Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait till he's 14 and you find his bong.
Considering it's not legal up here in Canada, there's a chance kids find their parents' bong when trying to hide theirs.
I think you meant "not illegal"
Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness
71–80 of 89 posts
Re: Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness
#72I think that this TV is from the 1990s, not from 1980s, because design screams it. Also there is no brand name anywhere, so the manufacturer is not proud of this cheap device, the front panel captions are screen printed, DC barrel connector has the modern polarity sign with a negative sleeve.
Interestingly, you can buy similar ones on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Coby-CX-TV1-Black-White-Tuner/dp/B000...
Re: Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
CRTs are unmatched for specific use cases. Retro consoles that predate HD support (and a few that can technically output HD like the PS2 are still better on a CRT), rhythm gaming (I play Clone Hero, which is an independent Guitar Hero-style engine, on a 120Hz CRT), and viewing SDTV content are three use cases where flat panel displays just cannot match all of the benefits that CRTs offer. However, I still agree that…
>CRTs are unmatched for specific use cases I'd say for PC usage they _were_ unmatched, but that's no longer the case. I played games professionally at one point, of course using CRTs when they were the superior choice, but in this day and age with affordable 240hz sub-1ms G2G LCD displays... I just can't see any argument for using a CRT with a PC in 2019.
The arbitrary resolution support and superior color saturation might still justify using a CRT in some cases. Back in the day I ran a CRT at some bizarro resolution with custom XFree86 timings to get as much screen space or as high a refresh as possible while matching width or height of another different display. LCD scaling will always be blurrier.
Re: Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness
#74At about the age of 14 I somehow came into ownership of 5" black and white TV. I wasn't allowed to have a TV in my bedroom, but this thing probably looked useless to my parents so they didn't say anything. Little did they know, while they were at work, I went up into the attic and ran a coaxial cable from a splitter down into my room and into the back of the VCR, all neatly tucked behind my desk. I spliced an old mon…
He will. Kids try to find loop-holes in every single rule, and they will deliberately misinterpret everything you say in order to use it against you later on. :)
Well, different kids are different. It was a lot of work, but eventually I convinced my kid that a) we were on the same team so rules were more for everyones' quality of life than just harassment, b) I knew more than they did so my feedback on what they should do was useful to them, and (importantly) c) "rules lawyering" was just as risky as simply breaking rules.
Re: Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
The memories indeed! We had a T1 and a pile of Livingston Portmaster 2e terminal servers, connected with a centrex hunt group to a single dialup phone number. I learned a lot about people very quickly. As we got more popular, we started to get busy signals, because we couldn't grow our hardware fast enough - and then people learned how to do keepalives, so that they wouldn't get stuck offline on a busy signal. That w…
LOL. I was one of those keepalive hackers. Once I discovered newsgroups and IRC I'd leave the line up to download while I was at school. Downloading a single MP3 over 19.2kbps took the better part of a day.
I remember discovering MP3s. My computer at the time could run Winamp and play music, but not do anything else (like web browsing) at the same time.
Re: Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness
#76Yeah, so mumble years ago my second monitor was a B&W workstation monitor that I picked up for next to nothing. It was actually slightly higher resolution than my other "proper" monitor, and much sharper. I had to make a converter from a VGA output on my video card to a single coaxial signal for the monitor. Luckily the monitor just wanted pull-to-ground for the blanking signals (both of them), so I could make a pass…
Waaay back in the day of PCs (late 80s, early 90s) the way to get "high res graphics" and "dual screens" was to hook up to your PC (which was usually an actual IBM machine) a CGA monitor for regular usage, and then add a Hercules card and monitor for the "second display". Downside was that the Hercules - while being very high resolution for the day - was only monochrome, and amber. But it was a common solution for ma…
I had Hercules for my first "IBM PC" computer, while everyone else either had CGA, EGA or even VGA! - It was the computer that my uncle left, before leaving for US - And yes, it was meant to run AutoCAD - lol
Being bored of not too many games working, I decided to take matter in my hands. Early on, I got into making various resident applications - and made one (used Turbo Pascal with inline assembly), where I would "convert" the 320x200 VGA buffer into Hercules bits. It was not taking care of what the palette was, but just happened to work by accident for some of the games (like Trolls). I also had to hack Trolls to first ignore the fact that I did not have VGA, then hack it instead of using 0xA0000 as VGA buffer (the standard address for an VGA adapter), but I would hack that location with my own buffer.
It kind of worked, real slow - I've got about - I dunno - maybe 5-10fps - lol.
Fun fact of trolls that I've found, but could not completely understood it back then (I was probably 9th or 10th grade, english is my secondary language) was this: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/trolls/trivia
"This game was written on a very slow schneider 10mhz 286 with lots of wait states. If for some reason on your very fast xxxx 25mh 486 this game seems to be fast or unplayable, do no blame us for it was a penny pinching boss who would not buy us reasonable pc's to work on. signed THE PROGRAMMERS OF FLAIR SOFTWARE"
So having hercules card made me - lol - did a bit of fun hacking :)
Re: Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness
#77Sounds like I need to hook up my 2" Sinclair MTV1 or Seiko wrist TV watch, both of which have just been gathering dust. However, neither have any sort of input -- is there a USB or HDMI ultra low power VHF or UHF transmitter so I can go total Terry Gilliam in the house with multiple displays??
The TV watch is all-in-one? I thought those usually had an external tuner that plugged into the wrist "monitor" via a cable of some sort? If so, then find the pinout and type of connector it is, and try to hack it that way. Whatever you do with that TV watch, though, don't destroy it. It might not be right now, but someday in the not-too-far future it could be worth some serious cash by a TV collector. Honestly, it m…
Yes, external battery box / tuner. I'm not sure if the tuner to display interface is actually video, or is basically a proprietary LCD driver at that point. This one is NIB, so I'd probably get another to experiment with first...
Re: Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness
#78This was not so pointless 'back in the day' when and old black and white was all you had access to and not a real computer monitor. Times was hard for some of us! ;-p
I was lucky--we had a spare little _color_ TV I could use as a monitor.
Re: Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness
#79I think that this TV is from the 1990s, not from 1980s, because design screams it. Also there is no brand name anywhere, so the manufacturer is not proud of this cheap device, the front panel captions are screen printed, DC barrel connector has the modern polarity sign with a negative sleeve.
Interestingly, you can buy similar ones on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Coby-CX-TV1-Black-White-Tuner/dp/B000...
Probably wouldn’t have a digital TV tuner, right?
Re: Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness
#80At about the age of 14 I somehow came into ownership of 5" black and white TV. I wasn't allowed to have a TV in my bedroom, but this thing probably looked useless to my parents so they didn't say anything. Little did they know, while they were at work, I went up into the attic and ran a coaxial cable from a splitter down into my room and into the back of the VCR, all neatly tucked behind my desk. I spliced an old mon…
He will. Kids try to find loop-holes in every single rule, and they will deliberately misinterpret everything you say in order to use it against you later on. :)
That's a phase. And it's more annoying when the parent teach the child how to argue and value discussions as a mean to solve conflicts or find a solution to problems. So,... sometimes it's really annoying :).