CRT TV's - Are you using one?

[paul1981]

I still have my Microvitec 1438 and Philips 8833, but they are packed away in the loft due to space constraints. I have have two VGA monitors in the loft and a third that is in the junk room incase I need to hook up a motherboard to it or something. Also, I have a an old Hitachi portable colour TV in the junk room for attaching to my C64 to still check they're both working once in a while. Almost forgot about the old Ferguson black & white portable in the loft - that was what I used for the C64 up until 1990. It still works fine.

So the answer to your question is no, but only because I don't have the room to set them up!

[paul1981]

PS: I worry about keeping these old monitors in the attic on two fronts:

• Previously I kept a monitor up there and it yellowed really badly.  I was under the impression that exposure to UV triggered this reaction but my monitor went yellow just by being stored in the attic in the dark! I wonder if the heat triggered it.  Not sure.  But ever since then I don't keep any AMIGA equipment in the attic.
• It gets very hot in the attic, especially in the Summer.  And then it goes cool in the night.  So your equipment is going hot/cold/hot/cold all the time.  So I worry about the longevity of older equipment like this when subjected to that environment.  This is a worry that is born of personal feeling rather than direct experience of attic storage causing specific problems with my equipment.

There was a recent post on here regarding the yellowing of the someones's Apple Quadra (or whatever they're called) and there was a rusky chap I think who linked to some info about yellowing and it was quite interesting (required google translate) and it turns out even air alone can yellow some plastics. I never knew that, so perhaps that explains your case.
My monitors are in boxes and I think I put them in bags too and the boxes are taped, so pretty safe from dust. The biggest problem with the loft besides heat is moisture in there, but since we had four vents installed up there on both sides of the house (eight vents in total) then that problem has disappeared and all the cardboard boxes up there remain as dry as a bone. I have a load of floppy disks up there, but again I was careful to bag and pack them very well. I have tapes up there which aren't packed well at all (C64 and reel to reels) so I'm not sure how they'll be after all these years.

[paul1981]

Thanks for all the input guys. I found a free CRT TV which I'll be picking up today. It's a "Grundig" and it is 28", so quite larger than what I've used in the past. Think it should work nicely.

It should be a very good picture if it has a SCART connection. You're gonna have lots of fun with that. 

[paul1981]

I could not wait to get away from CRT Televisions on my computers in 1984, I sure don't want to use one now! I have a 1084, a 1902, a couple of 1702's and some LCD displays - no nostalgia at all for blurry CRT's. That's just me, though.

There should be a pot on the rear or behind the rear cover for adjusting the focus (it's on the LOPT). You need a large mirror though ideally so can actually set it - especially on larger CRT's.

[paul1981]

When I was a lad I used mine through the RF for a couple of years until I figured out what those phono connections were on the back of the tv. Even through the RF I used to use the 1280x512 interlaced Workbench with magenta coloured icons because I didn't know about the MagicWB palette. The composite video picture was quite an improvement. My tv didn't have scart.