D board, or a track broken/damaged in these flat cables. (but that's not very likely if these cables were properly handled, and not numerous times)
I'd rather believe in a failure in the vertical deflection circuitry on the D board. It's like any of the V+ or V- line was grounded or too low. Check the resistors/fuses and diodes in the vicinity of IC701 with a multimeter (see that in the service manual). Do that on every line from Vshape, Vret, -15V and +15V. If you don't find anything suspicious, it might be the IC itself being down.

edit: I just realised, there might be something else wrong, that bright blueish display WITHOUT a VGA input is clearly not normal. What I told you may help to fix one issue, but if you do not have some minimal experience in electronics repairing this could be too difficult for you.
 
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Greetings! New member here looking for help.
Recently I was able to get a cheap HP A7217A (basically a Sony FW900) which is in a really bad shape. As it can be seen on the photo below, the monitor displays only half the image while the other half of the screen stays black. I don't know if it is a separate problem but also when I try to connect it to a computer the monitor immediately turns off.

Any ideas on how to fix these problems?

View attachment 249756

We can fix that issue...

Sincerely,

Unkle Vito!
 
Do u have Dell P1130 drivers for Win7 x64? I can't install the standard 32bit.
I have vga cable with pin 12, i don't know why I can't make 2048x1536@85hz in nVidia Panel. The drivers are the best solution.
 
Hello everyone, I encountered a strange phenomenon when using windas for white balance adjustment Sony CPD-G520.
When I go to step 48, das prompts to use a white image. When I display a white pattern on the full screen, the brightness of the entire screen will immediately decrease. The white brightness of DTP-94 test is about 50 nits.
I don't know where is the problem? When I calibrate my other Dell P1110, everything works fine.
Has anyone encountered the same problem?
 
Try Custom Resolution Utility
The driver are the best solution. In Windows XP i couldn't set 120hz in games without res change f.e. chicken invaders. I installed driver (it's now recognized as P1130) and set refresh override in dxdiag and i have 120hz in old games. I couldn't do it in Windows 7, even newer games does not have full options f.e. only 1600x1200@85hz in GTA IV (i have 100hz at desktop made using nvidia panel).
Windows thinks he better know what driver is good and don't allow me to change from "PnP display". I have EDID connection, that's not a problem.
 
the kind of "phosphor trail" in a bright moving object agains a black backgrounds is normal on crts, all crts (tvs and monitors) i have owned produce that so its normal on them as long as it vanishes fast and is only notable on bright object agains a black background, however cheap hdmi to vga adapters can introduce that kind of artifacts as well and make them worse, for example i also have a cheap brandless hdmi to vga adapter and it lefts a kind of ghost blurry replicate next to the object being displayed unless i use a low resolution refresh rate combo, like 640 x 480 60hz even if the object is not againts a black background it is notable, an issue that does not occur when coneccting the monitor straigth to analog ports or to the dpu3000.

my advice would be. if posible to connect your monitor to a native analog port for example your integrated vga motherboard port if availble to make sure your adapter is not causing that.

in case you adapter is the issue and return it, i remember a cheap Benfei brand HDMI to VGA adapter being tested here up to 1920x1200 95 Hz (320mhz)

more info here: https://hardforum.com/threads/24-wi...ived-comments.952788/page-408#post-1044094096
Thanks for the info, I'll adapt my colour settings in games to avoid it (i.e. grey background on osu! and other games).

Also, I've heard the HP a7217a is an FW900 rebrand, but it seems the pixel pitch is .27 instead of .23 like the FW900. How much does this affect the clarity of the monitor?
 
Thanks for the info, I'll adapt my colour settings in games to avoid it (i.e. grey background on osu! and other games).

Also, I've heard the HP a7217a is an FW900 rebrand, but it seems the pixel pitch is .27 instead of .23 like the FW900. How much does this affect the clarity of the monitor?

It's the same. .27 mm is at the edges. .23mm is at the center. Just like the FW900. It, in theory, makes it softer. But I don't think you'll notice much difference between the edges and the center if everything is well-converged and focused.
 
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It's the same. .27 mm is at the edges. .23mm is at the center. Just like the FW900. It, in theory, makes it softer. But I don't think you'll notice much difference between the edges and the center if everything is well-converged and focused.
Thanks. I was just curious since I saw a listing for one and my friend may buy it, but didn't want to let him spend 500 on an inferior product.
 
Hi yall!

I JUST signed up and was approved. I've been reading the threads since about the 300's. I have 2 of these HP A7217A's and love them. Got them both for 50 bucks waaaay back when a graphics company was upgrading. I love all the info here and really enjoy reading all the issues and comments.

For the past couple of days I've been watching this same monitor on EBAY to see where the price is. For the last few days it's been sitting at 500 bucks. Low and behold in the last 30 seconds it went from 800 up the final selling price. I about jumped out of my seat as I watched it in real time!!! I couldn't believe it. Holy cow.

thumbnail (1).png


(Ok. Sorry for the large picture though.)

But damn, I really wish to sell one of these- but my luck the other will break.


I was trying my damndest to post this up before it ended but I was waiting on mod approval-
 
I was watching that one too, but anything over 600USD would be unrealistic for me. Just have to pray my luck is good and try to find one for a reasonable price.
 
This price is just ridiculous.
Back when LCD's were at 60Hz and FW900's were cheap as dirt was the time to get FW900
Today I could get used mint quality ASUS ROG PG27UQ for half this money...
 
even when sadly crts as a whole gaming all in one picture-motion quality / performance monitor are still better than most modern monitors if not all, specially the fw900 and its rebrands being widescreen, some popular sites like digital foundry, eurogamer seem responsible to crts price over increasing since there are aware of crt strongness agains modern displays and repopularized them through their sites, since that, fw900 and many other crt montitors wordwide available prices increased exagerately, but even with those strong points crts still have, i agree does not justifiy those absurd prices specially being an old used tech with obsolete analog ports not usable as they are on any modern video card.

Back when LCD's were at 60Hz and FW900's were cheap as dirt was the time to get FW900
Today I could get used mint quality ASUS ROG PG27UQ for half this money...

just my personal opinion but i wish the only dissadvantage with lcds against crt were just lower refresh rates or lower resolution against crts, if that would be the simple case, i would have replaced my crt for a lcd like that long time ago, but from what i see from reviews, i dont see how that ASUS ROG PG27UQ can be even a match for a crt, that asus monitor does not have any blur reduction modes available, which motion quality will be considerable inferior vs crt monitor, even at its overclocked 144hz which brings reduced but still notable blurry motion and also will requiere an expensive constant matching framerate capable hardware of 144fps, also is an ips panel with nasty tipical light glow, backlight bleed, delivering considerable lower contrast and black level quality than crts, also a native 4k resolution which will requiere an expensive hardware if you want to enjoy native non reduced quality due to scaling resolution quality, on crt you will requiere much lower hardware power, no non native resolution image quality scaling degradation and better motion quality at much lower refresh rate being used and excelent latency to achieve a better gaming quality experience. not even gsync makes that monitor and atractive replace tradeoff to a crt agains those fatal flaws.

i dont even see a match on the modern blur buster's overrated "fw900 succesor " viewsonic xg270 240hz ips monitor , which "crt motion quality" ultra mode has a very low luminace level, even considerable lower than a crt monitor, needing a cave room to see whats on screen (as the same blur busters chef have claimed) any other modes with better brightness also reduce motion quality to be called "crt motion quality" and plagged with typical ips glow light bleed mediocre contast, also add the crosstalk fest issue it has outside its recommended blur reductrion range of 120hz, (an issue i have never seen on any crt i have used), also not even being able to produce crt motion quality at lower refreshes than 75hz, which fw900 and any crt monitor can with much better luminance levels and again, add the absurd hardware power required.

so basicaly the only good thing i see from modern monitors agains crts from a picture quality gaming perspective is their native digital ports to connect to any modern monitor wihtout depending on external active adapters.
just my opinion being a crt gaming enthusiast

i even personaly would prefer to keep using and would enjoy better gaming experience with my old ordinary small 17 inch 4 3 monitor compaq 7550 crt monitor (50 - 140hz) which is capable of popular resolutions up to 1920 x 1080 75hz via custom resolutions rather of those boring flaw-fested "modern" gaming monitors




What's the recomended adapter for digital VGA output?
Thanks


i have been having a good experience with the sunix dpu3000 so far (there is a delock brand which seems identical) however its been a tricky adapter to setup some resolutions / refresh rate combinations without issues this adapter has with some and may requiere some patience, but so far, im am satisfied with it being used with a gtx 1080 ti to fw900, and allows to use resolutions and refresh rates i was not able even with native analog outputs such 2560 x 1440 80hz there are other adapters as well which seem good quality depending of user needs, for more info search this thread for "sunix" "delock" "Benfei" "Plugable" "Vention" also search for user "Derupter" which has done good research about good quality Dac adapters
 
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3dfan: have you seen good gaming LCD in action? Response, blur was reducted, it's no problem longer even for e-sports gamer.
You enlarge the legend of FW900 legend, and makes people think it's worth thousands of dollars https://www.ebay.com/p/52108670
FW900 is nice for the price, but technology went better and there's good succesors.
I use CRT because they are cheap (35$ for 2xP1130) but i'd go for gaming lcd as main display if they were not that expensive.
 
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It doesn't matter how you get the resolution, you either have it or you don't
It does matter, in older games you can use only resolutions with driver support. You can create custom res in nvidia or cru but games won't show this. I tested that in Windows XP, but XP driver won't work on Win7 (it says that it's not compatible with x64)
 
It does matter, in older games you can use only resolutions with driver support. You can create custom res in nvidia or cru but games won't show this. I tested that in Windows XP, but XP driver won't work on Win7 (it says that it's not compatible with x64)
No, it doesn't matter. Now it's time to answer you a big nice Read The F*cking Manual:

CRU doesn't work with Windows XP.

Requirements:
  • Windows Vista or later (Windows XP does not support EDID overrides)
 
3dfan: have you seen good gaming LCD in action? Response, blur was reducted, it's no problem longer even for e-sports gamer.
You enlarge the legend of FW900 legend, and makes people think it's worth thousands of dollars https://www.ebay.com/p/52108670
FW900 is nice for the price, but technology went better and there's good succesors.
I use CRT because they are cheap (35$ for 2xP1130) but i'd go for gaming lcd as main display if they were not that expensive.

no, i said i also do NOT agree on such high prices on crt monitors even when they still are overall better as a whole package than many if not all modern monitors from a picture-motion quality / performance perspective. actualy the ones that enlarged fw900 were digital foundry eurogamer throught their sites, after that, fw900 and other crts price increased a lot. i personaly would not even paid 1000 usd for a crt monitor even if its a fw900 maybe 500 if its new with its original scratchless coating, perfectly calibrated and came with a good dac adapter.

unfortunatelly all lcd i have seen or are offered as having blur improvements or recomended in the internet as "fw900 succesors" have fatal tradeoff effects such very dimm screens or very overbright without the ability for the user to adjust their luminance levels without degrading motion quality, double image effects, crosstalks, require much higher constant framerates and hence much more expensive hardware than a crt require to achieve similar flickerless blur free experience, no 60hz blur elimmination support, poor black levels, light glow - backlight bleed artifacts etc making the blur improvment on these not worth the tradeoff to be a real replacement for a crt even if those "high end" lcd were cheap enough, not for me.

as for esports i agree, there are plenty of modern monitors that do the job well since motion blur elimination and image quality is not really important in that department. but my main complain is as a whole package, specially to enjoy an eye candy color full, brightfull , life like clean motion etc gaming experience in which for what i have seen and researched, sadly crts are still better.
 
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personally i limit my price range to what i would probably spend on a normal LCD monitor that is top tier (i.e. a 240hz, etc), which is around 300-350. hard for me to justify spending over that for an older monitor that many games won't even support it's top refresh rate/low resolution combination (800x600 for example is no longer supported by many games, the lowest it goes to is 1024x768).
regardless, from my own testing, my CPD-520GS@150hz vs my Omen X 25f @240hz, i perform very similarly, and there is definitely similar/lower levels of motion blur on my CRT. for now i've been sticking to my 240hz solely due to the fact that most games support it well, may just build a desk for a separate setup (have another rig laying around).
excited to test out a better monitor though, likely buying a Iiyama Vision Master Pro 454 soon, for more than what I want to pay for.. but finding these things in North America is damn difficult now since the increase in demand for them..
of course, finding them cheap is ideal, but i've been making calls/emails to many recycling places and universities/hospitals, with pretty much no luck past a couple bad models that they would want upwards of 50-100 dollars
 
I've spent a lot of money on CRTs over the years with no regrets. They've been fantastic displays. And I hope this one lasts a bit longer.

That said, it's sad a display such as the FW900 introduced almost 20 years ago is still even relevant today.

I think Digital Foundry would still maintain that knowledge is power even in this case, because apparently you can still find CRTs cheap, if you look for listings where folks are just getting rid of computer displays. (Without awareness of the particular technology.)

You don't want to pay much though for a used one at this point. They're certainly consumable and it's kind of like buying a used lightbulb.
 
an older monitor that many games won't even support it's top refresh rate/low resolution combination (800x600 for example is no longer supported by many games, the lowest it goes to is 1024x768).

You can go into most game's config files to manually enter resolution and drop resolution lower. I don't think I've seen a game that doesn't support 640x480 that way, and I think most will even go lower. I've played games at 320x240 for shits and giggles.
 
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I've spent a lot of money on CRTs over the years with no regrets. They've been fantastic displays. And I hope this one lasts a bit longer.

That said, it's sad a display such as the FW900 introduced almost 20 years ago is still even relevant today.

I think Digital Foundry would still maintain that knowledge is power even in this case, because apparently you can still find CRTs cheap, if you look for listings where folks are just getting rid of computer displays. (Without awareness of the particular technology.)

You don't want to pay much though for a used one at this point. They're certainly consumable and it's kind of like buying a used lightbulb.

You ready to go OLED? LG's 48CX is looking pretty sweet. :)
 
LG's 48CX is looking pretty sweet. :)

interesting, however quite expensive, also considering still fatal flaws such, as the mayority of modern displays it sadly seems to lose a massive amount of brightness when in crt motion clarity mode as seems in this video (linked at the exact moment 2:01 )

 
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interesting, however quite expensive, also considering still fatal flaws such, as the mayority of modern displays it sadly seems to lose a massive amount of brightness when in crt motion clarity mode as seems in this video

Probably still brighter than a CRT though, so I'd be fine with it.

My only issue would be if the BFI mode only works at either 60hz or 120hz, and I don't know if anybody's tested that yet. I run my CRT at 75hz, 90hz, 100hz, etc., all the time. Matching the game's frame rate to the monitors refresh rate is very important, and I don't want to have to cut down resolution or settings on every game just to hit 120hz.
 
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I can't say for sure but the issue isn't likely to be (electrolytic) capacitor related.

It might be a contact issue with one of the 2 flat cables linking the N and D board, or a track broken/damaged in these flat cables. (but that's not very likely if these cables were properly handled, and not numerous times)
I'd rather believe in a failure in the vertical deflection circuitry on the D board. It's like any of the V+ or V- line was grounded or too low. Check the resistors/fuses and diodes in the vicinity of IC701 with a multimeter (see that in the service manual). Do that on every line from Vshape, Vret, -15V and +15V. If you don't find anything suspicious, it might be the IC itself being down.

edit: I just realised, there might be something else wrong, that bright blueish display WITHOUT a VGA input is clearly not normal. What I told you may help to fix one issue, but if you do not have some minimal experience in electronics repairing this could be too difficult for you.

Following your advice I was able to fix the problem with the retracted image. Thanks a lot! R729 on the D board was faulty. It went from 1 ohm to almost 600. I also improved the overly bright image by reducing the G2 voltage. However the problem with the input signal still remains. When I plug in a VGA cable the monitor displays an image only for a second then turns off with the orange led flashing. WinDAS detects the following errors:
WinDAS.jpg

Any ideas on how to fight these errors will be much appreciated.
 
Following your advice I was able to fix the problem with the retracted image. Thanks a lot! R729 on the D board was faulty. It went from 1 ohm to almost 600. I also improved the overly bright image by reducing the G2 voltage. However the problem with the input signal still remains. When I plug in a VGA cable the monitor displays an image only for a second then turns off with the orange led flashing. WinDAS detects the following errors:
View attachment 252684

Any ideas on how to fight these errors will be much appreciated.
R729 is a fuse resistor, it's a special kind of resistor designed to always fail open (instead of shorted) when its thermal resistance is exceeded. It's there to protect different parts of the circuit from each others and prevent one failure to cause other failures in chain.
If it failed, that means either there has been/is a problem on the -15V line, or the IC drew too much current (in other words, there would still be another problem you didn't spot in the vicinity of the IC or with the IC itself).
The display shutting down with orange flashing means a safety was trigerred, does the led blink following a specific pattern ?

edit: oh, and when the monitor did briefly display an image, did it look "normal" or was there any obvious anomaly ?
 
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Too echo others. Man that is nice resolution. And it was only a few years ago when we had to put up with blocky, poorly rendered graphics. Just as with movies hard to watch some of those 20 year old movies and see how poorly done the graphics and simulations were.
 
interesting, however quite expensive, also considering still fatal flaws such, as the mayority of modern displays it sadly seems to lose a massive amount of brightness when in crt motion clarity mode as seems in this video (linked at the exact moment 2:01 )



I mean you gotta start somewhere right? How long did it take for CRT’s like your beloved FW-900 to be made? 60 years?
 
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