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

just hooked up my fw900 for the first time



colors and blacks are pretty nice - both better than my s-pva tfts
picture was pretty green out-of-the-box but that was easily fixed by setting green bias to 0 (default 50)

sharpness isn't that good
its not blurry but not quite crisp either
i already adjusted convergence and played with the focus potis inside of the monitor
probably gonna have check this windas stuff out when i have the time



other than that i am pretty pleased

i was surprised how silent my fw900 is
by far the most silent crt i ever had

also i'm not sure if the previous owner removed the anti-glare but the screen sure is reflective as fuck
i need to turn of all room lights so i don't see a crisp image of my face on a black backgrounds
not much of a problem for me though



all-in-all a real bargain for what i payed (63€)
 
also i'm not sure if the previous owner removed the anti-glare but the screen sure is reflective as fuck
i need to turn of all room lights so i don't see a crisp image of my face on a black backgrounds
not much of a problem for me though

That sounds like the anti glare was definately removed. The benefit though is you don't need to turn the brightness up as high and should in turn make the electron guns last longer. They are beautiful when the antiglare is removed, but you definately need a dark room, otherwise there is alot of glare. My parts one had the antiglare removed, and it looked amazing.
 
That sounds like the anti glare was definately removed. The benefit though is you don't need to turn the brightness up as high and should in turn make the electron guns last longer. They are beautiful when the antiglare is removed, but you definately need a dark room, otherwise there is alot of glare. My parts one had the antiglare removed, and it looked amazing.
yes i would have removed/replaced the antiglare either way
i comfortable turn the lights on and off using a remove control in my keyboard :D




anyone know a good place to order:
- a nice clear ag coating for the fw900
- a pre-made windas cable that's usable right away
?

i'm located in eu/germany
 
picture was pretty green out-of-the-box but that was easily fixed by setting green bias to 0 (default 50)

Instead of doing that.. Set it all back to 50.. Wait for the monitor to warm up and set your brightness to twice what you like..

Go to the menu-> Colors-> sRBG.. If you waited long enough the Image Restoration function should be available.. Go down and press right.. It will blank the screen and take a series of grey screens toward neutral. When it is done return your brightness and see if the green persists.

These may help with judging.

http://zeospantera.imgur.com/display_calibration They are labeled. Look for the Neutral Gray image. Make sure you see no color in it.
 
Instead of doing that.. Set it all back to 50.. Wait for the monitor to warm up and set your brightness to twice what you like..

Go to the menu-> Colors-> sRBG.. If you waited long enough the Image Restoration function should be available.. Go down and press right.. It will blank the screen and take a series of grey screens toward neutral. When it is done return your brightness and see if the green persists.

These may help with judging.

http://zeospantera.imgur.com/display_calibration They are labeled. Look for the Neutral Gray image. Make sure you see no color in it.

i did but it always comes out with a certain green tint
colors only look even when i manually set green gain to 0
 
you can usually edit the color settings in your gpu drivers too. Just a reminder as it might help you out idk.
 
I got a few questions I should have researched this a bit further, but I bought a dvi to vga cable specifically this. Would it have been a better choice to have went with dvi to bnc? I notice when I'm on a black screen my mouse trials extremely bad I assume this is lag?
 
i did but it always comes out with a certain green tint
colors only look even when i manually set green gain to 0

Tints and/or color casts on the GDM-FW900 are indications of faulty gun(s) and/or faulty color transistors. If after testing, the guns and transistors checked out OK, then the monitor needs white point balance adjustment via WinDAS/WinCAT.

Hope this helps...

Sincerely,

Unkle Vito!
 
you can usually edit the color settings in your gpu drivers too. Just a reminder as it might help you out idk.
in my experience software calibration always looks worse than hardware
and keeping your software calibration is a big hassle under windows

Tints and/or color casts on the GDM-FW900 are indications of faulty gun(s) and/or faulty color transistors. If after testing, the guns and transistors checked out OK, then the monitor needs white point balance adjustment via WinDAS/WinCAT.

Hope this helps...

Sincerely,

Unkle Vito!
yes, this doesn't surprise me to hear
i don't really wanna open everything up though :D
already got a few electric shocks only touching the glass at certain points

windas i plan on checking out right away once i have a suitable cable

do you by any chance know if the fw900 has a setting like "g2 voltage" or something?
on my diamondtron increasing this improved black levels and contrast at the cost of sharpness (starting in the corners)
i'd like to lower this if possible since my fw900 already has great contrast and lacks sharpness

thanks
 
in my experience software calibration always looks worse than hardware
and keeping your software calibration is a big hassle under windows


yes, this doesn't surprise me to hear
i don't really wanna open everything up though :D
already got a few electric shocks only touching the glass at certain points

windas i plan on checking out right away once i have a suitable cable

do you by any chance know if the fw900 has a setting like "g2 voltage" or something?
on my diamondtron increasing this improved black levels and contrast at the cost of sharpness (starting in the corners)
i'd like to lower this if possible since my fw900 already has great contrast and lacks sharpness

thanks

In the GDM-FW900, the G2 Voltage setting is done by accessing the EEPROM via WinDAS. The correct way to adjust the G2 via WinDAS takes place during the white point balance adjustment. The G2 adjustment is the first value to be adjusted.

Hope this helps...

Sincerely,

Unkle Vito!
 
Just thought I’d post this so everyone may enjoy :D

So I was trolling to see if any of these bad boys were for sale around my area (DC, Maryland, Virginia) as I do every single day (no really), along with some other stuff I’m looking for \ would like to have a backup of, and lo and behold jackpot, I find one on Craigslist. The guy is out in Dale City/Manassas which translates into about an hour and some change depending on traffic from DC. He has two for sale, one for $225 and is perfect except for a minor convergence issue on the upper left corner (I’m thinking fooling with a setting or so will fix this) and another for $125 which he claims is the same as the first one but has washed out blacks.

So I send the guy an e-mail with some numbered Q’s regarding the $225 one, and after a couple days, no response (the listing was only a day old when I responded). I then send a modified version of my first e-mail through my two other e-mail accounts thinking he was lazy and didn’t want to answer any Q’s and ignored it; I ask a friend to e-mail the guy also- yeah you could say I want it… No response after a couple days.

I was about ready to say fuck it, but then I got a response. The guy had taken the time to answer all of the questions I asked on my first e-mail, apologized for the lag time, and fully disclosed anything \ everything when answering (i.e. his answers weren’t shady \ vague).
I wanted the $225 one and paid $225. Since I paid his asking price he delivered it to me- there was a gas station about 6 blocks away that we agreed to meet at. Yeah, I probably could \ should have negotiated, but I wanted it and didn’t care.

When I got home-
I live in a 2 story condo in a brownstone (aka garden-rise)…For people who don’t know what type of building this is, there is no elevator and is not a high-rise. So I got the pleasure of having to haul this fucker up all the small flights of stairs once in the building, then when I get to my place, up a full flight of stairs. Yeah, this kinda fuckin’ sucked, though it was easier this time around- I posted a few pages ago about the one I got over summer and having to do this.
I fear the day of having to carry these things down the stairs- the chance of me taking a tumble is a lot higher than going up the stairs.

I hook it up with the crappy looking VGA to 5BNC cable he gave me and while everything else was fine, I did see the issue the guy had mentioned (a convergence issue on the upper left corner of the screen). I then connected it to my main machine with the Blue Jeans DVI to 5BNC cable I got when buying the first one over summer- convergence issue gone. Awesome.

So today I decided to take off the anti glare coating- getting those 4 fucking bezel screws off was harder than taking the AG coating off. FFS, those things were screwed tight, so much so I had to get a vice grip and put my screwdriver in it to get enough leverage to unscrew those things (I don’t have a drill handy at the moment). I also used them to peel off the AG coating and, wow, did it help.

Right now I have both of these pieces of ass on my desk but am waiting for the other DVI to 5BNC cable to arrive from Blue Jeans so I can start calibrating it (I don’t care for a dual setup, so this one will be going in my closet afterwards).
 
If the convergence is really jacked up in that corner, you may find the HUD option's limiting. You may have to go for WINDAS dconv adjustment to get things straight. A magnifying glass is advised. It's a painstaking process. Not a fun one, either.
 
Just thought I’d post this so everyone may enjoy :D

So I was trolling to see if any of these bad boys were for sale around my area (DC, Maryland, Virginia) as I do every single day (no really), along with some other stuff I’m looking for \ would like to have a backup of, and lo and behold jackpot, I find one on Craigslist. The guy is out in Dale City/Manassas which translates into about an hour and some change depending on traffic from DC. He has two for sale, one for $225 and is perfect except for a minor convergence issue on the upper left corner (I’m thinking fooling with a setting or so will fix this) and another for $125 which he claims is the same as the first one but has washed out blacks.

So I send the guy an e-mail with some numbered Q’s regarding the $225 one, and after a couple days, no response (the listing was only a day old when I responded). I then send a modified version of my first e-mail through my two other e-mail accounts thinking he was lazy and didn’t want to answer any Q’s and ignored it; I ask a friend to e-mail the guy also- yeah you could say I want it… No response after a couple days.

I was about ready to say fuck it, but then I got a response. The guy had taken the time to answer all of the questions I asked on my first e-mail, apologized for the lag time, and fully disclosed anything \ everything when answering (i.e. his answers weren’t shady \ vague).
I wanted the $225 one and paid $225. Since I paid his asking price he delivered it to me- there was a gas station about 6 blocks away that we agreed to meet at. Yeah, I probably could \ should have negotiated, but I wanted it and didn’t care.

When I got home-
I live in a 2 story condo in a brownstone (aka garden-rise)…For people who don’t know what type of building this is, there is no elevator and is not a high-rise. So I got the pleasure of having to haul this fucker up all the small flights of stairs once in the building, then when I get to my place, up a full flight of stairs. Yeah, this kinda fuckin’ sucked, though it was easier this time around- I posted a few pages ago about the one I got over summer and having to do this.
I fear the day of having to carry these things down the stairs- the chance of me taking a tumble is a lot higher than going up the stairs.

I hook it up with the crappy looking VGA to 5BNC cable he gave me and while everything else was fine, I did see the issue the guy had mentioned (a convergence issue on the upper left corner of the screen). I then connected it to my main machine with the Blue Jeans DVI to 5BNC cable I got when buying the first one over summer- convergence issue gone. Awesome.

So today I decided to take off the anti glare coating- getting those 4 fucking bezel screws off was harder than taking the AG coating off. FFS, those things were screwed tight, so much so I had to get a vice grip and put my screwdriver in it to get enough leverage to unscrew those things (I don’t have a drill handy at the moment). I also used them to peel off the AG coating and, wow, did it help.

Right now I have both of these pieces of ass on my desk but am waiting for the other DVI to 5BNC cable to arrive from Blue Jeans so I can start calibrating it (I don’t care for a dual setup, so this one will be going in my closet afterwards).

I went to look at these same exact monitors a few weeks ago. Both had issues with shaking at any refresh rate greater than 60hz. I'm curious if you noticed that or not? I'd like to know what could have caused the shaking.
 
@Rock
Heh, a magnifying glass...
Actually no, it’s not jacked up and looks normal- I go out of my way to look for any type of issue and will drive me nuts if there is one...

@Crowly
I have the res at 1600x1200@85 and I don’t see \ notice wobbling or anything…the quality of the cable maybe (no idea)?
 
Ok here an little Guide how to install the Original GDM-FW900 Drivers.
[Screenshots from a German Windows 7]

First download the drivers, there should be these 5 Files
Dateien.jpg


Second right click on the desktop and click Screen Resolution.
KontextmenDesktop.jpg


Third click on the blue Link "Advanced Options" / Monitor / Properties / Driver / Update Driver / Search for Drivers on the Computer / Select Drivers from a list on the Computer
Bildschirmauflsung.png


Next click on Disk... / Search and then select the Snymon17.inf File and click open
Treibersoftware.jpg


Maybe you will get an information that says that these drivers are not signed, just click ok and install them.


This works for both systemtypes 32 and 64 bit. The only difference is for 32 bit you use the original sony drivers which you can find easily with google. And for 64 bit systems use the modded version. I uploaded it a few posts ago cause i forgot where they actually are to find in this forum. (Note im not the guy who make this modded drivers i only made these little guide for how to install them)

i had to bookmark this put it in the reference section for gods sake i had to look through the pages to find it again
 
I went to look at these same exact monitors a few weeks ago. Both had issues with shaking at any refresh rate greater than 60hz. I'm curious if you noticed that or not? I'd like to know what could have caused the shaking.

Wow what a small world. I tested a few of these in the field and having the monitor not warm up and running 60hz with improper drivers (ie a cheap netbook) can cause it. As well as being near a big power source or transformer and also direct vibration can cause the image to un-stabilize.. Usually with the right driver, refresh and a good warmup all that goes away.

Question was what else was wrong with the $125 one. You could have kept/sold the parts and made that back.. Plus some G2 tweaking in windas would have most likely fixed the blacks issue.
 
@Zeos
Yeah I was thinking about this, and a friend also said the same thing. I would like to avoid having to fool with Windas to make the monitor fully useable (though this would be a perfect chance to do so without caring what happens) \ want ones that are functional.
Honestly, I probably still could get the other one if I wanted as the guy said he was going out of town until this Thursday (that is if it’s still up for sale)...

I also forgot- Vito thanks for answering my question a few pages back about how to measure the hours on a CRT, I never thanked you for that...:eek:


Heh, I think you guys will hate me even more- I have a lead, and I’m just looking at the e-mail now, at another one up in Baltimore- he wants me to make em’ an offer…HP branded and manufactured in March 2003…we’ll see. ;)
 
Ug, Fedex is taking forever to deliver my FW900. Cannot wait to test this bad boy out. I bet there aren't many Fedex guys that want to move around a 110lb box. :D
 
Ug, Fedex is taking forever to deliver my FW900. Cannot wait to test this bad boy out. I bet there aren't many Fedex guys that want to move around a 110lb box. :D

I hope your fed-ex experience is better than mine..

Lets just say the bezel needed a replacing when it arrived.
 
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So that HP branded one I didn't act in time as when I e-mailed an offer the guy said it was sold.
Eh, I prefer the Sony, SGI, bezels anyway...
And I must add- if anyone in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area wants to sell there’s, gimmie a PM…;)
 
Has anyone ever gotten BNC to work with an AMD card in Win 7 x64? I am having a hell of a time. Even with custom .inf's, using powerstrip etc the max it will let me go is 1600x1200@60Hz. 60HZ is making me go blind!

In powerstrip it lists the max resolution as 2304x1440 @ 80Hz yet when I go into display porfile to actually change the resolution, it only goes up to 1600x1200@60Hz. Makes no sense!

I wonder if the people that got BNC working with Win 7 x64 where all nVidia users and not AMD?
 
When I scored another one of these I bought another set of 5BNC to DVI cables from Blue Jeans Cable and noticed they had a VGA to DVI cable. I bought that too and Win7 detected the monitor and gave me all the res'es and refresh rates- maybe try this cable if all else has failed? ( it's an idea :p )
 
Has anyone ever gotten BNC to work with an AMD card in Win 7 x64? I am having a hell of a time. Even with custom .inf's, using powerstrip etc the max it will let me go is 1600x1200@60Hz. 60HZ is making me go blind!

In powerstrip it lists the max resolution as 2304x1440 @ 80Hz yet when I go into display porfile to actually change the resolution, it only goes up to 1600x1200@60Hz. Makes no sense!

I wonder if the people that got BNC working with Win 7 x64 where all nVidia users and not AMD?

I'm using an unlocked 6950 to drive my FW900 at 1920x1200@85Hz and 2304x1440@80Hz.
BNC->VGA -> DVI adapter. The custom inf and pin mod in these two posts did the trick.

And in case anyone using BNC for their FW900 run into problems with W7 or Vista, here's a custom .inf I've made.

It works and gives you every resolution and refresh rate available, you just have to update your monitor driver. At the very least you won't be limited to 1600x1200 in BNC mode and will be able to use 1920x1200 @ 85hz:

http://hotfile.com/dl/99499166/9d9ce6b/modmonitor.inf.html
Seems the file link is dead, try this one. - http://hotfile.com/dl/139833040/89c4132/FW900_W7_64.inf.html
DVI to BNC now fixed for the ATI 5850! It actually was a hardware hack to the cable..hehe. Here is a picture someone posted on how to do it.

608


I am now super happy with my ATI 5850 card! I can set refresh rates as high as I want because EDID is disabled by removing the pin!
 
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I did the pin mod and the custom .inf and I can get 1920x1200@85Hz but not 2304x1440@80Hz. It doesn't even come up as an option. I am using a DVI-D AMD 6990 output to BNC adapter and BNC cable to the monitor. In catalyst control center, if I switch resolution and refresh rate it always keeps going back to 1920x1200.
 
I haven't run mine in quite some time, not sure if it will even work ... but when I did run it, I always had the best luck using powerstrip and testing timings/resolutions until I hit a sweet spot.
 
I haven't run mine in quite some time, not sure if it will even work ... but when I did run it, I always had the best luck using powerstrip and testing timings/resolutions until I hit a sweet spot.

Do you remember how/what to adjust in powerstrip? It is only pulling the windows refresh rates and resolutions and not letting me select anything higher than 1920x1200@85Hz.

Even under the EIDI line it says FW900 2304x1440@80Hz ye the slider doesn't let me do it. All sorts of weird stuff like it only lets me select 75Hz at 800x600 even though I have the custom .inf's installed.
 
With a nvidia Card and the inf driver you are also not able to take 2304x1440 @80Hz with BNC instantly. You have to create a custom resolution in the nvidia control panel, but after that you can use it normally.

Is there also an "Custom Resolution Option" in the Catalyst Control Center? If yes then i would try this.
 
All of these custom .inf's don't do anything to change how my AMD 6990 and CCC/Win 7 views this monitor. I can only get 1920x1200@85Hz max. I've tried the pin removal, powerstrip, registry edits, with EIDI, without EIDI, all with both the VGA and BNC cables to no avail. It's like Win 7 and/or CCC completely ignores everything I do/change.

I did get 2304x1440@80Hz working on the GTX580 with the VGA connector but not the BNC. The image was totally shrunk and distorted when I applied 2304x1440 via BNC. Does anyone know if BNC support that resolution or just VGA?
 
When the image was shrunk and distorted did you go into the OSD and stretch it back out and center it?
Everytime you try a new resolution it is messed up the monitor remembers how you set it last so you can correct all your commonly used resolutions.

I dunno about ATI man that is why I prefer not to buy their cards. Drivers are always sub par.
 
Vega, did you try restarting the driver each time you made a change? I know i generally have to do that when messing with CCC when using registry edits.
 
BNC supports 2304x1440 i have testet it with mine DVI to BNC cable, i also got 2560x1440/1600 and some other (i think it was 2700x1800 just for fun) resolutions working.
 
Rudy is right , CRT will sometimes have to be stretched into full screen (or "letterboxed" for 16:9 resolutions assuming you don't want it stretched past 16:9 FoV) manually using the controls. If I remember correcty, the monitor either remembers the last scale/squash settings from prior resolutions (which are not appropriate for the new rez), or forgets and goes back to "zero". Either way you have to adjust the display size/position.
.
So what you are shooting for (and beyond apparently) can be done one way or another, as Myramond said. You might have to restart the driver when using powerstrip or other edits (its faster than rebooting but rebooting works too). I never had to do that when switching to a newly created resolution using powerstrip after the first time I created it, and powerstrip lest you know on the fly if the resolution you are trying will work or not before you save it. Powerstrip might even restart the driver for you .. I forget if it did last time I used it, and if not its been awhile so it might now. Maybe someone else can chime in on that.
.
Powerstrip is a relatively inexpensive and robust app that works fine with ati (or nvidia for that matter). With it you don't have to do anything manually in registry and it is much more full featured than the integrated nvidia custom resolution tools last I looked, unless nvidia improved theirs to compare with powerstrip interface and functionality (which I doubt). As long as both result in a custom resolution in the end its fine I guess. The new version of amd drivers coming out is going to be really cool btw.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/19/amd_catalyst_121_preview_profiles_performance/
On December 12th, AMD posted a preview version of its Catalyst 12.1 driver, which is set to be finalized and released next month. Among the changes is a system through which gamers can create CrossFireX profiles for specific games. NVIDIA has had this kind of feature in place for a very long time, but it is new for AMD. In these game profiles, gamers can finally customize CrossFireX settings for their games. This means that when new games come out without CrossFireX support either built in or already supported by an available Catalyst driver or Application Profiles package from AMD, gamers can now force CrossFireX modes. Along with CrossFireX options, we can also save specific rendering options (such as forced Anisotropic Filtering, VSYNC, or Anti-Aliasing) for individual games, rather than only having global options which apply to every game. It is a terribly late addition, but a very welcome one. Recent AMD graphics cards owner outcry is no doubt the "catalyst" behind the move. CrossFireX support has been arriving later and later behind new game titles leaving the top end Radeon users in the dark. Why it has taken AMD this long to remedy this issue is beyond us, but hopefully AMD has finally filled this performance void for CrossFireX users. Let's see how AMD has done this time.
 
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Rudy is right , CRT will sometimes have to be stretched into full screen (or "letterboxed" for 16:9 resolutions assuming you don't want it stretched past 16:9 FoV) manually using the controls. If I remember correcty, the monitor either remembers the last scale/squash settings from prior resolutions (which are not appropriate for the new rez), or forgets and goes back to "zero". Either way you have to adjust the display size/position.
.
So what you are shooting for (and beyond apparently) can be done one way or another, as Myramond said. You might have to restart the driver when using powerstrip or other edits (its faster than rebooting but rebooting works too). I never had to do that when switching to a newly created resolution using powerstrip after the first time I created it, and powerstrip lest you know on the fly if the resolution you are trying will work or not before you save it. Powerstrip might even restart the driver for you .. I forget if it did last time I used it, and if not its been awhile so it might now. Maybe someone else can chime in on that.
.
Powerstrip is a relatively inexpensive and robust app that works fine with ati (or nvidia for that matter). With it you don't have to do anything manually in registry and it is much more full featured than the integrated nvidia custom resolution tools last I looked, unless nvidia improved theirs to compare with powerstrip interface and functionality (which I doubt). As long as both result in a custom resolution in the end its fine I guess. The new version of amd drivers coming out is going to be really cool btw.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/19/amd_catalyst_121_preview_profiles_performance/

No matter what I tried, using registry edits, powerstrip, different .inf's on my 6990 it would not do 2304x1440 on either VGA or BNC. I spent like half a day on it and I give up. It took me literally like one minute to get 2304x1440@80Hz working on a GTX580 via BNC using the custom resolution option. nVidia drivers are so much better.

Now the problem though is a single 580 is much to slow to run that resolution at 80 FPS. :mad: This also means the 7970 or any AMD cards in the future are out seeing as they have zero CRT support unlike nVIdia.
 
Now the problem though is a single 580 is much to slow to run that resolution at 80 FPS. :mad: This also means the 7970 or any AMD cards in the future are out seeing as they have zero CRT support unlike nVIdia.

hmm in that way AMD just sucks if you want to use it with the good old CRT Monitors.

yeah for gaming one 580 on that resolution needs definitely help from a second unit ^^, if you want to set everything to high settings and play at an normal fps count
 
Vega, did you try restarting the driver each time you made a change? I know i generally have to do that when messing with CCC when using registry edits.

This is actually pretty important. Last week I was helping my friend set up his FW900, his machine had a 5770 and he was using a VGA cable. We were curious about the 2304 x 1440 resolution ourselves. I have to agree, setting a custom resolution is kind of a pain with AMD's drivers. Like you, the maximum listed resolution was 1920 x 1200 and we were unable to get 2304 x 1440 to become available even after using Powerstrip and modifying the registry. After hours of frustration, I realized that we forgot about the driver.

In Windows 7, what I did was open the Device Manager, select Monitors and find the FW900 (it will probably be listed Generic PnP Monitor). Then go to Properties, and click "Update Driver". Select "Browse my computer for driver software", then "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer". Generic PnP Monitor should be listed there. After doing this, we were finally able to select 2304 x 1440 when going to "Screen Resolution" in Windows.

Not sure if it will work for you, but hope this helps.
 
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