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

This is hard to read and reply to...

LAGRUNAUER said:
My reply: The world may end tomorrow, the pigs may fly as well, the plasma TVs may last forever.... You don't make ANY SENSE! There are NO guarantees that ANY electronics will not fail. They will treat you the way to treat them, and if guidelines and recommended procedures are followed, the probability of failure will be dramatically reduced. I personally own 12 CRTs that I took out of the boxes: eight (8) GDM-FW900s, three (3) Artisans GDM-C520K (I had more but sold them), and one (1) GDM-F520. To this date, NONE of them have failed me, and they still as bright and as sharp as the day they were removed out of the boxes.
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This is a bit of a strawman argument. My statement was meant to chain into the next paragraph, which is pointing out the consequences of something somehow going wrong while asserting the self-evident fact due to circumstances something might, not "I'm guaranteed that nothing will go wrong with electronics if I buy new." With new monitors you have a manufacturer's protection, and even with used monitors on Ebay if that's not enough (sometimes it transfers between owners anyway), you can get a Squaretrade warranty. None of those options are available. Just your 6 months, informal, and after that if something does happen you're probably paying the full price of the monitor depending on your location.


On Ebay I can pretty much cheaply add on Squaretrade and it's guaranteed to work for at least 2 years.

My reply: I personally know the condition of EVERY MONITOR THAT COMES OUT OF MY LAB AND IS SHIPPED TO MY CLIENTS!!! And I ONLY SELL UNITS THAT HAVE LESS THAN 3,000 OF USE, IF THAT! For estimating longevity of the CRT and functionality, please look at my past postings...
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That's kind of hard to. Do you mean heat or something? Also it wasn't ever really about the condition coming out...

My reply: You are entitled to your own opinion, and I respect that. Again, you will get what you pay for... Whether you want to play semantics or really understand what this true sentence really states and means... Oh well... You are entitled to you own opinion, and I respect that...
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It's not about receiving what you pay for. It's keeping what I paid for.
 
flod said:
and if it dies in 3 months? what will squaretrade do?
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It's covered 46 days after purchase, not 3 months. That being said if something dies within a month and a half... that's just bad research I'd say... but supposing it happens you could just probably pretend it was working fine until day 46 and then send it to Squaretrade at day... eh 50-60?

At least that's what I'd try.
 
Are the focus pots on the flyback set "perfectly" at the factory? I'm curious if they only require adjustment as a result of (significant) physical monitor displacement or if focus is an attribute which "drifts" with time.
 
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One more question about my monitor I was talking about on the previous page:

What could have caused the change in the way the static sounded? Like, we all know how you can hear static building up in the tube when you first turn it on. It's usually a linear sound that fades.

Mine suddenly changed to building in a couple short bursts, it sounded totally different. Anybody know what component could cause that change?
 
gr33dy said:
Are the focus pots on the flyback set "perfectly" at the factory? I'm curious if they only require adjustment as a result of (significant) physical monitor displacement or if focus is an attribute which "drifts" with time.
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well when you're dealing with analog stuff nothing is perfect :p

i wouldn't touch it unless the focus is obviously off
 
My FW900 is displaying some weird problems.

On a completely black screen (.e.g. Full screen blank screensaver) the bottom 1/6 of the screen would be totally black, while the rest of the screen slowly becoming visibly lighter. The edges of of the screen would each have a light area. The "lightness" would slowly bleed into the center of the screen. Final.image is a screen that is black on the bottom while the top 75% of the screen is lighter and blotchy. After 30-60 seconds, the lighter areas would strobe.

In normal usage I don't notice these issues. But this is troubling.

What could be causing this?
 
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so the gtx970's dac has this annoying thing that is hard to describe. basically it looks like every pixel is convolved with a kernel like [0 1 -0.3]

here's a slightly unfocused picture. note how to the right of each black line is a faint white shadow
http://imgur.com/0F1IEz1

edit:
laptop (intel hd 3000) does the same but not as intensely.
 
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Looks like classic monitor ghosting to me. I get this on a 4870x2 and my EIZO monitor both with VGA and BNC. Though BNC reduces it somewhat.
 
not sure...
it seems to be a one pixel thing. and there isn't the duplicated image, only a inverted image one pixel after.
 
christpunchers said:
On a completely black screen (.e.g. Full screen blank screensaver) the bottom 1/6 of the screen would be totally black, while the rest of the screen slowly becoming visibly lighter. The edges of of the screen would each have a light area. The "lightness" would slowly bleed into the center of the screen. Final.image is a screen that is black on the bottom while the top 75% of the screen is lighter and blotchy. After 30-60 seconds, the lighter areas would strobe.

In normal usage I don't notice these issues. But this is troubling.

What could be causing this?
Click to expand...

Does this happen if you use a black pattern (try using the 1920x1200.png image I included with my WinDAS guide).

I get a bit of lightness on the sides, especially the left edge, but it's only noticeable if I'm in really dark room with a full black pattern.

Does this issue happen even after tube has warmed up?

Not sure about the strobing - you sure that's not in your head? If you see the strobing, try closing your eyes and look at it again.
 
flod said:
so the gtx970's dac has this annoying thing that is hard to describe. basically it looks like every pixel is convolved with a kernel like [0 1 -0.3]

here's a slightly unfocused picture. note how to the right of each black line is a faint white shadow
http://imgur.com/0F1IEz1
Click to expand...

Hard to tell what's going on, but I also see magenta shadows above the lines and green shadows below them. Also hard to say what's caused by the camera and what's actually there. What monitor is this, and does the same thing happen on your other CRT?

You sure it isn't convergence related? But yea, I guess a poor quality DAC may be acting as a low pass filter of sorts?
 
convergence isnt perfect but this is definitely not convergence related. its much more noticeable than it appears in the picture

this is on the g520p. havent tried on the fw900, though im not sure if the fw900 is sharp enough to show it
 
Any guys here from Europe? Vienna, Austria, specifically, or surrounding countries like Slovakia or Hungary?
Reason is: I have a GDM-FW900 for sale, in near-mint condition. Optically and technically probably the best you can buy today. Only little hours of gaming on it, has not been used during office hours.
It's only for sale because the newer Radeon's don't have analog outputs anymore and I had no luck with DP->VGA-adapters. Thinking of giving up this hobby anyways, I decided to sell this one-of-a-kind monitor. It has served me well, the colours of the FD-Trinitron are still fascinating and out of the three GDM-FW900 I've owned this is by far the best regarding convergence, geometry and contrast.
Unfortunately, I do not have appropriate packaging for shipping this beast, so I will sell only to people willing to pick it up at my place or paying some travel reimbursement for my personal delivery by car. Unless, of course, somebody ships me the original packing of the monitor wherein I can send it back.
Question to everyone: what's a GDM-FW900 in described condition worth? What would you realistically pay for it?
Thanks! :)

Kind regards,
Michael
 
KILLI said:
Any guys here from Europe? Vienna, Austria, specifically, or surrounding countries like Slovakia or Hungary?
Reason is: I have a GDM-FW900 for sale, in near-mint condition. Optically and technically probably the best you can buy today. Only little hours of gaming on it, has not been used during office hours.
It's only for sale because the newer Radeon's don't have analog outputs anymore and I had no luck with DP->VGA-adapters. Thinking of giving up this hobby anyways, I decided to sell this one-of-a-kind monitor. It has served me well, the colours of the FD-Trinitron are still fascinating and out of the three GDM-FW900 I've owned this is by far the best regarding convergence, geometry and contrast.
Unfortunately, I do not have appropriate packaging for shipping this beast, so I will sell only to people willing to pick it up at my place or paying some travel reimbursement for my personal delivery by car. Unless, of course, somebody ships me the original packing of the monitor wherein I can send it back.
Question to everyone: what's a GDM-FW900 in described condition worth? What would you realistically pay for it?
Thanks! :)

Kind regards,
Michael
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No price checks are allowed around these parts. But I'll give you a hint - look at eBay. Do you think your FW900 compares to the higher-priced ones? Then I'd charge that much. If you want it sold though, you may have to either lower the price or be willing to wait a while.
 
spacediver said:
Does this happen if you use a black pattern (try using the 1920x1200.png image I included with my WinDAS guide).

I get a bit of lightness on the sides, especially the left edge, but it's only noticeable if I'm in really dark room with a full black pattern.

Does this issue happen even after tube has warmed up?

Not sure about the strobing - you sure that's not in your head? If you see the strobing, try closing your eyes and look at it again.
Click to expand...

Yes it is using the 19x12.PNG file.

I'm definitely not imagining the problem. When I said strobing, I meant the lighter areas of the screen eventually converge near the center of the screen and they begin the flicker. Hard to describe but I will try to capture some pics tonight.
 
How important are ferrites on the input board? Say, like this one on the P991:

p991_zps2e492560.jpg


Long story short, I was trying to hack an input connector onto the board (so I could use my own cables instead of the attached one) and used too heavy gauge of a wire, which broke off a couple solder pads for the red signal path. So I had to bypass and solder my red line directly to the first capacitor you see in the series, and I reconnected the resistor to ground. I didn't actually see the ferrite bead on the board, but according to the diagram I bypassed it.
 
Hello everyone.

I've finally got rid of the dust on my FW900 and bought this vga cable to hook it up to the imac (bootcamped windows 7 x64) with mini displayport to vga adapter (graphics - nvidia 680MX)

immediately, I saw the strange thing - actual picture not filling the "black light rectangle" or "light box" (don't know to call it propeply) that the monitor displays. the actual picture is disproportional - with assimetrical black bars on left and right. This is not a overscan issue.

for futher research i rebooted into OS X and saw that the actual picture is snapped to the right side of the "light box" with big black vertical bar on the left.

Then i went to my father's pc setup (FW900 connected to PC tower via VGA->5-BNC cable), tried my VGA cable and saw similar picture - black areas of different size on the sides of actual picture

i thought, maybe it's the cable and tried it with full-hd lcd monitor - everything's great.

Any thoughts? Maybe i just need to adjust the geometry of FW900? But it's very strange, i'm thinking that the size of the actual picture must be synced with the size of the light box... am i wrong?

P.S.: when i adjust geometry, it adjusts the light box.
 
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KILLI said:
Any guys here from Europe? Vienna, Austria, specifically, or surrounding countries like Slovakia or Hungary?
Reason is: I have a GDM-FW900 for sale, in near-mint condition. Optically and technically probably the best you can buy today. Only little hours of gaming on it, has not been used during office hours.
It's only for sale because the newer Radeon's don't have analog outputs anymore and I had no luck with DP->VGA-adapters. Thinking of giving up this hobby anyways, I decided to sell this one-of-a-kind monitor. It has served me well, the colours of the FD-Trinitron are still fascinating and out of the three GDM-FW900 I've owned this is by far the best regarding convergence, geometry and contrast.
Unfortunately, I do not have appropriate packaging for shipping this beast, so I will sell only to people willing to pick it up at my place or paying some travel reimbursement for my personal delivery by car. Unless, of course, somebody ships me the original packing of the monitor wherein I can send it back.
Question to everyone: what's a GDM-FW900 in described condition worth? What would you realistically pay for it?
Thanks! :)

Kind regards,
Michael
Click to expand...

I am from Austria and near vienna. But i already have three of them and no more space, so i cant get it. :(
 
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nevermind my previous question, i got it.

i have a new question/problem - when i set the resolution to 800x500 and lower - the picture becomes a small rectangle in the center of the screen (about half the size on both x and y), even when i adjust the size options of the FW900 to the max....

i wanted to play old 640x480 games on it, but with this problem it would be kind of a problem. any solution?
 
My suggestion would be to try the 640x480 resolution out and see what happens. Is there any kind of scaling going on? I would think that if everything on the signal end is okay, you should be able to fill the screen.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
My suggestion would be to try the 640x480 resolution out and see what happens. Is there any kind of scaling going on? I would think that if everything on the signal end is okay, you should be able to fill the screen.
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there is scaling options in nvidia control panel, but scaling is disabled. Only thing i can do is select "stretch", after which the picture is stretched on the whole screen, but is blurry (like when you set non-native resolutions on LCDs) - seems that it's a software upscale of low res to high res

i'll try to use 640x480 when i get home.
 
Could setting a FW900 to 160Hz at 1152x720 cause permanent damage? I am looking to get a FW900, but I don't want to worry about an improper resolution destroying it.
 
rabidz7 said:
Could setting a FW900 to 160Hz at 1152x720 cause permanent damage? I am looking to get a FW900, but I don't want to worry about an improper resolution destroying it.
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i dont think it's possible to instantly damage it as the monitor doesn't allow resolutions higher that exceed its limits (which is set in the firmware or whatever). and i've tried resolutions higher than the limit before.... the monitor just tells you it's out of range and does not display anything

@pingrale: disable scaling and set the scaling to DISPLAY. if you select disabled and have the gpu "scale" it, it just adds black borders like what you describe
 
Is it true that the FW900 is actually 14:9, not 16:10? And is the best resolution for the FW900 1680x1080?
 
rabidz7 said:
Is it true that the FW900 is actually 14:9, not 16:10? And is the best resolution for the FW900 1680x1080?
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No! The GDM-FW900 is 16:10 aspect ratio. For best resolutions, please check my past posting for a list of all VESA recommended resolutions and timings...

UV!
 
rabidz7 said:
Is it true that the FW900 is actually 14:9, not 16:10? And is the best resolution for the FW900 1680x1080?
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Viewable area is 474mm x 296mm. That's what the specs are. Divide 474/296 and we get roughly 1.601... Which is not *exactly* 16/10 but it's sooooo close that honestly - who cares.
 
the service manual indicates 482mm x 308 mm, which more or less matches my own measurements. The standard image size is 474mm x 296 mm, which is what the geometry adjustments result in with a 16:10 aspect ratio.

In other words, the viewable image size is about 1.56:1 aspect ratio, but if you want to use a 16:10 aspect ratio, you should adjust the geometry accordingly (in which case you'll be under utilizing the entire viewable image).

If you want to use the entire viewable image and not get distortions, then you'll need to use an aspect ratio that matches it, such as 1600x1024.

1920x1200 is likely considered prime mode because:

a) it's a common image format
b) it doesn't result in aliasing as the phosphor triad density is high enough to support 1920 pixels across - in the top right of this image you can see the intersection of a horizontal green line and vertical green line, each one pixel thick, at 1920x1200.
c) the tube can handle 85 hz at this resolution which is high enough for comfort viewing.
 
if you're only using osd adjustments, i wouldn't worry about aspect ratio beyond having it "look right"

the effective aspect ratio at the center probably doesn't match the aspect ratio of the displayed area anyway. as in, if you tune the geometry so that an image of a big square appears perfect, a small square at the center of the screen may be slightly rectangular.
 
Hello, this thread made me register to this site. I am really intrigued by this monitor and am looking for one, I saw one a few days ago on eBay but it costed too much. I live in Aldinga, South Australia so I doubt I'll find any any time soon and will be very lucky if I do. Is it really worth it?
 
Vyr said:
Hello, this thread made me register to this site. I am really intrigued by this monitor and am looking for one, I saw one a few days ago on eBay but it costed too much. I live in Aldinga, South Australia so I doubt I'll find any any time soon and will be very lucky if I do. Is it really worth it?
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When buying a GDM-FW900, please remember that "You'll get what you paid for it..."

Hope this helps...

Unkle Vito!
 
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