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

I've been having some trouble with my FW900 and I was hoping someone here could give me a clue as to what could be wrong with it.

I actually had Unkle Vito repair it and perform a full calibration last year. He commented that the tube had very low hours and it should be in general very good shape.

He did do a "parts swap" with another non-functioning FW900 instead of installing new parts and he cautioned that it is impossible to know for sure how long the parts will last.

Here's what's happening: Basically, the monitor will sometimes fail to turn on. Instead of the full degause sound followed by an image displayed on the screen, there'll be a quieter "click" sound, nothing displayed on screen then after a few seconds the yellow light will turn to amber and flash (some sort of protection mode I assume).

This has been happening for months. But every time I'm eventually able to get it to turn on again and it'll work perfectly for days at a time.

Usually I just unplug it, set it aside for a few days and keep trying it until it turns on, then use as much as possible until it again fails to turn on.

When it is working, I don't want to turn it off or even restart the computer because I'm worried the monitor won't turn back on. If I keep both the monitor and computer running constantly, it seems to work indefinitely. But I don't want to do that because I'll just be wearing out the tube for no reason.

Any idea what could be causing this?

Thanks!
 
The most likely possibilities are a bad solder joint somewhere or an electrolytic capacitor in bordeline shape that recovers enough of its characteristics with heat. But it may be something else as well, it's hard to say without checking the inside of the monitor itself.
 
jrodefeld
Failing MCZ3001D in the Sony TV's had a symptom where they will work only if the temperature is high enough. Can you try checking if the issue correlates with the room temperature?

I'm pretty sure that amber flashing is B+ voltage line issue, and that IC is the main regulator for that line.
 
Hello Fellow HF users and CRT enthusiasts... 1st time poster here!

I've recently got a Dell M933, and quickled followed up with a P1130 CRT; connected them to my secondary testing RIG w/ a GTX 970 and was blown away...
However, as I am looking to down size to 1 rig (which houses a GTX 1080). I'm having difficulty finding a good active Display Port to VGA analogue adapter to allow my CRTS to reach their full potential...

My goal is to run the P1130 at 1400 x 1050 at 85hz or 100hz (at a minimum). I've tried several and so far, the highest resolution I've achieved is 1600 x 1200 @ 60hz 🙁 (it can do 100hz on the GTX 970...)
If anyone has any recommendations or suggestions on good active adapters, please let me know (kindly note that I am in Canada; and this makes it a challenge to find certain things).

Thanks for reading! 🙂

Edit: To fix grammar/typos...
 
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Help w HP A7217A, had orange light blinking error, replaced power supply IC w SHINDENGEN MCZ3001DB. Now have green LED but no image & OSD does not come up. Slight rainbow effect on screen.
 

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Help w HP A7217A, had orange light blinking error, replaced power supply IC w SHINDENGEN MCZ3001DB. Now have green LED but no image & OSD does not come up. Slight rainbow effect on screen.
Having an orange blinking light has never meant this particular IC is failed, and it's not because this is what happened for one person that replacing that IC will fix anything for anyone else.
 
Help w HP A7217A, had orange light blinking error, replaced power supply IC w SHINDENGEN MCZ3001DB. Now have green LED but no image & OSD does not come up. Slight rainbow effect on screen.
If you don't get any other opinions I would redo the soldering on that socket and clean up that residue. No clue otherwise. From some cursory googling it looks like the TVs can be fixed easily be replacing that IC, but didn't find anything relating to the FW900.
 
I've been having some trouble with my FW900 and I was hoping someone here could give me a clue as to what could be wrong with it.

I actually had Unkle Vito repair it and perform a full calibration last year. He commented that the tube had very low hours and it should be in general very good shape.

He did do a "parts swap" with another non-functioning FW900 instead of installing new parts and he cautioned that it is impossible to know for sure how long the parts will last.

Here's what's happening: Basically, the monitor will sometimes fail to turn on. Instead of the full degause sound followed by an image displayed on the screen, there'll be a quieter "click" sound, nothing displayed on screen then after a few seconds the yellow light will turn to amber and flash (some sort of protection mode I assume).

This has been happening for months. But every time I'm eventually able to get it to turn on again and it'll work perfectly for days at a time.

Usually I just unplug it, set it aside for a few days and keep trying it until it turns on, then use as much as possible until it again fails to turn on.

When it is working, I don't want to turn it off or even restart the computer because I'm worried the monitor won't turn back on. If I keep both the monitor and computer running constantly, it seems to work indefinitely. But I don't want to do that because I'll just be wearing out the tube for no reason.

Any idea what could be causing this?

Thanks!
How long ago did Vito repair it? And have you contacted him about it?
 
CookieNapper

Check this post, especially the DP2VGAHD20 as it's one of the most reliable, performant and cheap good adapters on the market.
omg; thank you! ordered with super express shipping >.> ETA Wednesday... can't wait 😄

Now... if only I can find another P1130 or equivalent in Toronto, Canada at a reasonable price as a backup unit.
Don't mind me, just getting ahead of myself as per usual. But I'd settle for a Dell M993 as well... since CRTs in working condition are getting harder to come by these days...
 
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How long ago did Vito repair it? And have you contacted him about it?
He repaired it I think sometime in May 2020.

I did contact him and he did say that because he did a parts swap, there was no guarantee as to how long any of the parts would last. He said he'd have to examine it again to see what's going wrong.

The trouble is that I've since moved and I don't feel like paying to have it shipped to Vito at the moment. So far it's always ended up working eventually, but when it doesn't work it can be days and multiple attempts before it works again.

I'm living in Portland at the moment. I wonder if there's a repair place that could at least diagnose the problem and possibly repair it.

Would you suggest I take it to any repair shop that claims to be able to work on CRTs or would you only trust reputable people like Vito?

I know these monitors are very rare at this point and the chance of finding another one at any sort of reasonable price is pretty unlikely so I want to take care of this one.

But at the same time, I can't help but think that it's something pretty simple given how recently Vito worked on it and how good the condition of everything was at that time. It could be as simple as a connection that needs to be re-soldered.
 
He repaired it I think sometime in May 2020.

I did contact him and he did say that because he did a parts swap, there was no guarantee as to how long any of the parts would last. He said he'd have to examine it again to see what's going wrong.

The trouble is that I've since moved and I don't feel like paying to have it shipped to Vito at the moment. So far it's always ended up working eventually, but when it doesn't work it can be days and multiple attempts before it works again.

I'm living in Portland at the moment. I wonder if there's a repair place that could at least diagnose the problem and possibly repair it.

Would you suggest I take it to any repair shop that claims to be able to work on CRTs or would you only trust reputable people like Vito?

I know these monitors are very rare at this point and the chance of finding another one at any sort of reasonable price is pretty unlikely so I want to take care of this one.

But at the same time, I can't help but think that it's something pretty simple given how recently Vito worked on it and how good the condition of everything was at that time. It could be as simple as a connection that needs to be re-soldered.
Maybe you could get him to help diagnose the problem online, and get enough information to work with a local expert if you can find one. You can also try reaching out to online communities who specialize in CRT restoration (often for home arcade systems).

Here's one guy who knows his stuff:

https://randyfromm.com/
 
Anyone know if I can still get 100hz+ via some adapter? With an upgrade to a rtx 3080 and 5800x its with sadness I say i finally retired the fw900 for a 240hz benq. Despite 240hz, I still preferred the fw900s motion handling and if there is any way to still utilize this gem with updated tech please let me know! I can't go back to 980 gtx after the upgrades lol
 
Anyone know if I can still get 100hz+ via some adapter? With an upgrade to a rtx 3080 and 5800x its with sadness I say i finally retired the fw900 for a 240hz benq. Despite 240hz, I still preferred the fw900s motion handling and if there is any way to still utilize this gem with updated tech please let me know! I can't go back to 980 gtx after the upgrades lol
There's a lot of discussion about adapters in the past 50 or so pages.

It's worth your time to go back and skim the discussion to get an idea of the pros and cons of the different adapters

But short answer is yes
 
Yeah the bids are suspicious. Could be a rich collector or a troll. The fact that it was made a private listing means we probably won't ever find out. Even if the buyer were to pay 35K for the monitor, the fees would be exorbitant and the seller would have an incentive to make the transaction in cash or other hard currency to cut the middleman out and prevent a chargeback when the inevitable happens and the monitor has problems. In that case the final amount would be highly negotiable. Who knows.

What is clear though is that high-end CRTs have a historical and technological value that is honestly still understated. In the future they are going to be like the Pyramids of display technology. You could probably reproduce them with modern or future manufacturing techniques but the process and outlay would prevent it from ever happening again in history. That's not to say that some better scanning display technology won't be invented in the future or couldn't be produced right now, but the hundred pounds of metal, glass and silicon representing thousands of man hours and millions of tons of pollution put together in a box just to make the fuzzy picture we know and love aren't ever going to exist again.
 
I’m wondering if laser-scan display is something that could work? Think of Sony’s portable laser projector (now discontinued). It scanned out the image like a crt would. I would be curious to see one of those in action with motion clarity.

anyways. Have a laser emitter fire from the back toward the user’s face and have it hit a translucent screen or something, to protect the user from eye damage. I’ll bet that could look very CRT-like. You’d have the benefit of having multiple scan rates and no native res, etc.
 
I was watching the auction during lunch. Was at $11,600. Was refreshing my screen. Then listing disappeared. Found it again. Job dropped. Shocked. Must have spiked in the last few seconds.

I figure it was some rich gamer who in the middle of Covid said what the hell.
 
I’m wondering if laser-scan display is something that could work? Think of Sony’s portable laser projector (now discontinued). It scanned out the image like a crt would. I would be curious to see one of those in action with motion clarity.

anyways. Have a laser emitter fire from the back toward the user’s face and have it hit a translucent screen or something, to protect the user from eye damage. I’ll bet that could look very CRT-like. You’d have the benefit of having multiple scan rates and no native res, etc.
Yeah laser projectors and rear projection are a pretty good but they have their own issues, primarily how you deflect the laser light still involves some form of physical device as the photons can't be electromagnetically diverted the way a stream of electrons can. There's also the speckle problem which probably needs a new form of laser technology and screen material to solve. Cathode-rays despite the bulk of analog components required to operate them are still a remarkably elegant way to display realistic images to the human eye.
 
Yeah laser projectors and rear projection are a pretty good but they have their own issues, primarily how you deflect the laser light still involves some form of physical device as the photons can't be electromagnetically diverted the way a stream of electrons can. There's also the speckle problem which probably needs a new form of laser technology and screen material to solve. Cathode-rays despite the bulk of analog components required to operate them are still a remarkably elegant way to display realistic images to the human eye.
Well shit. Let’s do it boys! Let’s make a crt factory again.
 
I've not seen any evidence that that price was fake. There's a lot of rich people out there to whom that's nothing. And was that the last new FW900 on Earth at this point?
 
Well shit. Let’s do it boys! Let’s make a crt factory again.

Last one that was making them was sold and shipped to china. China tried making them, but as making the actual tubes is more an art and took the people here years to get good enough to make them, they failed and scrapped it. Who knows, someone might try again before all the people that know how to make them die...
 
yea may be totally fake just to create illusion of high demand for a future sale
This or it was just a typical bidding war. Someone wants the item for a reasonable price, fails to get it because of someone else putting an insane maximum bid, then he takes revenge on this by making the final price increase as much as he can without winning the auction.
In the end, the winner doesn't pay, the second chance is still an insane amount and isn't taken either, and the item is listed again. Maybe with the very same people fighting again with the very same result.

I've seen a CRT rejuvenator usually worth about 50€ ending at 400 or 500€ that way on ebay. The seller had actually to wait something like 4-5 months to make a proper auction and sell it, otherwise the people wouldn't chill and would start trolling again as soon as it was relisted. :wacky:
 
Hey gamers.. just want to express my gratitude for this long lived thread.

So a week ago I posted asking if there was an adapter so I could run the fw900 on my 3080 ftw. Well, I just tried out the StarTech display port to VGA adapter from amazon (~$25) and my baby is back!

Guys.. on my desk right now is the a alienware ad27 IPS 1440p240hz (~$800), the latest benq TN 1080p240hz (~$450), and my fw900 that i bought from vito some 10-15 years ago (~$350) which im currently running 800p130hz. And let me just say, there is STILL no comparison! Blur busters: fw900 wins and its not even close. Colors: fw900 wins and not even close. Input lag: havent really noticed a delay from the adapter, feels as good as any "1ms" lcd panel.
 
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after reading stories like this....... :eek: everything is posible!!

Exactly. And if it's the last new FW900, I don't even know what a reasonable price would be. Nor do I know why there would be an expectation that folks would act reasonably.

I was shocked by the price, but I'm not wealthy.
 
This or it was just a typical bidding war. Someone wants the item for a reasonable price, fails to get it because of someone else putting an insane maximum bid, then he takes revenge on this by making the final price increase as much as he can without winning the auction.
In the end, the winner doesn't pay, the second chance is still an insane amount and isn't taken either, and the item is listed again. Maybe with the very same people fighting again with the very same result.

I've seen a CRT rejuvenator usually worth about 50€ ending at 400 or 500€ that way on ebay. The seller had actually to wait something like 4-5 months to make a proper auction and sell it, otherwise the people wouldn't chill and would start trolling again as soon as it was relisted. :wacky:
Interesting, I didn't realize you could back out of paying once you've won an ebay auction.
 
I recently did a well controlled experiment where I simultaneously did a WinDAS WPB on two FW900s side by side, using two laptops to connect to each monitor, and using a startech VGA splitter to split the video signal from my PC. (which was being used to generate images). I achieved the same luminance targets on each tube.

One of the FW900s had the antiglare removed, and the other didn't.

I went into this experiment expecting to see a clearer, cleaner, image on the screen with the antiglare removed. This was based on years of experience using an FW900 with the antiglare removed. I remember the first time I removed antiglare from an FW900 - there was this glossiness to the image that I loved, and I was expecting to see that contrast in glossiness between the two monitors.

I was so wrong. The images in a dark room were virtually identical. With lights on, the one with the antiglare off was indeed glossier, but the one with antiglare on was much more usable.

I took photos and wrote up this experiment and the results in detail, and posted it on the forum. It was within the last 3 months. I can't find that post though! Perhaps it got deleted or something, or never made it through.

This experiment changed my mind completely. Antiglare is far superior to no antiglare, although, as JBL correctly points out, the tube has to be run harder to achieve the same luminance.
well, found the post - it was from Nov of 2019, not 2020. Boy, can't believe I made that error!

https://hardforum.com/threads/24-wi...-ebay-arrived-comments.952788/post-1044396017
 
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Hey gamers.. just want to express my gratitude for this long lived thread.

So a week ago I posted asking if there was an adapter so I could run the fw900 on my 3080 ftw. Well, I just tried out the StarTech display port to VGA adapter from amazon (~$25) and my baby is back!

Guys.. on my desk right now is the a alienware ad27 IPS 1440p240hz (~$800), the latest benq TN 1080p240hz (~$450), and my fw900 that i bought from vito some 10-15 years ago (~$350) which im currently running 800p130hz. And let me just say, there is STILL no comparison! Blur busters: fw900 wins and its not even close. Colors: fw900 wins and not even close. Input lag: havent really noticed a delay from the adapter, feels as good as any "1ms" lcd panel.
Awesome! Yet bittersweet of course with CRTs premature demise in retail so long ago.

I've been using a DP2VGAHD20 for my work laptop since September. It's been great. Big shout out to the folks here for the heads up on that!

Probably upgrading my personal system this weekend and have got another DP2VGAHD20 for that.
 
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