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

How much are these things going for? I have one but can't use it now, apartment size restrictions..

I have the HP version that is in perfect condition. I should sell it. Times are hard.
 
Mine in excellent condition (some scratches on the sides of the monitor but none on the screen) was 150$.

Where are you located? My fiance wants one now she's seen mine... ;)
 
I picked up my monitor today. Have it plugged in now.

Visually it's in near perfect condition. No scratches/scuffs or marks. Manufacture date is March 2002.

So far the monitor is suffering from the green tinge problem mentioned earlier in the thread (I've put the brightness up to 90 before Image restore becomes available).

Convergence looks to be off at the top of the screen, I'll tinker with that after I do an image restore.

Widescreen Mode is also not displaying properly (I have a feeling that's just the geometry being seriously out of whack, but I may be wrong. 1280x960 is fine, but 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 displays in 4:3 mode with a mouse drag across the screen to display the rest of it in a 4:3 window :S
 
Fixed the widescreen issue, that was caused by my Catalyst Control Centre settings + WinXP not detecting the monitor drivers.

I can't install the monitor drivers, it's just detecting as Default Monitor, but I've managed to set it up fine with that.

Convergence on the screen isn't perfect. Will have to make a Service Cable to play around with it sometime.
 
There's still two problems I haven't been able to correct if anyone's willing to give me a few pointers.

1. There's some discoloration at the bottom middle of the screen (yellow tinge), adjusting the landing in both corners doesn't remove it.

2. There's a slight discoloration and distortion on the left side of the screen (blue-ish). The distortion I speak of looks like I can see vertical lines in the image going down the entire screen and are present across-ways about 2 inches. I remember seeing this distortion present on my 22" Dell P1230 when I was using an inferior cable. However the cable I am using now removed it on the Dell, but it's present here on the 24" (HD15 Male to Male 3M VGA cable with filters)
 
Anyone know of a refresh rate locker that works with Windows 7 (64bit)? I've tried ReForce but it doesn't work for every game.
 
Well my three-year-old Sony FW-900 may have finally bit the dust. The monitor will display a fast flash on the screen after being turned on. The green light will remain after about 10-15 seconds then turn orange. Nothing is displayed on the screen during this time. Is this an easy repair?
 
Anyone know of a refresh rate locker that works with Windows 7 (64bit)? I've tried ReForce but it doesn't work for every game.

I use ATI Tray Tools instead of CCC (has built in refreshlock function), if you have ATI. Works on most DX9 games. Dunno about all. DX10...not sure...I'm not running that bleeding edge.
 
I bought a GDM-FW900 back in 2002, when it was $1800. I added it to my GDM-F500, making a dual-monitor setup. I loved both monitors. I loved having such a flexible range of resolutions (with the help of PowerStrip), and on the FW900 regularly used:
  • 2000x1280 at 85 Hz
  • 1920x1080 at 30 Hz interlaced (with a transcoder, for YPrPb component input)
  • 1920x1080 at 60 Hz
  • 1920x1080 at 96 Hz, for judder-free, flicker-free 24 fps film playback
  • 1920x816 at 120 Hz, for watching 2.35:1 movies with perfectly-black letterboxing
  • 1600x1024 at various refresh rates
  • 2304x1474 at 60 Hz, for viewing photos (limited by my video card at the time — now I'd be able to do 2704x1730 at 60 Hz)
  • 640x480 at 160 Hz
  • 1440x922 at 125 Hz, for matching the rate of a USB mouse (it makes mousing feel silky-smooth)
The only things I didn't like about it were:
  • a black level inferior to my GDM-F500 (on my GDM-F500, if I turned the brightness down far enough I'd get a perfect black — it would also make white darker and totally throw off the gamma curve, requiring compensation, but it worked when I needed it)
  • inferior firmware to the GDM-F500 regarding the way the "Display Mouse" was used to adjust screen geometry (the GDM-F500 lets you use Up/Down/Left/Right to control centering and size adjustment intuitively; the GDM-FW900 requires you to up and down through a list to individually adjust horizontal and vertical settings, which is less intuitive and slows down the adjustment process)
  • could only remember 10 custom modes, as opposed to the GDM-F500's 15 custom modes (Really, why couldn't they remember hundreds of modes? It's not like this would've required much nonvolatile RAM.)
  • Like the GDM-F500, there was no way to get squares to be perfectly square throughout the entire screen. You could get close though.
  • My GDM-FW900 took a long time to warm up, during which the black level fluctuated. It seemed like the monitor was trying to compensate for the warm-up and failing (overcompensating).
My GDM-FW900 went kaput some years ago. One day it just stopped displaying anything on the screen when turned on; there's no visible output, not even a black level. Since then I've been storing it and planning to repair it some day, seeing as alternative technologies still haven't entirely caught up with what CRTs could do 10 years ago.

Thing is, repairing my FW900 might cost more than buying another one. Unless I could drive it over to the repair place, there'd be shipping, too. But it seems such a shame to throw out my trusty old monitor. The fix would probably be so simple. Does anyone have any ideas as to what may have gone wrong in my GDM-FW900 and how to fix it? I've opened up my GDM-F500 in the past and adjusted its focus knobs, but haven't gone beyond that. Or, any recommendations as to a CRT repair center?

Do any of you use your GDM-FW900 alongside an LCD in a dual-monitor setup?
 
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Do any of you use your GDM-FW900 alongside an LCD in a dual-monitor setup?

I just dropped a cheap Viewsonic 23.6" next to mine a few months ago. I use it when I'm working at home (instead of laptop screen at (1024x768), and otherwise, it is either my 2nd display for my desktop, or it's being powered by my slave PC ($25 Pentium 4 computer from college computer sale...running win7 at 1920x1080 now that I bought a cheap Radeon 9550XL for it). Thanks to Input Director and the P4 box I can use the other monitor even while playing games and such.

The viewsonic is set to 6500k in the menu but it looks awfully blue compared to the FW900. But I haven't calibrated the FW900 in a couple of years. Need to bust out the DVE DVD or some color test patterns and calibrate again.
 
Okay, I plugged my GDM-FW900 in to refresh my memory as to exactly how it fails.

I turn it on, and hear the standard sound of it deguassing itself on startup — but there is nothing on screen, not even a black level. Then the monitor emits a periodic scraping sound, every 2.3 seconds (approx); after 4 iterations of this sound, it gives up, and the power indicator starts blinking every 2 seconds (don't know what color, as I'm color deficient; if it's important, I can check with a camera).

Any idea what's causing this and how to fix it?

BTW, I had the defocus/popping/flashing problem many years ago, and had it fixed on warranty. It never had another problem until this complete failure.
 
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BTW, I had the defocus/popping/flashing problem many years ago, and had it fixed on warranty. It never had another problem until this complete failure.

What did they do to fix the defocus/popping/flashing problem? I have three FW900s but one of them is now doing the defocus/popping/flashing problem.
 
These issues are why I decided to go to the NEC LCD2490WUXi instead of the FW-900. Did anyone pick up the two mint ones in Orlando, FL off craigslist for $400?

I seriously thought about those, but when both my home and work G500's started acting up within a couple months of each other I knew buying into a 10 year old screen I didn't know the 'hours' on was a big risk.
 
What did they do to fix the defocus/popping/flashing problem? I have three FW900s but one of them is now doing the defocus/popping/flashing problem.
My memory was faulty. It was my GDM-F500 that had that problem, in May 2000, only 6 months after I bought it. It was Quest International who did the repair (contracted by Sony). If I still have the invoice from that, I don't know where it's filed. However, as I recall they were quite vague and I didn't understand how what they did could have fixed it (though I never did have the problem again after I got it back from them). It may have had something to do with the power supply but not at all sure of that.

Wow, three FW900s. Do you use all three, or do you have two extras as backup in case of failure?
 
My memory was faulty. It was my GDM-F500 that had that problem, in May 2000, only 6 months after I bought it. It was Quest International who did the repair (contracted by Sony). If I still have the invoice from that, I don't know where it's filed. However, as I recall they were quite vague and I didn't understand how what they did could have fixed it (though I never did have the problem again after I got it back from them). It may have had something to do with the power supply but not at all sure of that.

Wow, three FW900s. Do you use all three, or do you have two extras as backup in case of failure?

I use one, my son uses one, and the third one has nice plastic but started acting up with the faults you described so that one is in storage until I can find someone locally that can fix it. Both my son and I are gamers so we love the CRT Widescreen. I had 6 at one time but sold them to some local gamers.
 
Well it's looking hopeless for my old GDM-FW900, so I ordered a refurbished Grade B one from Accurate IT. Wish me luck. Maybe I'll be happy enough with the replacement FW900 that I can return my 3007WFP-HC and wait until something equal or better comes out that doesn't have anti-glare sparkle.

In the meantime I've been experimenting with resolutions on my GDM-F500. (This works well because the F500 has the same H/V sync limits as the FW900.) I've managed to get up to 2704x1730 at 60 Hz. It is still resolving vertical detail at that resolution (865 line pairs). The horizontal detail is as sharp as it can possibly be on a CRT, though obviously it's not resolving full horizontal detail because the grille pitch is being drastically exceeded. A photo scaled full-screen at 2704x1730 looks superior in every way to the same photo scaled full-screen at a grille-matching resolution such as 1920x1232, because the detail is less aliased.

Anyone have a graphics card that can drive the GDM-FW900 at an even higher resolution?

Has anyone been adventuresome enough to try mounting a GDM-FW900 in an extremely heavy-duty enclosure to give it the ability to rotate between portrait and landscape?
 
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...Has anyone been adventuresome enough to try mounting a GDM-FW900 in an extremely heavy-duty enclosure to give it the ability to rotate between portrait and landscape?

LOL. (Sorry, hopefully someone else can you give you a more constructive response on this point.)

On the resolution point, just another reminder of what a remarkable device this monitor is.
 
Originally Posted by MetaGenie View Post
...Has anyone been adventuresome enough to try mounting a GDM-FW900 in an extremely heavy-duty enclosure to give it the ability to rotate between portrait and landscape?






not even chuck norris could support the FW900
 
Is anyone running the FW900 at 100hz+ rates with Windows 7?

I can't install my Samsung 955DF drivers with Windows 7. So the only options are 75hz or 85hz.

ReForce doesn't do anything either in 7.

I should've kept XP for my gaming system :(
 
Bummrus[H]a;1034943425 said:
The site with the installation instructions for WinDAS (http://www.geocities.com/gregua/windas/install.html) seems to be down.

Does anyone have a backup of it that they can post?

i take paypal donations. :p

http://www.piclist.com/images/com/geocities/www/gregua/windas/index.htm

save or print that site NOW!

edit: saved pdfs of the webapges and consolidated them into a rar file and hosted them on my webspace

WINDAS INSTRUCTIONS:

http://haste.4saken.org/pics/windas.rar
 
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Weird

The green discoloration that was present at the bottom middle of my display has moved. The bottom is now fine ... and the green discoloration is in the middle right :S (landings are adjusted good as well)

WTF?

Any idea what could be causing this.
 
Have you moved the monitor around? If i recall correctly, i read somewhere that the monitor has internal magnetic style dealioz which are used to counteract the earth's magnetic field...maybe yours broke loose and moved?
 
My FW900 just pooped out :( I was referred here into looking for some help. I hear Uncle Vito knows a lot about the monitor and perhaps, if he is around, could help me with my situation.

Basically, my monitor will not display a screen on both inputs anymore. It almost sounds like it's trying to switch to something to where it eventually gives up and blinks the orange light. I am not sure if I can repair this on my own, or if it can be repaired at all.

Here's the link to the full details of what happened: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1471688
 
You never see anything on the screen? Not even the "no signal" HUD message? If you never hear the degauss circuit kick in (loud and mean sounding) then I would suspect you have a problem I have faced.

That is, a power supply fault. I was able to fix one of my monitors that had this problem buy purchasing a rough looking FW-900 and swapping out the power supply boards. All has worked well since. One of these days, I'm going to have to look into repairing the original power supply board.

You should be able to hook your monitor up and read the trouble code in WinDAS, provided you have a cable and another monitor to use to use your PC. I built my own WinDAS cable via a schematic using the MAX232 or HIN232 chip. That schematic is linked in this thread somewhere.
 
You never see anything on the screen? Not even the "no signal" HUD message? If you never hear the degauss circuit kick in (loud and mean sounding) then I would suspect you have a problem I have faced.

Nope, do not get the screen or HUD message at all. And, it's more of a screechy noise than a loud click(but there is a slight kick at the end of the screeching).

You should be able to hook your monitor up and read the trouble code in WinDAS, provided you have a cable and another monitor to use to use your PC. I built my own WinDAS cable via a schematic using the MAX232 or HIN232 chip. That schematic is linked in this thread somewhere.

I've found out how to get WinDAS, but I haven't started to look for or construct my own cable. However, I'm having some weird messages display on my screen when I load up WinDAS. I downloaded a preinstalled version of the program and I read the instructions on how to install it. The only thing that needed to be done on my end was to copy msflxgrd.ocx to my system32 folder and add it to the registry using the batch script provided. Other than those weird messages, I can still access the Module Sel, and can access the configuration thingy in WinDAS.

Here are those error messages:

Code:
Astro SG is not used. Please check configuration!
ASTRO SG COMMUNICATOR ERROR
ASTRO SG TIMING SETUP ERROR
No mdl files
 
I wouldn't worry about too many of those errors. Just make sure you followed all of the steps closely while installing the software.

The software will be useless until you have cable. Once you have it hooked up, it's just a matter of telling WinDAS which sony model monitor it's working with and reading the error codes. You'll probably find an error for no power supply.
 
//[T.0.P]//;1034957514 said:
Okay, sounds good. I won't be constructing it, though. If it doesn't simply connect to other things without the use of a solder gun then I I am out of luck. I'm going to fork out the $20 for this:

http://techref.massmind.org/techref/io/serial/RCL1.htm
If you get the RCL-1, you'll need to swap some pins. The RCL-2 probably has the correct pinout right out of the box. (Though it's unclear whether Rx and Tx may need to be swapped.)

I was not able to order from techref.massmind.org; got an error when it tried to connect to Paypal. So instead, I bought one of these (ebay). No need to do any soldering to swap those pins. RTS may need to be shorted to CTS though.

Not going to build one myself because if it didn't work, I'd have no idea what was causing the problem (monitor, software, incorrectly built cable) and might even get unlucky and fry the circuit on the monitor.
 
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Did the RCL-1 have a working link to paypal? I didn't try it.

The RCL-2 page suggested shorting CTS to RTS, and I think the reasoning is that in a null modem cable, RTS on one end is wired to CTS on the other, and vice-versa. So when one side raises RTS to say "It's okay to send to me", the other will receive that signal on CTS. Since the monitor has no flow control pins, the computer may need to be told that it's always okay to send to the monitor. With CTS shorted to RTS, since a modern computer would likely keep RTS raised all the time, it would always detect a raised CTS as well, and see that it's okay to send to the monitor. However, it might make more sense to wire CTS to VCC (+5V) instead, because it doesn't really make sense to say "You will be ready to receive if and only if I'm ready to receive"; it makes more sense to say "You are always ready to receive". On the other hand, wiring CTS to RTS is easy because they're not used for anything else; wiring CTS to VCC would involve splitting VCC.

It probably doesn't even matter, since WinDAS knows that the monitor only has 4 pins and should disable hardware flow control.
 
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Well, since you've already bought the RCL-2 cable, lemme know how that goes :D I hope CTS don't short out nothin on ur end.

I tried to contact the other guy with the RCL-1 cable, however, finding contact info is hard atm. And, the paypal link is broken because of "invalid weight" or something(Which I dunno what difference it makes). I left a message on the page asking how I can order one of these, but I don't expect to get a message til next week cuz of Thanksgiving and all :(
 
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