Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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melancholy
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Calavera wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:28 pm
melancholy wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 11:54 pm OMFG I want that TV.

EDIT: I did some research on those PC connectors. Two of them are data ports and not entirely useful. But the one labeled Analog is a DB15 port, which can be easily converted to VGA. Which is probably why the TV supports 800x600.

God I want that TV even more now.
Well if you are ever down this way I'd be glad to sell it to you! I'm not entirely sure what it is worth. I want to say just make an offer but I hate when sellers do that :olol: If you want to make an offer though go ahead. I'm not using it anymore and I'm sure you could put it to good use.
So I've been going back and forth on it for days now. Literal days. I will be passing near there next Thursday, but I just can't decide if it's worth buying and hauling a 30 year old TV with potential liquid damage and storing my 36" TV in the shed just to have a VGA input.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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melancholy wrote: Sun Apr 05, 2020 2:52 am So I've been going back and forth on it for days now. Literal days. I will be passing near there next Thursday, but I just can't decide if it's worth buying and hauling a 30 year old TV with potential liquid damage and storing my 36" TV in the shed just to have a VGA input.
I hear ya, plus it is VERY heavy. Like it is way heavier than a standard CRT of the same size. As for the liquid damage. I don't think any water was actually leaking on it, I think it gets moist near the wall it was sitting so it was probably subjected to alot of condensation. Which could be worse, idk. The picture was stable when I had on it. No flashing or CRT clicking sounds. If you want to wait on it for awhile I can test it out more when I'm messing around out in the barn. Play movies on it when I'm out there to make sure some issue isn't going to pop up. I'd say if I get through 10 movies or so on it with no issues then there is probably no underlying issues.


Keeping with the CRT topic I've also tried out my old Gateway VX1120 22" CRT monitor. I didn't take any pics so here are a couple pics I found online of one.
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Apparently it is a rebadged Mitsubishi Diamondtron. As you can see it has two VGA inputs plus a USB hub built-in. I never really used the USB hub but I did take full advantage of the dual VGA inputs. I had my PC on Input A on the Dreamcast on Input B. It was pretty convenient being able to switch between the two on the fly. If I was playing Shenmue and wanted to take a quick break all I had to do was pause the game and switch over to the PC input! I quit using the monitor around 2008ish I think. It was having an issue with keep the image steady. The best I can explain it is like the horizontal or vertical hold would go out and the picture would continuously scroll. Most of the time it would stop after a bit and be fine but towards the end I couldn't get it to stop doing it. So it has been sitting in the barn for the past 10+ years and hasn't been powered on. I figured it wouldn't even power on at this point and even if it did it would have the scrolling issue permanently. Imagine my surprise when I hooked it to an old PC switched it on and it worked fine! I would imagine after some use the scrolling issue would come back but that could be a fairly easy fix. I really don't know much about CRT repair.

I first got this monitor when I bought a crazy expensive Gateway PC back in 2001. It had a 1GHZ Slot-A AMD CPU, 384MB ram and a 32MB Geforce 2 GTS video card. It was a beast! The maximum resolution was 2048x1536! And I actually played games at that resolution. One game I can clearly remember running at the resolution was Hard Truck 2. Back then I didn't even realize what a crazy high resolution that was. I'm thinking about hauling it inside and hooking it to my XP machine I have in the back room and running some 3DMark tests on it just for fun.
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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I decided to clean up the 22" VX1120 and hook it up to my XP machine I have hooked up in the back room. It looks AMAZING!

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I couldn't believe just how great everything looks on it. This is easily the best CRT I've used. Even just running a Genesis emulator with Sonic looked incredible. So crisp and clear with perfect colors.

It is too bad I don't still have a Dreamcast and a VGA box. I'd like to see just how amazing the DC looks on it. This monitor is how I played the majority of DC games back in the day. I played through all of Skies of Arcadia,Grandia II, Shenmue and Shenmue II. I remember Shenmue looking amazing on it, especially the forest scenes towards the end of Shenmue II.
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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You guys need to show some excitement for this monitor! It is the best CRT I've ever seen!
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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It looks good. Most CRTs look nice.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Calavera wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 9:27 am You guys need to show some excitement for this monitor! It is the best CRT I've ever seen!
I had a 24” Sony Trinitron when I was in college, so I’ve used some top-of-the-line monitors in my day.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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melancholy wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 1:57 pm
Calavera wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 9:27 am You guys need to show some excitement for this monitor! It is the best CRT I've ever seen!
I had a 24” Sony Trinitron when I was in college, so I’ve used some top-of-the-line monitors in my day.
Sure those are nice TVs but it can't do 2048x1536! :olol: Was it 4:3 or 16:9? Apparently they made Trinitron widescreen CRTs. I've never seen one in person or even on a local buy sell trade. I imagine they are rare to find as not many people had them. They were probably absurdly expensive when new.

I was using the ole Mitsubishi XC-3715C earlier today when I was out in the barn. I had Ghostbusters on VHS running on it in the background while I was out there. VHS is only composite plus the tape is pretty old so I'm obviously not taking advantage of the video quality it is capable of. S-video is the highest quality input it has that I can take advantage of right now so I hooked a DVD player up to the S-video and played Terminator 2. It looks very good much better than that old VHS tape playing through composite!

I really need to try out those RGB connections. I need to look into it but I'm assuming just a BNC to Component cable would do the job for the Analog 1 input. Something like this except with female component instead of male.
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Then for the Analog 2 I guess I would just need a DB15 to VGA converter like this.
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I have a cable laying around that is VGA male on one end and Component female on the other. So I wonder if I could use that for the DB15 to VGA converter. I'm also wondering if I could use that with the PC monitor I posted. I'm wanting to try it with the original Xbox since it can output 720P or 1080i. I'm just concerned that it could somehow damage the monitor if it isn't compatible, although I really don't think it will. I think it will just display a box that says "Frequency out of range" I remember having that error come up back in the day when I was trying to play Shenmue II in VGA using the DC-X boot disc. I had to end up trying several different boot discs before I found one that would actually play Shenmue II in VGA.
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Calavera wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 3:57 pm
melancholy wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 1:57 pm
Calavera wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 9:27 am You guys need to show some excitement for this monitor! It is the best CRT I've ever seen!
I had a 24” Sony Trinitron when I was in college, so I’ve used some top-of-the-line monitors in my day.
Sure those are nice TVs but it can't do 2048x1536! :olol:
No, not a TV. A monitor. And I was mistaken, it was a 21”, the E500. But a flatscreen 21” CRT back in 2000 was insane. I had that thing for nearly a decade before finally ditching it.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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melancholy wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 11:51 pm
Calavera wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 3:57 pm
melancholy wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 1:57 pm
Calavera wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 9:27 am You guys need to show some excitement for this monitor! It is the best CRT I've ever seen!
I had a 24” Sony Trinitron when I was in college, so I’ve used some top-of-the-line monitors in my day.
Sure those are nice TVs but it can't do 2048x1536! :olol:
No, not a TV. A monitor. And I was mistaken, it was a 21”, the E500. But a flatscreen 21” CRT back in 2000 was insane. I had that thing for nearly a decade before finally ditching it.
I looked it up, it looks like a pretty good one. Did you buy it new? If so do you remember the price? I got mine when I got a top of the line Gateway as a gift. I can't remember exactly how much it added to the total price but I'm thinking it was $800-$1000! :whoa:
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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It was a Christmas gift from my dad, so I don’t know the price. But it was pretty much the only thing I got, so I’m sure it was a lot.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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melancholy wrote: Wed Apr 15, 2020 6:54 am It was a Christmas gift from my dad, so I don’t know the price. But it was pretty much the only thing I got, so I’m sure it was a lot.
I did a little searching and found an old forum post from May 25th 2001 that states the suggested retail price was $899.99. A pretty nice Christmas present!
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Calavera wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 9:27 am You guys need to show some excitement for this monitor! It is the best CRT I've ever seen!
When you've seen as many CRTs as me, it's hard to get excited over any specific model.
if it was a 21" Trinitron at 2048 x 1536, I'd show some excitement!

What people don't want to either admit, or acknowledge, is that even cheap, old and small CRT monitors have coulours and refresh rates that make $3000 top end current TV's look average at best. :olol:
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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ian wrote: Fri Apr 17, 2020 5:06 pm What people don't want to either admit, or acknowledge, is that even cheap, old and small CRT monitors have coulours and refresh rates that make $3000 top end current TV's look average at best.
They need to make a 4K widescreen CRT! :oshocked:

Since this thread is now just me talking about whatever random stuff I'm doing since Goodwill is closed I'll just post this here. I've been having an issue with my PC for awhile now but it usually rarely happens. It only happens when playing a game, at a certain point in the game the screen will go black and the computer has to be powered off and powered back on. What is odd is that it will happen at the same point in the game. Most recently when I tried to play Shenmue III it would do it during the opening cutscene at the exact same point each time. Before that Dirt 4 would do it at the post race screen each time. I don't recall what I did to fix Dirt 4 but with Shenmue III I had the game running in a window and minimized it at the point it would freeze and that somehow worked. After that I haven't had any real issues in the game.

I would guess it is something with my video card but it only happens on certain games. I can run furmark or other benchmarks for as long as I want and I don't get the black screen. Earlier I was going through all the games I have installed to see which ones I could delete because they've been installed for years and I haven't played them. When I got to Saint Rows IV I opened it up and started a new game. It worked fine up until the cutscene where the aliens first appear then it blackscreened.

The card runs hot and always has since I first bought it. I've put new thermal paste on, cleaned all the dust out of it but it still runs very hot. When running an intensive game it would run around 195F (90c) Apparently this is within the cards operating range but that is pretty damn hot. I'm thinking maybe the Vram is getting too hot and causing the black screen. I can only view the core temp and not the vram temps. But it still doesn't make sense why it would do it at the same point in certain games while other games would run fine.

So I decided to underclock the card a bit to lower the temps. Using MSI Afterburner I lowed the core voltage to -37mv and lowered the memory speed from 1250 to 1175 and the core from 1000 to 980. I'm just guessing with those numbers but I figured I should lower the memory speed in addition to the voltage to help with the memory temperature. Everything seems to be running fine and the core temp is now much lower, around 170F(77C) which seems pretty reasonable. I tried Saints Row IV and didn't get the black screen so I'm hoping this has fixed the problem. There is basically no drop in performance from lowering the speed such a small amount and now that the temp is lower I don't have to run the loud fan so high.

Has anybody here experienced a similar problem?
Has anybody else experienced a similar problem? ssed with those so if I replaced them with new ones it wou
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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I stopped in Goodwill yesterday and they really didn't have much. I had to buy something though, it has been so long since I've been! So what did I buy? A VCR of course! Because I don't already have a million of them. :olol:

Sorry for the low quality pictures. I couldn't find any images of this model online so I just quickly snapped some.

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It is a Go-Video DDV9555 Dual-Deck VCR. It was only $6 so I picked it up just because I don't have a dual-deck VCR and thought it was pretty neat looking. Both decks work fine so it is the perfect way to watch Titanic or The Green Mile on VHS :olol:

As a collector/hoarder of random electronics I think it is pretty cool.
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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I like the look of the first one.

Soon you will have 1 player for each tape you have.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Dr. Zoidberg wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:17 pm I like the look of the first one.
First one? Those pics are all of the same unit! :olol: But I agree, you don't see dual-deck VCRs very often. I actually have another one and I think it is made by the same company. The difference is that instead of the decks being horizontal they are vertical. I originally bought that one for the same reason as this one, just because it looked cool. Unfortunately the vertical stacked one won't play tapes. I've tried working on it before but never was able to get it to play.
Dr. Zoidberg wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:17 pm Soon you will have 1 player for each tape you have.
Funny you should say that because...... I bought another one just the other day! :oshocked:

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Nothing too exciting just a DVD/VCR combo. A JVC HR-XVC11B. I've seen DVD/VCR combos are Goodwill priced around $10-$15 many times but this one was only $3.99 so of course I had to get it! I bought it because combo units usually go for a decent price on Ebay. This one without the remote I can expect to get about $50 for it. I've got several things I need to list and get rid of. I've got a Boombox/DTV/DVD Player that I've been meaning to list for a long time now. Last I saw it was going for a pretty good price. I guess I'll search through my pictures and see if I can find the pics and video I took of it and get it listed!
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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Oh OK. :olol:

It just looked like a different unit zoomed out.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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A pretty awesome find today. An IBM Model M2 "clicky keys" keyboard for $4. I haven't tested it yet to make sure it works but my guess is more than likely it does. While not as expensive as the original Model M keyboard they still go for a pretty good price on Ebay.

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Next up with have a Sharp PA-1050 Electronic Typewriter
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I'm usually not into typewriters but this one looks pretty cool. I'll be testing it out later today probably. It seems like they aren't too common. Ebay has 1 sold and 1 currently for sale. Both at around $40 in non working condition. I paid $6 for it.


Finally we have some random records I got for 89 cents a piece.
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The only one of those that I know is El Debarge. I had to grab it up right away! :olol: I was really hoping "Who's Johnny" from Short Circuit would be on it but unfortunately it is not. The others I either liked the cover or just thought they were interesting. Pretty much anything that is from the late 70s onwards I'll usually pick up.

I also picked up Looney Tunes Racing and Hot Shots Golf for PS1 for $2 apiece. And the last thing I purchased was a black Wii nunchuck for 89 cents. Not too bad of a day at Goodwill. :ocool:
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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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When I pass through at the end of the month, I need to raid your Goodwill. It seems like you always find cool stuff there.

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Re: Calavera's Goodwill/Flea Market Finds 2: Resurrection

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melancholy wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 1:11 pm When I pass through at the end of the month, I need to raid your Goodwill. It seems like you always find cool stuff there.
I just hope we don't end up there at the same time. Wouldn't want a fight to break out over some obsolete electronic device! :olol:



I tested out the little electric typewriter. Apparently it is from 1987. Hard to say when it was last used. At first it wasn't putting anything on the paper which I expected since the ink cartridge thing could be 30+ years old. But after just a minute or so it actually starting working!




Obviously I have no use for a typewriter in 2020 but this particular one I find to be really cool. I also found this bit of information about it.
Note: these little battery-op baby wedges have a thermal print head, thus you can pull out the ribbon and feed it rolls of fax paper, and it'll print great on it without any ribbon at all! (:
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