CRT

Steve’s trip to The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The last week Steve was visiting Houston, Texas where he was running a series of workshops for the Museum of Fine Art. The purpose was to educate their curators of this museum (an several other notable museums) about CRT preservation and maintenance. Steve tells the story of his 20 hour drive to Houston, the different workshops that he gave and what he learnt about the use of CRTs in the world of visual arts. He also saw a great wrestling match.

If you missed last week’s episode, go back and check out Steve’s tour of prominent 20th century artists who used CRTs in their work.

00:00 Start
1:16 MiSTer S-Video updates
3:28 Steve’s trip to Houston
7:20 First day of presentations – PVM 2030 teardown
22:10 Steve tears-down a dotronix monitor for the first time
30:45 The HDMI to S-video converters driving the exhibitions
32:40 Backstage in the museums CRT storeroom
37:50 CRT or flat panel for visual art?… Read the rest

MiSTer FPGA S-Video & Composite Update – May 2022

Today I put out a short video giving an update on how work is going on the S-Video MiSTer FPGA cores by Mike Simone.

If you are not into watching videos, here is the script.

Antonio Villena Prototype Adapter

Last week Antonio Villena sent me a couple of prototype dongles which are designed to be used with these new cores. Remember, Antonio has had an external RGBs to S-Video and composite adapter available for years now which works with any core, you can see my video about it in the card above.

Antonio was nice enough to send me a prototype which works with the new cores and while some parts of it still need work, some cores already really great over composite.… Read the rest

CRTs in visual art – An art history tour by Steve

Recently CRT repair expert Steve from Retro Tech has been consulting for a museum, helping them preserve their collection of CRTs.

You may not have considered this before but CRTs have played a huge part in visual art in the 20th century. Almost since they were created, artists have been incorporating them into visual installations. In this podcast, Steve gives us a presentation showing a few of the notable artists from last century who used CRTs in their work.

The CRT visual art presentation starts at 36:51

Why are CRTs important to museums?

When museum curators are putting on installations which incorporate CRTs, they have many of the same concerns we retro gamers have:

Is this the same monitor that the artist originally designed this with?

… Read the rest

How To Hook Up MiSTer FPGA S-Video & Composite – The cables you need for the new YC cores

I made a video about it which I will embed here however, below that I wanted to give the same information but in written form.

With the advent of the tremendous new S-Video cores from Mike Simone, we can now get native S-Video (and by extension, composite) video from the MiSTer’s analog IO board. The goal of this guide is to help you understand how the cores output S-Video and show you a range of options for how you could hook this up to your TV. At the time of writing the project is still a work in progress, so this information could change over time.

As I explain at the end of the article, when the project is released then Mike will also be releasing designs for a low cost open source dongle which which will handle most of these steps for you.… Read the rest

Tell Him He’s Dreamin’ – CRT Prices in Estonia – 27.04.2022

This is a new series of posts where I show some of the more interesting and more outrageous online CRT sales in Estonia. Where I live it is still possible to get a good deal on a local CRT, but there are more and more dreamers popping up who think that a TV is worth 50, 75 or even 100€. There are a few hardcore retro gamers like myself in Estonia but come on guys, you are not sitting on the next investment, just be happy someone is hauling that thing away for you.

This week I am very happy to say I found no terrible deals! Each CRT I found was a reasonable price, I mean if you think 30€ is reasonable for a dusty AF 14 inch Trinitron.… Read the rest

Tell Him He’s Dreamin’ – CRT Prices in Estonia – 11.04.2022

I decided to start a new segment where I wrap up local CRT offers in Estonia (the country where I live). You can still get some good bargains here but seeing more and more offers having their go at high prices. I keep track of these and I am happy to say the high priced units stay on sale for ages, which tells me the market is not adjusting to these prices.

The segment name is from the classic Australian movie “The Castle”. The Kerrigan family are the Australian patron saints of getting a good deal.

Ok lets look through this weeks deals

Interesting Samsung TV and VHS combo. I have the 14 inch version of this and it’s nothing special beside being a combo unit.… Read the rest

What is the future of RetroRGB? w/ Bob – Zezcast #7

In this episode I talk with Bob about the past, present and future of RetroRGB. I love talking about organisations, leadership and how to grow a community.

We start with what does an average day and week look like for Bob. What work does he do and how does he coordinate the community on a daily basis?

Then we look back at how RetroRGB was ~2 years ago. No doubt the community has grown significantly in that time. More than just moving from New York to the ‘burbs, how has his work changed?

In the final part I ask Bob about the future of RetroRGB and what vision he is trying to move toward?

Retro FOMO & Whacky CRTs w/ Shank Mods – Cathode Ray Podcast #19

In this episode we have the pleasure of chatting with Shank from Shank Mods. You know him from that Hot Wheels PC video, GameCube Joy-cons and creating a portable Wii, among many other great portable modding projects.

Shank Mods on YouTube

Our talk is a really casual chat with Shank about the mods he does, his love of CRTs and more details on 4 Layer Technologies, the company he co-founded to provide components to enable more people to create portable systems

00:00 Start
02:20 The impact of his videos on our fomo
08:30 Shank’s trip to the Computer Reset Warehouse
13:00 More talk about CRTs
27:10 The potential in HD CRTs
34:30 Time Sleuth hijinks
47:00 Buying pro and jank monitors from eBay
55:00 Shank’s love of whacky CRTs: Shrek, Disney, Hot Wheels
1:04:00 Moving from CRTs to flat panels for Melee back in the day
1:14:00 Shank’s home setup
1:25:00 Shank’s PVM 20M2 repairs
1:31:00 His business “4 Layer Technologies” and their portable Wii kit

Which CRT wiki?, repairing a BVM input card, weekly thrifts – Cathode Ray Podcast #18

Head over to the Zez Retro YouTube channel to check out the latest episode of the Cathode Ray Podcast. This week we discuss the BVM cards Steve has been working on. These had some really bad cap leaks and a lot of cleaning was required. We also take a long look at the current state of CRT information on the Internet and the now various wikis which exist

How to get Composite & S-Video from a GBC-Control (with help from Antonio Villena)

In today’s article I will show you how to piece together composite and s-video output from the GBS-Control. I’ll do this by using the “VGA->Composite/S-Video adapter” by Antonio Villena.

Lets start by looking at the adapter by Antonio. It is a small and relatively affordable device to allow s-video and composite from a MiSTer. You plug this into the IO board and you get a small switch for PAL or NTSC output.

The signal coming from the MiSTer is just RGBs, so 1 pin for red, 1 for green, 1 for blue and one for sync. The adapter has some components which do the work of converting RGBs into s-video and composite. To enable this, the adapter also needs 5v on VGA pin 9.… Read the rest