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Who Still Uses Old Monitors?
skurrier asks: "Reading the comments for a totally unrelated article, an almost off topic post caught my eye: Someone said that they still had a Sun branded Sony GDM class monitor from way back, and (of course) it rocked then and still rocks. (Sorry, can't find the article, yet alone the comment) As I looked across my desk to that similar Sun branded Sony behemoth plugged into my PC I asked myself: How many people still use ancient monitors? And more importantly, what is the oldest monitor you still use regularly?"
I had a huge old monitor until recently, when I moved into a third-floor flat in an old Victorian house.
I gave the old monitor away to the first person who wanted it, and now have a flat panel display - a lot easier to carry up all those stairs.
Were it not for the move, I would have continued to use the old monitor until it died.
No.
This superb 21" CRT monitor is "only" 6 years old... But with an average of 10-hours/day of use, the display is still as bright & crisp today as it was back on the first day I got it. These were surely the best 2500 German Marks I have ever spent on computer hardware. I cannot praise Iiyma enough for the monitors they are manufacturing !!@
I also have an ancient 19" Sun branded Sony Trinitron monitor, still just as usable as it was when it was new (over a decade ago).
It's hooked up to a SPARCstation 10 from the same era, though it's been hopped up a bit (dual 166MHz HyperSPARC CPUs).
The only drawback to this monitor is an advantage in the winter... it produces more heat than any monitor I've ever seen.
I don't even need to run my heater most nights, but then I live in South Florida (yes, it does get down into the 40s down here).
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
If memory serves:
CGA = 2^2 colors
EGA = 2^4 colors
VGA = 2^8 colors
XGA was eXtended Graphics Adapter in Radio Shack (Tandy) terms, but what meant performance wise I was never quite sure. As long as I could play Bard's Tale on it, I was a happy camper.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Now I only use it for the C64 but it's still working. The shielding is awful though - I have a 17" SVGA monitor right next to it, and as long as the 1702 is on, the screen on the other is all wavy.
Omnes arx vestrum sunt adiuncta nobis.
My original Commodor 64 Monitor is still in great shape and runs in a bank of monitors my buddy has in his basement. They've got four working Commodore 64 monitors and a 27 inch tv with several game systems all hooked up. People will crowd in, bring over their XBoxes (XBoxen?) or Gamecubes and have ourselves a good old fashioned geek out. That same Commodore 64 monitor served as my tv in my residence room in University, was the screen I watched my first porno movie on in grade school and most important - was the screen that ran all those amazing Commodore 64 games. Space Taxi, Jump Man and Ghostbusters are still some of my all time favourites. The thing is coming up on 20 years old and still works like a charm.
Also, if you're in Canada - check out the occasional government surplus auctions. They're always selling these amazing old monitors for practically nothing. A couple of years back I picked up this behemoth 23 inch monitor that must have been a decade old. Still worked and was great for gaming. $45 bucks. When the brightness started to go, I managed to find a 21" Dell branded Trinitron knock off (or some kind of flatscreen) for $100.
Also, a buddy of mine ripped the monitor out of an old broken Mac Classic - one of those little black and white 9 inch monitors and incorporated it into some art project he did. It and 7 other monitors ripped free of their housings are arranged in some weird gothic metal looking statue thing. It's outfitted with cheap motion sensors and low quality video cameras and will display all kinds of weirdness based on what's going on around it.
You'll have to make a cable to connect your 1541 discdrive to your PC. See this page for more info.
-- Cheers!
Windex and a large category of other cleaning solutions for monitors are counterindicated.
First, they may attack the anti-glare coatings of the screen, which is what happened to one of my monitors before I acquired it.
Second, they may set your monitor on fire if they produce any flamable vapors. This happened more than once in the eighties.
Third, a damp cloth does a perfectly good job of cleaning monitors, with perhaps a little bit of dish soap.
Gentoo Sucks