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

etienne51 said:
That's good stuff. Sadly they don't seem to have one with a direct DVI connector or VGA.
Apparently, if I buy from them, I need a BNC-BNC adapter, then a BNC-VGA one and finally a VGA-DVI one. That makes a lot of adapters in the end.
Click to expand...

I bought a BNC-DVI cable from ebay, it was like 15€ but it is massive and in terms of picture quality it looks the same as the included vga cable from sony.

Unfortunately i can't find the ebay link anymore but there are cheaper, good quality cables on there
 
Thank you for all your advices on the cables. I'll look on eBay in the next few days, see what I can find that looks good enough for me.
If I buy a cable, its going to be straight DVI-I to BNC. For the moment I'll stick with my VGA cable I think, until I find something better.
I can't really complain about the quality of my actual cable anyway. I can even say I'm pretty happy I had this one, with the perfect length, laying around. :D

Well... the alignment settings now. I just spent a few hours on the first procedures:
- Preparation for Alignment
- Alignment at VDC MODE
- Alignment at Max Frequency

And honestly, my current settings are a bit worse than what it was before. Tomorrow I'll spend another entire afternoon to do it again, and I hope I'll have enough time to do the next couple procedures.
At least, now, I know how it works. But it doesn't mean I'll be able to go faster.

The Pin / Key / Bow settings are quite hard to ajust properly. I thought I did it right, and now at the end of the whole procedure, I realized that my windows borders are slightly curved, and that's noticable. :(
So I'll have to do all the steps again to correct that, and many other small issues as well. For example, the image is not well centered vertically, and not stredthed enough horizontally to the borders of the display area.

I'll take any advices. :D

Can someone tell me what is exactly the "Fact_preset [F5]" window? I just ajusted some of the factory modes, but I suppose if I go through all the adjustments procedures, all those presets will be already set perfectly, am I right?
Btw, why is there a GTF_128KHz mode (7)? As far as I know, and according to the manuals, this monitor is supposed to be limited to 121KHz of horizontal refresh rate.
 
etienne51 said:
Thank you for all your advices on the cables. I'll look on eBay in the next few days, see what I can find that looks good enough for me.
If I buy a cable, its going to be straight DVI-I to BNC. For the moment I'll stick with my VGA cable I think, until I find something better.
I can't really complain about the quality of my actual cable anyway. I can even say I'm pretty happy I had this one, with the perfect length, laying around. :D

Well... the alignment settings now. I just spent a few hours on the first procedures:
- Preparation for Alignment
- Alignment at VDC MODE
- Alignment at Max Frequency

And honestly, my current settings are a bit worse than what it was before. Tomorrow I'll spend another entire afternoon to do it again, and I hope I'll have enough time to do the next couple procedures.
At least, now, I know how it works. But it doesn't mean I'll be able to go faster.

The Pin / Key / Bow settings are quite hard to ajust properly. I thought I did it right, and now at the end of the whole procedure, I realized that my windows borders are slightly curved, and that's noticable. :(
So I'll have to do all the steps again to correct that, and many other small issues as well. For example, the image is not well centered vertically, and not stredthed enough horizontally to the borders of the display area.

I'll take any advices. :D

Can someone tell me what is exactly the "Fact_preset [F5]" window? I just ajusted some of the factory modes, but I suppose if I go through all the adjustments procedures, all those presets will be already set perfectly, am I right?
Btw, why is there a GTF_128KHz mode (7)? As far as I know, and according to the manuals, this monitor is supposed to be limited to 121KHz of horizontal refresh rate.
Click to expand...

Geometry is indeed quite challenging. It's very satisfying to master, in my opinion. To answer your question, I don't know really what the Factory Preset is for. It's been awhile since I last read the WinDAS manual and I don't remember if it stated its purpose or not. I don't think that all the alignments actually cover all of the factory preset resolutions.

Also, Factory Preset is a good way to adjust all factory preset resolutions real quick before you do other procedures that depend on the modes being properly aligned. It's almost like a touch-up in a sense. I think your usage case will depend on what you're setting out to do.

As for the 128 khz mode. No idea. If you go to the Signal Generator menu, you'll see that Mode 7 is labeled as Not Used. Maybe Sony created the WinDAS menus before the GDM-FW900 was finalized? DAS - the DOS version of WinDAS, which happens to be older, allows you to select the GDM-FW900. :)

EDIT: The fact that you only had to adjust your drive slider to 48 to reach the target is amazing, by the way. You have a barely-used tube. Good stuff! And congratulations. :)
 
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jbltecnicspro said:
EDIT: The fact that you only had to adjust your drive slider to 48 to reach the target is amazing, by the way. You have a barely-used tube. Good stuff! And congratulations. :)
Click to expand...

It was to 109.

48 is the step in which the slider is adjusted.

109 is still very decent I think.

etienne51 said:
I'm glad to hear that! That's really good to know. :D But can I ask you what makes you say that exactly? The brightness slider value, and the remaining margin?
Click to expand...

Yes, according to Vito, it's an indication of how much emission the tube has left. I think it basically means you need less of an accelerating voltage to draw your desired beam current.
 
spacediver said:
It was to 109.

48 is the step in which the slider is adjusted.

109 is still very decent I think.



Yes, according to Vito, it's an indication of how much emission the tube has left. I think it basically means you need less of an accelerating voltage to draw your desired beam current.
Click to expand...

-Was the adjustment made on the white background pattern (IRE 100) and at 9300K, x = 0.283 ± 0.005, y = 0.298 ± 0.005, Y=115 ± 2 cd/m2?

-If yes, was it in the first pass or second pass?

Let us know...

UV!
 
yep, here's the screenshot of when he did it, and he was following the guide so the 100 IRE fullscreen window was up. It was step 48, so first pass.

24yvfkm.png
 
When I select the "Preparation for Alignment" procedure, WinDAS asks me to look for any errors in the "Failure" window. Here is a screenshot of the results I get.

FAILURE_LOG.PNG


Anyone knows what does ABL stand for? I'm used to get error messages here everytime, at least until I do a manual refresh. The monitor turns off and on to fetch new values, and then everything is back to normal.
 
I think ABL = automatic brightness limiter. It's a safety mechanism that automatically restricts too high of a beam current as this can damage the phosphors and the tube. I think if it detects a high beam current it automatically shuts down the monitor.

I suppose if there was one single thing I could live with in terms of failure, it would be ABL, as it's very rare for a tube to spontaneously generate a dangerously high beam current. It would protect the tube, however, during calibration adjustments where a user slides a silder too far up (you can kinda experience this for yourself during the G2 adjustment - if you push it too high, the brightness goes WAAAY up).

But I think it's a good sign that the error disappears after a manual refresh.

That's my take on it - lots of speculation, but Vito will probably be able to give you more insight.
 
So really nothing to be worried about then.

Back to the cables, I said I'll stick with my VGA cable, but I just found something really interesting. Two things actually.
The first one is a DVI-A to 5 BNC (RGBHV) 10ft (3m) long from Kramer here on eBay, and the second one from the same seller, is a VGA to VGA cable 10ft long as well, from Atlona here.
Anyone knows those brands? Do you think those cables are worth buying?

EDIT: I did the Max Frequency alignment again, and it's quite better, but still not perfect. I'm getting used to it. I'll do it once more tomorrow, but there's something I still don't understand.
In the last steps for example, when setting the ASC settings, WinDAS asked to measure the width and height of the display area. I did it correctly, but now when I press the ASC button in 1920x1200, the image is too large horizontally and goes beyond the borders.
More precisely, I had to set the width to 385mm, then 460mm (I'm not sure about those values) and after that, WinDAS trigged the ASC automatically and asked me to check that the new width was 395mm.
But it wasn't the case, I measured 400mm the first time, and the same value after trying to reajust. So I don't know what's going on with those ASC settings. :confused:
 
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Yea I don't worry about ASC, as I never personally use it. I do remember coming across an odd instruction in WinDAS tho, asking me to check or adjust to somewhere around 380 mm, but it was a diff number than I thought it was supposed to be. I think like you said, it asked me to set width to 385, and then later asked me to check whether the triggered width was 395 (instead of 385). My take was that it was probably a typo, and it meant to ask if the width was 385.

About your ghosting, can you describe what you mean? Like, if you display a white line on a black background, you get a double image of the white line?

All my components have arrived for mounting my camera onto the linear translation stage, so I'm ready to start taking measurements, although not sure if I'll have time for the big project, where I do rigorous testing, before third week of May. But I may be able to take some useful shots of test patterns, like a white line on black background, and actually quantitatively measure artifacts like ghosting.
 
etienne51 said:
When I select the "Preparation for Alignment" procedure, WinDAS asks me to look for any errors in the "Failure" window. Here is a screenshot of the results I get.

FAILURE_LOG.PNG


Anyone knows what does ABL stand for? I'm used to get error messages here everytime, at least until I do a manual refresh. The monitor turns off and on to fetch new values, and then everything is back to normal.
Click to expand...


Check the G2 level... It may have been set too high...

UV!
 
spacediver said:
yep, here's the screenshot of when he did it, and he was following the guide so the 100 IRE fullscreen window was up. It was step 48, so first pass.

24yvfkm.png
Click to expand...


109 setting on the first pass is not that bad... The newer tubes will have setting adjustments of less than 100... I have had tubes with setting adjustments of 20!

UV!
 
is this number comparable for different monitors? my g520p was at 103 or something last time i tried.
 
flod said:
is this number comparable for different monitors? my g520p was at 103 or something last time i tried.
Click to expand...

It is not a # set in stone... Is just an estimate of how much life may be left on a tube... 103 is also OK...

UV!
 
LAGRUNAUER said:
109 setting on the first pass is not that bad... The newer tubes will have setting adjustments of less than 100... I have had tubes with setting adjustments of 20!

UV!
Click to expand...

This is the kind of little details I find really interesting to know! And btw, 20 that's really low. :eek: I think it's almost impossible to find a monitor now with such a low value, except maybe new old stock.

LAGRUNAUER said:
Check the G2 level... It may have been set too high...

UV!
Click to expand...

About the G2 value, I don't think I set it too high, since I did the WPB before, and I set the G2 value by looking at the monitor in a completely dark room.
I took my time to do it well and I ensured the display area was completely dark. I did it twice and I ended up with the exact same value.
 
etienne51 said:
This is the kind of little details I find really interesting to know! And btw, 20 that's really low. :eek: I think it's almost impossible to find a monitor now with such a low value, except maybe new old stock.



About the G2 value, I don't think I set it too high, since I did the WPB before, and I set the G2 value by looking at the monitor in a completely dark room.
I took my time to do it well and I ensured the display area was completely dark. I did it twice and I ended up with the exact same value.
Click to expand...


The 20 readings were brand new monitors taken out of the box...

The G2 needs to be set while looking into a 0 IRE to 100 IRE gradation pattern and setting the level when the darkest rectangle (pedestal) is just barely visible (I mean barely ....). If you did this correctly and still shows ABL failure, then the issue is something else and it needs to be checked out further.

Any issues with the limiters will indeed affect the tube and cannot be ignored.

UV!
 
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The method I use in my guide for setting G2 results in a lower G2 level than the standard pedestal method, so Etienne's G2 value is definitely not the cause of the ABL error. Anyway, the error resolved itself after hitting refresh, so maybe it's not a big deal.
 
Like spacediver said, I used a full black pattern to set the G2 value, and the step after that. I started with the grayscale pattern at first, but it was a bit hard to see the changes in the darkest petal with all the light around, coming from the other petals.

So I switched to the full black pattern, and I lowered the G2 value until I couldn't see any changes anymore, then I increased by 2. After that, I took a break a couple minutes to get used to the darker workspace.
Then I got back to it and did it once more, lowering the G2 value, increasing by 2 and taking a few minutes. I did that until lowering G2 won't change anything anymore, and at that point, I ensured that increasing by 1 did something noticeable.
When I reached really low brightness, it was a bit hard to distinguish any changes, so I alternatively increased and decreased by 1 or 2 to see if I could see some differences.
That's how I set my G2 value. And I did the same thing for the next step.

So I can't tell if that's the best way to do it or not, but I think I ended up with a lower G2 value than what I'd have ended up with by using the grayscale pattern.
 
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etienne51 said:
So I can't tell if that's the best way to do it or not, but I think I ended up with a lower G2 value than what I'd have ended up with by using the grayscale pattern.
Click to expand...

you certainly do end up with a lower G2 using the guide-recommended level (and you end up with deeper blacks too).

The pedestal method is just a standard way to adjust the black level. It has the advantage of providing a more usable gamma "out of the box", without the need for a software LUT.

I know of at least one studio that used my method also. They had a bunch of SGI FW900's (part of a "flame" package or something?) that they used. They got the Sony technicians to lower the G2 to deeper levels, and they used a LUT to provide a usable gamma, as my guide suggests.

Too low of a G2 is not bad for the health of the tube, so I really don't think you need to worry.
 
I have some news about the adjustments I'm doing, I thought I'd let you now.

So I'm done with all the alignment procedures. I used some improvised tools.

DSC02401.JPG


At first I thought each step would have taken as much time as the Max Frequency one. But fortunately, I was wrong.
So I was so happy about that, I did everything again a couple more times... :D

No, seriously, I did everything once and then I checked both RESET and ASC buttons, and things were not really centered or stretched well enough. So I could have just used the menu or touch up procedures to adjust that, but I really wanted something clean.
I mean, when I hit the RESET button, I get something usable, and centered well enough. This button is supposed to restore the default settings, so I needed correct default settings. So I did everything again, learning from my past mistakes.
It was a lot better, some things were a bit off centered, but nothing to worry about. But during those two passes, I noticed something about geometry I thought I had fixed but I was wrong.

display_area_shape.png


(The dotted line is just a reference, to help seeing the curved window representation.)

My display looked like that. As you can see, the borders looks funny, but the explorer window on the center of the display area looks curvy too, but in a different way, not following the shape of the borders... This, with some minor things to reajust (I ran the landing procedure, even without the proper tools, and I was actually able to eliminate the bottom discoloration, but it rotated the picture a bit), I did everything one last time.

Now I'm quite happy with the results on most resolutions. Prime mode looks really good, except that I can still see a bit of that funny shape on the borders, but it's not disturbing. At least the windows doesn't look curvy anymore, maybe a little, but again, nothing to be worried about. I had to choose bewteen a straight border (and curved looking windows), or straight windows (and really awful borders). I think I ended up with something acceptable.
But the thing is, if I set my monitor to 1600x1024, the display looks pretty much exactly like my picture above. That's not cool. :mad:

Now, I'm running the dynamic convergence procedures, and apparently the last 2 settings on each point may help me with this slight geometry issue.
I noticed that changing those settings made the image move at the selected area (I mean compressing, or stretching the picture in that area).
So I don't know what this is, if someone can enlighten me. Maybe I'll give it a go.
 
etienne51 said:
Now, I'm running the dynamic convergence procedures, and apparently the last 2 settings on each point may help me with this slight geometry issue.
I noticed that changing those settings made the image move at the selected area (I mean compressing, or stretching the picture in that area).
So I don't know what this is, if someone can enlighten me. Maybe I'll give it a go.
Click to expand...

jbl probably has something to say about this.
 
Ok, no forget it. I just found out exactly what each of the four settings do.

- HAMP_0: Horizontal convergence of red and blue beams
- VAMP_0: Vertical convergence of red and blue beams
- HMC_0: Horizontal balance of red and blue beams on each side of the green beam
- VMC_0: Vertical balance of red and blue beams on each side o the green beam

So to explain more precisely. Imagine you align red and blue on each other perfectly, using a white crosshatch pattern, but you still feel something is wrong, like there is a green bleed.
That's because the red and blue may be perfectly aligned, but not on the green line. So you now need to adjust the balance to make the magenta line align with the green one to have a perfect white line.

Now I have a serious amount of work to do to get all that stuff to align perfectly all across the screen. I applied the initial values at the beginning of the DCnv procedure, and it has reset all of the convergence settings, so I have to go through multiple passes to get everything right again.
 
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etienne51 said:
Ok, no forget it. I just found out exactly what each of the four settings do.

- HAMP_0: Horizontal convergence of red and blue beams
- VAMP_0: Vertical convergence of red and blue beams
- HMC_0: Horizontal balance of red and blue beams on each side of the green beam
- VMC_0: Vertical balance of red and blue beams on each side o the green beam

So to explain more precisely. Imagine you align red and blue on each other perfectly, using a white crosshatch pattern, but you still feel something is wrong, like there is a green bleed.
That's because the red and blue may be perfectly aligned, but not on the green line. So you now need to adjust the balance to make the magenta line align with the green one to have a perfect white line.

Now I have a serious amount of work to do to get all that stuff to align perfectly all across the screen. I applied the initial values at the beginning of the DCnv procedure, and it has reset all of the convergence settings, so I have to go through multiple passes to get everything right again.
Click to expand...

You nailed it. Protip - I run through dynamic convergence twice. First using magenta crosshatch, and only adjusting HAMP and VAMP. Next, I start over again using a yellow crosshatch pattern and adjust HMC and VMC. The logic behind it is this. Magenta = Red and Blue. Align HAMP and VAMP and magenta is good. Yellow = Red and Green. That's when you align HMC and VMC (magenta cyan is what I believe "MC" stands for). Since Magenta is now perfect (as perfect as can be at least), you know that aligning Red and Green to be perfectly yellow is also affecting Blue (since it adjusts Magenta and Green to come together, as you noted - you just can't see blue on a yellow crosshatch).

After I do that, I look everything over with the White just to make sure it looks good. Do note that CRT's are never 100% perfect, so don't fuss over small mis-convergences. You'll never get it completely perfect.

I personally find white to be too busy - especially when you have so many parameters to adjust. So to make it easier on myself, I do a divide-and-conquer approach. The good news is after you do one round of alignment, you simply click back at the top (A1). The monitor will remember everything you've adjusted at that point, so you don't lose your magenta alignment. :)
 
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Thank you for the confirmation.

Actually I did the first step on a magenta custom crosshatch pattern. Using Inkscape I drew a pattern that looks exactly like the WinDAS convergence grid, so each case corresponds to the same spot on the screen, and I drew a small circle inside each case.
The patterns can be found here. Following your answer, I just made 2 more derivates, Red/Green and Green/Blue.
 
Just went through the cyan crosshatch pattern in matlab. It's not a completely square wave signal. This is probably because inkscape uses antialiasing when exporting a bitmap, unless the vector image has information that perfectly maps onto the pixels. The way I do my test patterns in inkscape is by showing grid, and using snap to grid. But I've started making test patterns in matlab since it's easier that way.

To see what I mean by not square wave, see the image below, which plots the video level of the 10th column of pixels in the green channel of your cyan crosshatch pattern. It should go from 0 to 255 to 0, but in some of the lines it goes from 1 to 255 to 1, or from 2 to 255. The thicker lines indicate where this is happening. (hardly a big deal, since a signal of 1 is hardly going to be visible anyway, but still good practice to generate precise test patterns).

iyzcpf.png
 
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Indeed. You're right, I completely forgot about the antialiasing stuff. That's what caused the issue.
I just corrected my patterns using Gimp, the folder stays the same. I suppose that now everything is correct.
 
only checked the first pattern (the cyan crosshatch). Still has the same problem, specifically on the borders of the horizontal lines.
 
etienne51 said:
Thank you for the confirmation.

Actually I did the first step on a magenta custom crosshatch pattern. Using Inkscape I drew a pattern that looks exactly like the WinDAS convergence grid, so each case corresponds to the same spot on the screen, and I drew a small circle inside each case.
The patterns can be found here. Following your answer, I just made 2 more derivates, Red/Green and Green/Blue.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's up to you whether or not you use yellow or cyan. My eyes track red better with yellow. YMMV. Glad to help. And I'm really impressed that you've been able to put so much time into WinDAS and rocking it. Keep it up!
 
jbltecnicspro said:
Yeah, it's up to you whether or not you use yellow or cyan. My eyes track red better with yellow. YMMV. Glad to help. And I'm really impressed that you've been able to put so much time into WinDAS and rocking it. Keep it up!
Click to expand...

I'll use yellow because green on red is a lot easier to see than blue on green. But I did the cyan pattern as well so I can check it, along with the white one, to see if everything lines up.

I have a fair amount of spare time for the moment, so I try to do my best with the different settings available to achieve the best results I can with the tools I have.
We have to keep this thread going, it's almost 10 years old now, and btw, it will be on 09-14-2015! This is a small community where we're all helping each other to keep the best CRT monitor ever made alive.
I think that's really amazing! :)

spacediver said:
only checked the first pattern (the cyan crosshatch). Still has the same problem, specifically on the borders of the horizontal lines.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm not used to these things, but now I hope I corrected the issue. I found out that the black background wasn't exactly black. It was something like (0,2,0). And the same thing happened with the cyan lines apparently.
So now I corrected that on each patterns, and I limited the color space to only 2 indexed colors. I used grayscale for the white patterns. If it's still not perfect, I'll give up... :D
 
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Will WinDAS work in Windows 8.1? I'll be adjusting my Dell P1130's G2 value soon and wanted to run it on a spare laptop for convenience.
 
worked on my windows 7 so it should work for 8
you may need to fiddle around with some things... i don't remember exactly what but hopefully someone else here who does can provide help if you need any
 
I'm using it on my Windows 7 x64, on my main computer and my laptop. I have no way to test it on Windows 8, 8.1 or 10, so I can't tell.

If you want to try, the install is in my Dropbox folder, here. I put readme files to help with the installation.
Click on the blue "Download" button on top right, and then "Download as .zip". If you have any questions don't mind asking, I hope I forgot nothing.
 
spacediver said:
etienne, if that dropbox folder is a stable link, mind if I include it in my WPB guide?
Click to expand...

Go ahead :p The link is stable, I won't move those files. I tried it and it's fine, but please ensure everything is in working order before.
 
Sadly mine starts to get complete out of focus (unsharp) from one moment to the other. Fixes when i turn it off and on again. But now it happens so often a day. Not a good sign.

Im sure this had been described before here. Was it the Flyback?
 
does it make a popping kinda fizzing sound when it goes out of focus, and when it comes back into focus?

Maybe try leaving the monitor on for a day or two, there were some reports earlier in this thread of that potentially helping.
 
Wut, done! I'm done with everything! I finally did every each WinDAS procedure with precision, and I'm finally using a fully home-calibrated GDM-FW900. It was a long way, but it was definately worth the hours and days spent.
I just finished the WPB, which I did again. The first results I got when I posted the screenshots a few days ago, I thought they were amazing, but I got slightly better results this time.

DSC02410.JPG


DSC02407.JPG


I mean, for example, I now have 106 instead of 109 at step 48. At some point WinDAS asks me to set the brightness to 95, and then a couple steps after that it auto-adjusts the brightness level to around 105+ and asks me to check this value.
Last time, I was hardly getting 102-103, after reajusting the previously set 95 to a higher value. This time, I got 105.5 right away! I'm really pleased with the results.

I didn't make screenshots of the WPB steps this time, but I made one of HCFR grayscale tracking.

hcfr_9300K_grayscale_tracking.png


I think it looks pretty good. And I have to say, I think I feel the difference. I mean, last time I did WPB, I got a delta E of around 8, so something happened when saving the firmware. This time it went fine, and I feel like the colors are indeed better.

Now about the step before WPB, I ended the dynamic convergence adjustments. So I proceeded one slider by one.
- Magenta crosshatch / vertical lines
- Magenta crosshatch / horizontal lines
- Yellow crosshatch / vertical lines
- Yellow crosshatch / horizontal lines
- Minor adjustments of any slider on the white crosshatch pattern

Now I think I'm going to put the hood back on this monitor, before a curious lizard finds it's way inside while I'm asleep and destroys everything. :D
 
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