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Selling retro rigs?

I still kick myself for not snagging a used FW900 Sony 24" widescreen monitor I seen at a computer shop ages ago for cheap. The thing is they weight 100lbs and take up a ton of desktop space (especially depth).

Anyway, after my Sony 19" died and got recycled I only have 17" and under CRTs in the house (which are good enough for DOS and Windows games). Well and a 20' fixed frequency Sony monitor for Macs I haven't fired up in ages.
 
Dont mean to be a dick but im not aware of anysony 24" crt. Can you share a link? Again 21" seems to be the largest commercial 4:3 crt monitor available. If you can show otherwise id love.to learn about it.


I remmeber in the early 90s when company surplus stores started selling off older computers. I came across my first large screen monitor. It was a 17" b&w hig res proprietary monitor. Used for cad or publication. I got it for $5.00. it had a de9 connector and i learned later on it needed tobe paired with its own video card not included. I threw it out a few months later.. who knew.
 
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I have one branded by HP
Curb weight is 110lbs, you WILL injure yourself moving this alone.
They run hot and their flybacks like to fail. There are no replacements and being the largest computer CRT you could commonly get people will pay money for a working one.
 
I think they came out in 2002 or around there when people were buying LCD screens with crappy color and low refresh.

The last CRT I purchased new was my 19" Sony 420GS (and a 17" Sony 17sf2 before that) and it sucked when the 420gs died.

I have a dead 14" NEC 3Ds in my garage that would be cool to fix since it works on anything even Amigas.
 
The FW900 is the holy grail of gaming monitors. It is not 4:3 but 16:10 and 1440p. These things are still sought after today by modern gamers because even the very best flat panel cannot beat the response time of a CRT.

When one goes up for sale, they are worth thousands of dollars. There's a broken one currently for sale on eBay for $550, and the only reason that's not a good deal is because its local pickup only.

Sadly the thing that makes it good for modern gaming also makes it not great for retro gaming: that aspect ratio. My current white whale is a way to get a 4:3 aspect ratio on a gigantic flat panel so I can enjoy my old games with my terrible eyesight.
 
These things are still sought after today by modern gamers because even the very best flat panel cannot beat the response time of a CRT.
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I always interpreted people who got fussy about critical response times to be people who need to seriously get a life.
(or quit blaming the hardware for sucking so much. ; ) )
 
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NeXT said:
I always interpreted people who got fussy about critical response times to be people who need to seriously get a life.
(or quit blaming the hardware for sucking so hard. ; ) )
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As much as I agree with that general statement.. EVERYTHING looks better on a CRT, especially fast moving things.

But I had a friend who was fussy with Cache latency timing on his boards and always had. Problems. I set his board to DEFAULT and it worked fine.. So yeah,, thats where I agree with that statement.
 
NeXT said:
I always interpreted people who got fussy about critical response times to be people who need to seriously get a life.
(or quit blaming the hardware for sucking so hard. ; ) )
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Definitely most people(99.99999%) don't need to care about it at all. But there are still some.

Take anything seriously enough and eventually you will want the best of the best. Many years ago I knew a guy on a forum who'd spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours perfecting a PC to eek out the absolute best performance for Descent 2. We're talking using a dual PIII board but running win98(to get access to a specific kind of RAM), the 4-way SLI PCI voodoo cards, the works. I don't know why, but he sure had fun doing it.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
Definitely most people(99.99999%) don't need to care about it at all. But there are still some.

Take anything seriously enough and eventually you will want the best of the best. Many years ago I knew a guy on a forum who'd spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours perfecting a PC to eek out the absolute best performance for Descent 2. We're talking using a dual PIII board but running win98(to get access to a specific kind of RAM), the 4-way SLI PCI voodoo cards, the works. I don't know why, but he sure had fun doing it.
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I used to love Descent. PIII seems newer than the game though. Pretty sure we were playing Descent on 486's and descent II on Pentium 1's. I mostly played the first one but the Second one was great too. The third was.. Well pretty different. I didn't get into it too much.

Descent underground which got me excited and I bought it back in I dunno 2015.. IT felt nothing like Descent and wasnt made by the same people. I sorely feel my money was stolen on that.

Overload came out in 2018 by the makers of the original Descent games (the Desacent name was tied up obviously). If you are a fan of Descent, check it out.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
The FW900 is the holy grail of gaming monitors. It is not 4:3 but 16:10 and 1440p.
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I dunno about that. Back in the hey days of LAN parties I had a buddy carting his 21" 110lbs monitor around and it was just insane. I would bring a 17" just because its good enough. They take up the entire desk and they are a severe accident waiting to happen.

On a similar note a buddy of mine still has a Sony WEGA crt which is like 34" I think and analog 1080P. Its a marvel.
 
VERAULT said:
PIII seems newer than the game though.
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He was doing this in ~2012ish? Maybe 2015? The discussion was on 2CPU.com before that site went defunct. The rig was a weird hodge-podge of eras. Voodoo1s, tualtins, SSD RAID. Really fun project.

Funny part was, after all that he still only had a 17" CRT for it. Go figure. The fact that me21" screen survived is why I got into retro gaming. Cart before the horse much, I guess.

Unknown_K said:
I figured the FW900 was something a video editor would have loved.
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Thats probably the market it was aimed at. Or at least high-end professional work.
 
VERAULT said:
I dunno about that. Back in the hey days of LAN parties I had a buddy carting his 21" 110lbs monitor around and it was just insane. I would bring a 17" just because its good enough. They take up the entire desk and they are a severe accident waiting to happen.
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By the time my original LAN party days ended(original because a new round is starting!) I had a collection of 3 CRTs 15-17" set aside just for LAN parties(I was the guy who always brought extra equipment to share). My 21" never went to a single LAN party(I should remedy that, now that they're happening in my dining room).

VERAULT said:
On a similar note a buddy of mine still has a Sony WEGA crt which is like 34" I think and analog 1080P. Its a marvel.
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Those things are fricken amazing. Hope he keeps it in good condition!
 
I find CRTs too cumbersome to offset the relatively marginal increase in image quality personally. As soon as I could switch from my 20” Eizo CAD CRT to a generic 19” LCD back in the early 00s I did.

And our retro LAN party is 100% identical notebooks (ThinkPad T400) based and has been for many years (ThinkPad T60 before).
 
JAXVintagePC said:
I find CRTs too cumbersome to offset the relatively marginal increase in image quality personally.
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Hey, more CRTs for the rest of us then ;)

But I get it, I do. I have a CRT but rarely use it. The image quality is noticeably better but I'd rather sit at my big comfy desk. If I ever succeed in getting my home office tidied up I'll post pictures.
 
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