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

Focus improves the darker the picture gets. It's not dependent on the horizontal frequency as some observed.
Interestingly it seems that even when turning down contrast with a black-on-white input signal, the focus is worse than when displaying a black-on-grey input signal at full contrast. That might be my imagination though...
 
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ikari_01 said:
I just picked up a used GDM-FW900 mfd. 2001. The previous owner seems to have been a strong smoker, the internals are covered in black-brown smelly sticky dust.
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One of my units had the same issue - my room would smell of pot and cigarettes every time the monitor heated up, but this went away after a few weeks.


ikari_01 said:
The picture is a bit too blurry for what I'm used from Trinitron CRTs, definitely much blurrier than my CPD-G400. Dark text on bright background looks really washed out, white text on dark background likewise. It cannot be corrected using the focus pots on the FBT.
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I'm wondering if this is an issue with too much drive, which would cause blooming. Turn lights off and display a pure white background. Is it pretty bright?


ikari_01 said:
On that note, the monitor does have a dynamic focus circuit but it doesn't seem to be adjustable from WinDAS. I wonder whether some things are hiding in the numbered register entries that WinDAS has no labels or procedures for.
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How did you discover the dynamic focus circuit?
 
spacediver said:
One of my units had the same issue - my room would smell of pot and cigarettes every time the monitor heated up, but this went away after a few weeks.
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Wow, at least mine doesn't smell of pot :)

spacediver said:
I'm wondering if this is an issue with too much drive, which would cause blooming. Turn lights off and display a pure white background. Is it pretty bright?
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It's about as bright as I'd expect. sRGB suggests brightness 21 and contrast 75, and at that setting I find it just bright enough to work in daylight. Blooming is quite apparent at that setting however.
I looked at a pattern with horizontal lines alternating between black and white. At contrast 35 they are quite well defined and definitely satisfactory regarding sharpness. At contrast 75 it becomes apparent that the red beam from the white lines is so thick that it covers the dark lines, too. So there seems to be particularly strong blooming of red.
By turning the vertical focus dial slightly, I can "choose" which beam has excessive bloom. I can find a common ground setting where no beam is blooming excessively but all of them are blooming slightly... Maybe I'm expecting too much from this buddy :rolleyes:

Actually with the help of a magnifying glass I've managed to get the focus quite okay now, to a point where I can agree that it's just as good as it gets. But I'd like your opinion on that. So I took some pictures. Concentrate on the fine horizontal lines (bottom of squares), they show the effect best.

I used the recommended mode (1920x1200, 85Hz) for all tests done so far.

Here's the test pattern at contrast 35 before readjusting with the magnifying glass:
gdm-fw900-focus-contrast35.jpg


Here's the test pattern at contrast 75 before readjusting with the magnifying glass:
gdm-fw900-focus-contrast75.jpg


Here's the test pattern at contrast 75 after readjusting with the magnifying glass:
gdm-fw900-focus-contrast75-after-magnifyingglass.jpg



spacediver said:
How did you discover the dynamic focus circuit?
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By looking at the schematics. The FBT has inputs (Pins 14+15) that are connected to the focus resistor network fed by amplified signals from the DSP on the N Board (which also generates e.g. H SIZE according to, well, horizontal size as well as pincushion and probably others). The signals used to drive these FBT inputs are named "HDF" and "VDF".

From tinkering with some BVM monitors I know these are used for dynamic focus adjustment (which is pretty coarse on the BVMs, one control for all corners and two for left+right, top+bottom edges respectively). Also when trying some of the adjustment procedures in WinDAS I noticed that after one of the procedures the focus was badly off in all four corners (but fine otherwise). So there has to be some means to adjust it.
 
I can confirm that I was adjusting my FW900 during WinDAS and had the focus go out. Upon restoring the monitor's DAT file, I found the focus back in control. Really, really smarts that the software could control this, but there's no apparent way to do it. I wonder if this is because of our "hacked" version of WinDAS?

Edit: Just the FYI - this happened back in September.
 
ikari, do you have a colorimeter or a luminance meter? I'm' curious what the luminance of peak white is on your unit when you're experiencing these issues. It would also enable you to do a white point balance.
 
Unfortunately I don't have one.

Regarding the focus loss problem than can be caused by WinDAS, I've been sniffing the serial communication between WinDAS and the monitor. Defocusing happens during the "Alignment at max frequency" process. At the process step where the defocusing occurs, only the zoom related registers are being touched. So either some labels are wrong or the monitor does some implicit focus related adjustment upon changing of the registers.

Maybe I'll try and devise a way to access the registers without having to do a full dat file upload every time. The serial protocol is pretty simple.
 
ikari_01 said:
Unfortunately I don't have one.

Regarding the focus loss problem than can be caused by WinDAS, I've been sniffing the serial communication between WinDAS and the monitor. Defocusing happens during the "Alignment at max frequency" process. At the process step where the defocusing occurs, only the zoom related registers are being touched. So either some labels are wrong or the monitor does some implicit focus related adjustment upon changing of the registers.

Maybe I'll try and devise a way to access the registers without having to do a full dat file upload every time. The serial protocol is pretty simple.
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Wow man, thanks for looking into this. What do you do for a living? You an engineer or something? It kind of peeves me that WinDAS allows some monitors a ton of control of certain things like geometry, and other monitors don't have it. Example is the Dell P991. It allowed a user to adjust pincushion and pin balance at both the top and bottom of the screen, separately. GDM-F520, however, does not allow this control (And neither does FW900). I wonder why?
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Wow man, thanks for looking into this. What do you do for a living? You an engineer or something? It kind of peeves me that WinDAS allows some monitors a ton of control of certain things like geometry, and other monitors don't have it. Example is the Dell P991. It allowed a user to adjust pincushion and pin balance at both the top and bottom of the screen, separately. GDM-F520, however, does not allow this control (And neither does FW900). I wonder why?
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For adjusting horizontal pincushion/balance, I found the pots useful on the GDM-F520...
 
MonarchX said:
You mean 15000:1? Could you provide some black and white level luminance numbers that create that 15000:1 CR?
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Mentioned here and elsewhere: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1161657,00.asp

However, I don't believe they released the raw numbers.

(And I think I recall others talking about 22000 to 1 or more when talking about pro studio CRTs.)

These big numbers are carved from their ability to produce something much closer to black and were obtained in controlled ambient lighting.
 
been playing Titan Fall on my fw900 looks great incredible .. ..good fps game i think i heard its built on old HL 2 source engine... fun
 
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some nice pics would be cool :D
and also side by side comparing with a new 144hz (or LB).
i badly want a full calibrated example of FW900 just to see it.
 
looks like one ,uncle vito will know...go check it out , and hold that menu button in for about ten seconds that will tell you year model
 
i`d buy it if it was closer ..I drove about 150 miles to get mine a few years back 400 bucks..somebody should stop thinkin about and go get it
 
it doesn't list 2304 x 1440 (better dot pitch)native Sony FW 900 resolution only 1920x 1200?
 
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jbltecnicspro said:
Yeah, nothing wrong with VGA, but BNC is far better because you don't have to worry about windows trying to scale your display like an LCD.
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Just change the A1 board with one from a GDM-FW900 (they are 100% compatible), then you will have the full BNC connectors from the monitor. You can also remove the back plate from the SUN Microsystem's outer case then replace it with one from a GDM-FW900 so you can have the correct orientation of the BNC connectors.

Is a simple process if you have the parts.

UV!
 
Baxter299 said:
it doesn't list 2304 x 1440 (better dot pitch)native Sony FW 900 resolution only 1920x 1200?
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Ignore it. According to WinDAS - it's the same monitor.

EDIT: Since this is a database of Sun products, you may be seeing the different Sun Microsystems computer modes listed, rather than all the possible resolutions listed. But if you look closely at the specs, the dot pitch matches exactly the FW900. Like I said - I'd ignore it.
 
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so...id go over there have him turn it on for an hour ,look at it in a dark room see if will run image restore,maybe buy it .Remove anti glare?
Hey those Trinitrons are great for online gaming
 
Baxter299 said:
so...id go over there have him turn it on for an hour ,look at it in a dark room see if will run image restore,maybe buy it .Remove anti glare?
Hey those Trinitrons are great for online gaming
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Whether or not it will run image restore isn't too relevant in my opinion. If it hasn't been calibrated, then it may return a bad image. I would probably do the following - turn it on, let it warm up. Then once warmed up, let it do a flyback test. Any CRT-testing software worth their salt will have this. It's usually a black screen with a white border and a cycling white box in the middle of it. If you have flyback issues, this will be very apparent. If it can survive this test for 10 minutes (after warmup, of course), it should be good.

I would say look for the following:

1. Focus should be pretty sharp. But remember that the FW900 are not as razor sharp with text compared to LCD. The question here is that at Prime Mode (1920x1200 at 85hz) - is it readable? Make sure any and all scaling is disabled (Windows 7 will see native res as the max - 2304x1440 and sometimes tries to keep this mode enabled while scaling lower resolutions up to it. Windows XP is your best friend in this one).

2. Check to see that the color temperatures scale with your adjusting. Move the color slider from top to bottom (5000K to 11000K) to see that the color changes with it.

Note that it probably won't be perfect, but if it checks out with these tests, you probably have a good unit.

If you see any of the following, don't buy it:

1. Blurry output (verify the resolution first) - you simply can't read the text in prime mode.
2. Color dropping (red, green, or blue, or any combo of the above drop out of the picture). Verify the connector to make sure it isn't a loose connector (one of my BNC connector's blue output is weird)
3. Popping in and out of focus. You'll hear the FBT "pop" and the monitor will be blurry. It may "pop" back into focus.
4. Strong color cast - this can usually be seen with an overly colorful black level. Instead of a black screen, you'll see a blue, green, or red screen. This indicates at the very least, a white point balance needs to be done. But frankly - a good monitor shouldn't exhibit this at all. This is an indicator of a gun failure, which means it's as good as recycled.

However, if it looks and functions alright (again - don't look for perfection), then it's probably a solid buy. Do note that most monitors in the wild were never calibrated, and will probably exhibit some image anomaly or another. If you're ready and willing to go through the WinDAS fire - it's very worth it. I should know - I can fully calibrate my units. It did take months of weekends learning how, but it's very satisfying and fun. :)
 
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I've been lurking in this thread since the early 2000s after buying an FW900. It served me quite a long time despite my having to move it around quite a bit. However, it is as good as dead now, unfortunately.

If anyone living in western Oregon or Washington has one they'd be willing to sell, don't hesitate to PM me. I have a Vidikron CRT projector if that'd be a worthwhile trade ; )
 
Josephaud said:
That's my monitor, but craigslist community moderators deleted the post.

Apparently they don't want ads for CRT monitors. And one guy told me that the idea that it "kicks sand in the face of puny flat screen monitors" was disparaging.
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List it on eBay, and make sure you get it professionally packed. It will sell...

To pack it, you need to raise the base of the unit 6" from the ground and protect the entire unit 6" all around including the top. I recommend high impact foam (not styrofoam) or liquid foam. The cushions have to be made in order to raise the unit from the bottom of the box. Pack it inside a 30x30x30 double wall heavy duty box. If it not packed this way, the unit will arrive destroyed.

If you cannot find an outfit to pack it professionally (they way I recommend), then list it for local pickup.

UV!
 
Josephaud said:
That's my monitor, but craigslist community moderators deleted the post.

Apparently they don't want ads for CRT monitors. And one guy told me that the idea that it "kicks sand in the face of puny flat screen monitors" was disparaging.
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Sounds like someone has their panties in a wad then... I'm assuming it must be a local thing, as in Missouri there are plenty of CRT monitor listings.
 
Josephaud said:
That's my monitor, but craigslist community moderators deleted the post.

Apparently they don't want ads for CRT monitors. And one guy told me that the idea that it "kicks sand in the face of puny flat screen monitors" was disparaging.
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what??? Can you share the response that craigslist sent you?
 
Bear in mind that these replies come from volunteers on a craigslist forum offering their opinion on why my ad was flagged. They are not from craigslist directly.

https://forums.craigslist.org/?ID=246670987

"The #1 problem is your price. < doggieIuvin > 04/05 06:56:43
CRT monitors are obsolete.
That model is 12 years old which is long past the expected life for a CRT monitor given daily use.
You are advertising on a garage sale website, would you expect to find a buyer for that behemoth if you put it out at a garage sale? Well, someone might buy it for $20 or so at a garage sale. "

"FAQ covers scalping very nicely < Jack80218 > 04/05 07:30:32
http://www.craigslist.org/about/help/faq#scalping
"Can I scalp my ticket or popular gift item on craigslist?
Many users will flag posts scalping tickets or popular gift items for way over face value."
overpriced crap draws flags- simple
don't like "community moderation"? use another site, BUY ad in newspaper, etc "

"Don't make disparaging comments. < Da_Grump > 04/05 07:04:13
"It kicks sand in the face of puny flat screen displays."
Especially offensive ones.
Drop the price is my recommendation, and post in computers.
They can buy an 32" HDMI flat screen for less money. "

""It's a cult item" tells us enough about it < WannaSpam > 04/05 07:23:34
That means that the general public is going to see this as just another overpriced obsolete CRT monitor.
If there are a few dozen people in your area that actually might realize the value of the monitor, there are thousands who won't and don't care since it is just another old CRT monitor.
The reason it keeps getting flagged is the price.
You need to find a venue where the nut job gamers with more money than brains hang out and try and sell it to one of them."

"I'm mystified as to why you think this old relic < Rick_Deckard > 04/05 06:38:27
is worth anything near $475.00.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-GDM-FW900-/151175247699?pt=Computer_Monitors&hash=item2332bf3753 "
"Offensive is a valid reason to flag < Jack80218 > 04/05 07:40:19
overpriced crap draws flags"
 
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Screw craigslist. No wonder I had such a hard time finding my last crt on there. (Fucking Sony Trinitron F520, one of the best ever made, period.)
 
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