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jbltecnicspro
Joined: 23 Apr 2016
Posts: 512
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| Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 1:58 am Post subject: |
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I'm a bit of a newbie here, but I'll weigh in some opinion as a "gamer" myself. Some gamers prefer their material look spot-on. For example, I game on a Sony GDM-F520 CRT monitor, and on my LAN box I use a Sony GDM-C520K Artisan. I tend to calibrate the monitors every six months to twelve months and realign dynamic convergence, grayscale, etc. The process takes a few hours for each screen.
Any display that I've ever gotten a hold of for gaming purposes, I've calibrated as much to perfection as I can get. There are quite a few gamers who are in the same boat and really want accuracy.
You should just be bluntly honest about the condition of the tubes and let the buyer decide. If it's good enough, they'll bite.
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:16 am Post subject: |
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If you're a gamer and like CRT monitors, there aren't any better monitors than the last generations of Sun monitors made by Sony.
I forget the part numbers, but the ones where the whole back shell is purple are a safe bet. I used to run two of them on my last workstation and sometimes I miss them. Awesome monitors, not ever matched by LCDs even yet.
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jbltecnicspro
Joined: 23 Apr 2016
Posts: 512
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| Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:23 am Post subject: |
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| cmjohnson wrote: | If you're a gamer and like CRT monitors, there aren't any better monitors than the last generations of Sun monitors made by Sony.
I forget the part numbers, but the ones where the whole back shell is purple are a safe bet. I used to run two of them on my last workstation and sometimes I miss them. Awesome monitors, not ever matched by LCDs even yet. |
GDM-F520 is the tightest monitor (0.22mm pitch) they've ever put into production. It really is a sight to behold. I'm typing this on the monitor now, and am running it at 1920x1440 85hz and it's completely readable (even with just a 20-inch viewable screen). LCD cannot touch this screen.  I've had a GDM-FW900 before and while I liked it, I prefer the F520.
There's still a (small) community of fans who help each other keep these babies going.
EDIT: All of the Sun monitors are GDM rebrands. They all had rebrands except for the F520, F500R (which is a 520 in older-looking clothing), and the Artisan did not have a rebrand.
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:40 am Post subject: |
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I've got a 22" Sun (I know, they're Sony made) in my car right now. I need it to test out custom resolutions out of a video card as I push into beyond 2K territory. This needs to be done before I attempt it with a projector.
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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I've begun today's round of tube tests. The first green of the day is so simply perfect that it's gone straight to potting, no discussion or opinions needed. More later...
The dark band in the top range of the first photo is a camera artifact.
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2016 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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It's a nice batch for today. Two blues and two greens tested perfect.
But due to my own fault, I damaged the vertical amplifier by accidentally shorting the VDM pins on the tube under test. No problem, I'll swap out the amp board with a spare tonight and then test some more tubes. I think there are two reds and one more blue to be tested in this lot.
The current tally of tubes that are definitely worthy of potting up is two greens, two blues, one red.
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2016 4:55 am Post subject: |
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Found my first BAD tube. A shame, it's an absolutely perfect looking red. Image is dim, retrace lines always visible if the contrast is turned up (and it's STILL dim) and after it warms up for a while the brightness level increases but never gets anywhere near usable. The whole greyscale pattern can be seen only if the contrast is below about 12. Above that, the low end vanishes, leaving only the top end of the greyscale visible. Text streaks like MAD. It's not the neck card, I tried several just to see if any of them made any changes.
It's either a slightly gassy tube or it has a defective electron gun assembly. It looks absolutely normal to visual inspection, butthat doesn't mean much, since a misalignment of electron gun elements by only a few thousandths of an inch can make all the difference.
it's a Mikado, and unlike Clinton Tubes and Displays, Mikado is still in business so there's a slight chance that it might be exchangeable under warranty.
Probably not but I can ask.
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2016 11:04 am Post subject: |
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The bad tube turned out to be gassy. And cracked under the pin base. And pin 8 was clipped off before I got it, WHY I can not fathom, because if my information is right, that's the cathode!
Since it is (was) a LUG tube then that might explain why I was still getting SOME image, as it was still getting drive on grid 1.
Marquees drive the cathode and G1, with equal but opposite signals. It's what LUGs were made to do.
It's now in the dead pile. Shame, the phosphor was perfect.
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the big E
Joined: 20 Apr 2013
Posts: 1928
Location: speedwell Tn.
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| Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2016 12:50 pm Post subject: |
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That's a bummer
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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I expect a few bad ones. Unfortunately it's likely that any tube that has a manufacturing defect will never get many hours on it,
so the rejects can be expected to look like new.
Fortunately, I have plenty more reds to check. I think almost half these tubes are red. I wish it was a more balanced mix but there's not much I can do about that.
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2016 7:49 pm Post subject: |
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Tubes sorted and counted. Those tubes that have not yet been tested, but have every appearance of being perfect, amount to enough tubes to fully equip six projectors. This means that my total count as of so far is eight full good sets plus an extra or two.
Plus the rest, which I consider to be "B grade". Those will be sold off at a cheap price for people who have BAD tubes but are too cheap to spring for minty fresh tubes, but would pay a little for "pretty decent" tubes. When your tubes are a 5, 100 bucks for an 8 is probably a decent deal.
Tubes that are just flat out UGLY will be sent to recycling but I may keep one set just for test purposes.
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the big E
Joined: 20 Apr 2013
Posts: 1928
Location: speedwell Tn.
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| Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2016 9:31 pm Post subject: |
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100 bucks for a b grade tube sounds like a deal
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 3:07 pm Post subject: |
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That would be for a bare tube. Buyer mounts the tube to his own LC hardware. For Marquee users, I will offer an exchange program. Send me your LC assembly and I send the replacement tube back to you in a matching assembly. I'll have to charge about 50 bucks for this as there's a fair amount of labor and materials cost involved.
I don't do Barco or Sony or other brand LC assemblies. Marquee only.
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the big E
Joined: 20 Apr 2013
Posts: 1928
Location: speedwell Tn.
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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Not bad
I know how the marquee housings are a pain to work with and if the 9500 ones are as a bad as 8500 ones are the price is worth it
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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It does help that I have literally dozens of sets of Marquee LC hardware in stock. I do a lot of prep work on each housing,
including painting the surfaces that touch glycol with black VHT epoxy paint so as to stop corrosion, and I replace ALL the hardware
in the LC assembly with stainless so nothing rusts in the event of a leak.
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the big E
Joined: 20 Apr 2013
Posts: 1928
Location: speedwell Tn.
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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Smart thinking on doing the prep work
I have to pull the blue tube in my 9501 to flush it out due to fungus build up
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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Odds are that the other tubes will benefit from a flush at the same time. The murk is just noticed soonest on blue. But it's there in red and green too, I bet
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 11:01 pm Post subject: |
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That blue tube with the spot on it has me really annoyed. I coudn't knock the contaminant off it with a few raps from a rubber mallet, so I think that when I get around to doing it, I'm going to try to burn it off by making a custom pattern with just the black spot, in reverse, and run it at high contrast for a while, thus (hopefully) making the contaminant get hot enough to fall off. Hit it with enough electrons to make it move.
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the big E
Joined: 20 Apr 2013
Posts: 1928
Location: speedwell Tn.
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 11:40 pm Post subject: |
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| cmjohnson wrote: | | Odds are that the other tubes will benefit from a flush at the same time. The murk is just noticed soonest on blue. But it's there in red and green too, I bet |
Likely will pull and do all three I just have to make sure I have enough glycol to do all three
I got replacement screws from curt back of this just haven't had the time to do it
I have been using my dwin set till I can get it done as I can see the effect of it in certain movies(it's a bummer but oh well)
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the big E
Joined: 20 Apr 2013
Posts: 1928
Location: speedwell Tn.
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| Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2016 11:41 pm Post subject: |
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| cmjohnson wrote: | | That blue tube with the spot on it has me really annoyed. I coudn't knock the contaminant off it with a few raps from a rubber mallet, so I think that when I get around to doing it, I'm going to try to burn it off by making a custom pattern with just the black spot, in reverse, and run it at high contrast for a while, thus (hopefully) making the contaminant get hot enough to fall off. Hit it with enough electrons to make it move. |
I hope it works out
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