
Retro 5″ Black and White TV as a computer monitor – A tale of pointlessness - LluisGerard
https://blog.uchujin.co.uk/2019/07/retro-5-black-and-white-tv-as-a-computer-monitor-a-tale-of-pointlessness/
======
katzgrau
At 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 mono 1/8 jack onto an
RCA component for the video (ext.ant to VCR) and did a similar splicing for
the audio, but I had to run it through an old 8 track player to amplify the
audio. It may be obvious that I collected a lot of old junk and cables (I
still do).

I did this all so I could primarily watch Conan O'Brien... which was available
on channel 4 anyway (accessible via antenna) but I just wanted to watch the
show in the highest definition possible.

Having my first kid soon, I'm curious if he'll be as determined to work around
the rules.

~~~
ahje
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. :)

~~~
RHSeeger
When my daughter asks me "Daddy, can you <something>", I usually reply with
"Yes" and then leave it at that. Then should responds with "WILL you
<something>", and I do it. I very clearly taught her the difference between
can and will by doing so. And now she does the same thing to my wife. And I
get in trouble for it. It's great.

~~~
quelltext
What's the point of that "lesson"? In English and many other languages
politeness in asking for something is achieved by beating around the bush.
That's just how it works.

"Could you do me a favor and look into that issue?". Answering yes implies
you'll do it. Same goes for the "woulds" and "cans" and "mind doing ... s".

~~~
RHSeeger
They two different questions. One is asking if you are you able to, the other
if you are willing to. I don't teach my daughter to correct people outside the
house, but I do want her to speak properly when out there.

It's the same as everyone knows what she means when she says "libary", but I
correct her to pronounce it "library".

~~~
taejo
Pragmatically, _neither_ of them is a question: they are more and less polite
requests (or a request and an order). Your daughter is perceptive enough to
have worked this out; probably you did too, but at some point decided to
override your unconcious competence with concious nitpicking.

------
Nr7
LGR has a couple of related videos on YouTube.

Regular old B&W TV connected via HDMI:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMiMz1uGCXI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMiMz1uGCXI)

A tiny 1/2 inch CRT used as a display:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY7olqQF8iM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY7olqQF8iM)

------
stronglikedan
Hah! I had one of these hooked up in my car around the turn of the century!
Mounted under the dash, with a micro (mini?) atx computer in the trunk, all
powered by an inverter. I controlled it with a thumb ring trackball, and a
mini keyboard that I would stow under the driver's seat. Once I got going, I
only needed the trackball, since I was just using it with Winamp to play my
mp3s. No wireless anything back then (at least not reliable). It looked cool
enough that someone broke my window to steal it!

------
anonymfus
I 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.

~~~
scarejunba
Interestingly, you can buy similar ones on Amazon
[https://www.amazon.com/Coby-CX-TV1-Black-White-
Tuner/dp/B000...](https://www.amazon.com/Coby-CX-TV1-Black-White-
Tuner/dp/B00006I56A/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1563904426&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_two_browse-
bin%3A7070353011&s=electronics&sr=1-1)

~~~
loser777
Probably wouldn’t have a digital TV tuner, right?

------
mnw21cam
Yeah, 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 passive converter with just a few
resistors (to mix the three colours) and a couple of transistors (to pull the
signal to ground when blanking).

~~~
cr0sh
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 many CAD
systems (with a price to match of course).

IIRC, it was also a setup that some later game programmers used (I may be
wrong, but IIRC, Carmack used something like this?) - because they could run
the debugger on the monochrome Hercules, while outputting the game on the
color monitor (CGA/EGA/VGA). This was well after better solutions came around
for CAD, so the Hercules setup was a relatively inexpensive upgrade.

~~~
malkia
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](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 :)

~~~
rzzzt
simcga was a similar utility, it used B800h for the CGA-compatible frame
buffer (the card also had memory in that location as a secondary graphics
page):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Graphics_Card#CGA_emu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Graphics_Card#CGA_emulation)

~~~
malkia
If I only knew back then, but it might've not been been available to me. Or
it's possible that I've tried it, and might've even relied on it, as I played
other games, but this one, along with few others were VGA only. Wow, now that
i think of it... it was long time ago... Just trying to squeze that last bit
of 640kb with QEMM... looool

~~~
rzzzt
Real mode x86 is certainly not the most accomodating environment for hardware
emulation :)

------
linker3000
Yep, been there, done that.

Just knocking up a VGA to composite circuit similar to the one linked below
(AD724 chip) to put my laptop onto a 21" Philips colour TV from the 1990s:

[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/403637/vga-t...](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/403637/vga-
to-composite-circuit-does-it-work)

------
whenchamenia
I still use a CRT. Works great, no fuss. Its just heavy to move, which I don't
do often. People comment on how rich the colors are. 85hz refresh solves the
'flicker' issue.

~~~
simias
I reluctantly discarded my last CRT a few years ago. They're not just heavy to
move, they also take a lot of room on my desk and they generate a lot of heat.

For a long time LCDs really couldn't compete with CRTs. They had bad
resolutions, terrible viewing angles and terrible colors (and especially
horrendous blacks).

Resolution is (finally) no longer an issue, colors and viewing angles are
still meh but steadily improving. Hopefully we'll get OLED or something
similar in the near future that will solve that once and for all. I decided
that it was good enough to finally make the switch definitively.

~~~
jerf
"Resolution is (finally) no longer an issue, colors and viewing angles are
still meh but steadily improving."

Are you buying _good_ LCDs? There's a whole range of types:
[https://pcmonitors.info/articles/lcd-panel-types-
explored/](https://pcmonitors.info/articles/lcd-panel-types-explored/) The
worst LCDs today are crap, but the best ones are going to be hard to tell
apart from a CRT without putting it next to one. Since the only CRTs made
today are high quality CRTs because there's zero market for bad CRTs anymore
(and only barely a market for CRTs at all), a modern CRT may still outclass
the best LCD, but mostly because of the fact that if the CRT couldn't outclass
the best LCD it wouldn't exist at all.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to buy a good LCD screen. Monitors you may
have to dig into relatively technical reviews of to find out (generic tech
magazine reviewer may not tell you), and finding out what specific kind of
screen a laptop has can be very difficult sometimes. Manufacturers don't
really want to talk about it as they tend to benefit from being fuzzy about
exaggerated specs, and a lot of "reviewers" aren't really aware enough of
these issues to make a point of it in their review.

I'm not an expert but I'd swear even in the TN space there's a lot of
variation. I once accidentally bought a latop that basically literally didn't
have a viewing angle; even at the "optimum" angle only the vertically-middle
50% of the screen was correct and the top and bottom were already showing
major brightess drop-off and color inaccuracy. I don't just mean "I don't like
to admit it but sometimes I can be a bit of a videophile" sort of complaints,
either, I mean more like "literally can't read the word 'Start' on the Start
Menu because the text and the background have both color shifted that much".
Ironically, sold as a media laptop that only the most casual casual would have
wanted to actually watch movies on. Dumped that one right quick. And this
particular laptop was priced in the range where it really should have had a
decent screen.

By contrast, I'm coding on what is almost certainly a TN monitor, and I really
don't care. I wouldn't want it on my personal laptop, the Macbook screen
driving it is much, much better by comparison, but I don't do anything color
sensitive at work. There's very minimal viewing angle distortion and that's
all I really need. (I mean, push comes to shove, I could pretty much do my job
on a monochrome monitor and only be somewhat annoyed.)

~~~
simias
>Are you buying good LCDs? There's a whole range of types:
[https://pcmonitors.info/articles/lcd-panel-types-
explored/](https://pcmonitors.info/articles/lcd-panel-types-explored/) The
worst LCDs today are crap, but the best ones are going to be hard to tell
apart from a CRT without putting it next to one. Since the only CRTs made
today are high quality CRTs because there's zero market for bad CRTs anymore
(and only barely a market for CRTs at all), a modern CRT may still outclass
the best LCD, but mostly because of the fact that if the CRT couldn't outclass
the best LCD it wouldn't exist at all.

You're right, I should've been a bit more explicit, I was mainly comparing
"average" CRTs from up to about 2005 (back when they were still relatively
mainstream) from an average LCD monitor today. Not the top of the line but not
the bargain bin either.

For a long time switching from CRT to a comparably-priced LCD was a massive
downgrade. You had a lower resolution, ridiculous ghosting, bad colors, black
levels that looked like the rising sun and a viewing angle on par with the
angular diameter of Pluto.

Nowadays you can find relatively cheap 4k LCDs that perform decently. Sure the
blacks aren't perfectly black and it's not good enough for any serious color-
sensitive work but for coding and gaming it's good enough for me.

------
iamdead
I know someone who converted one of these into a home-made terminal, so they
could connect to the computer at school and work from home. They drilled a
hole into the TV, added a socket for video input which bypassed the
antenna/demodulator, and hooked it up to a home-made 8-bit computer. 32
columns!

~~~
cr0sh
Sounds like Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Typewriter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Typewriter)

------
g00s3_caLL_x2
This 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

~~~
Finnucane
I was lucky--we had a spare little _color_ TV I could use as a monitor.

------
thelazydogsback
Sounds 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??

~~~
cr0sh
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 might be that way now - so check
into that before jumping into something like this.

~~~
asd
> The TV watch is all-in-one?

The Seiko T001 does have an external tuner and routinely go for $400-500+ on
eBay, depending on condition.

[https://monochrome-watches.com/seiko-t001-mother-smart-
watch...](https://monochrome-watches.com/seiko-t001-mother-smart-watches/)

------
sangnoir
Ha, I got the same model 5" portable TV from Goodwill - the composite input
work perfectly with the Raspberry Pi's composite output (some basic soldering
is required on the RPi Zero).

My plan was to make it a self-contained old-school PC (with green cellophane
film on the monitor for aesthetics) and internally mounting the RPi inside the
shell, but I'm being held back by my fear of the high-voltage circuitry of the
CRT, and a couple of stripped screws.

------
dfxm12
"Retro" isn't the right word here. I thought this was going to be about
building your own monitor, not simply using an old one...

~~~
mnw21cam
Okay. For my first-year university physics project, I made a jumble of wires
attached to the parallel port of a computer on one end and the X/Y inputs of
an oscilloscope on the other end, and could get it to display vector graphics.
(Badly. Very badly. There was far too much stray capacitance in the circuit.)

------
fock
came here for the FPGA and got instructions on buying premade-adapters

~~~
kennyadam
Yep, a blog post that teaches you nothing except 'adapters exist' and is also
poorly written. Not sure what the criteria are for making the front page is,
but I'm baffled how this could meet them.

------
dawsob
Now you can buy Xiaomi Mi Box S Android TV Media Streamer coneced to you TV
and you will able to watch Netflix. But quality will be hard to watch :)

------
justanegg
cool, permanent terminal window?

------
dmhimanshu
good one

------
cm2187
Also a good way to damage your eye sight given the low refresh rate.

One thing I don't miss from CRT monitors from the 90s.

~~~
deadwing0
How does a low refresh rate damage eyes? Got a link? Legit question, not
looking for an argument.

~~~
VLM
The counter proof is TV viewing skews extremely old, and there's plenty of
elderly who've been staring into 60Hz screens for multiple decades with no
obvious TV related illnesses.

~~~
cm2187
You are typically not watching them at the same distance either, and the fact
that TV screens are interlaced might also affect the flickering effect (I
understand 1990s monitors weren't).

I remember that my 67Hz macintosh monitor was really stressing my eyes as a
teenager, while I never had this problem with a TV.

~~~
mnw21cam
You're misunderstanding interlacing. Interlacing was a way to still keep 50Hz
(or 60Hz in some parts of the world) while having twice as many rows. It
didn't give you a higher refresh rate than that.

~~~
LocalH
No, but the difference in scanning pattern does provide a quite stark
perceptual difference between 15KHz interlaced and 31KHz progressive at 60Hz.
The scanning of fields seems to provide a higher chance that field 1's bottom
lines won't have disappeared by the time the monitor is scanning field 2's
bottom lines. Of course, it's largely dependent on a monitor's specific
phosphor persistence, and why high-persistence monitors were so common in the
earlier days of personal computing.

