Has anyone here used a monochrome phosphor CRT with a modern machine? Say, a monitor with a 9-pin serial/re9/rs232 cable with a more modern PC. Also, this will just be a terminal screen. Possibly with w3m images. Here are some options I've thought up. I haven't picked out a monitor yet.
VGA/serial adaptor These adapters are common. Don't know if they would work.
CGA video card output or other period correct, oem matched card Don't know how the fuck I would use this on a modern board.
Some other 9 pin display video output Maybe there is an old PC with Core Duo or Pentium with serial display? I was born in '96, so I'm not too savvy on 20 year old graphics hardware
I know that the green Macintosh CRT's are pretty cheap and use a 9-pin, but the pin out is proprietary. Chime in if you have experience with these things! Am I over thinking this?
Had CRT with VGA connector connected to a laptop from 5 years ago. Worked without any issues.
If your laptop does not have VGA connector anymore, you can buy reduction to any other standard for couple bucks.
That being said, you could probably buy second hand LCD for the same price, so reconsider your situation.
Jaxon Allen
This purely for fun factor. So reduction doesn't matter, and LCD isn't monochrome CRT so that's not an option :3
Jonathan Parker
Was your CRT mono? Column or vector? :o
Ryan Flores
It might be less work to gut the old CRT frame, put in an LCD panel of the same size with its electronics, and modify whatever application you are using to only output mono.
I'm afraid it was regular CRT from around 2000. Missed the part of your post asking for mono / vector specifically.
I've decided to just buy myself a DEC/Boundless VT520-BA terminal w/LK412 keyboard and hook it up to my freebsd rpi2. null modem cable is like $6.
Yeah man LGR's vids are tha shit. Guy is a way bigger tech nerd than me.
Alexander Diaz
I didn't do anything special but back then I used to play ps2 on my old apple IIe monitor.
Isaac Roberts
check 'em
Alexander Rodriguez
Im pretty sure you can just set your modern monitor to B&W
Carson Cooper
why do people do this? aesthetics? nostalgia?
Oliver Hall
...
James Gray
aesthetic because I was born too late to take mono crt's for granted. Also, it'd be really cool to get an experience more in line with the old Unix design philosophy. Admittedly it isn't pure, cuz I don't have $3-4k to plow on a 1980's mainframe.
I was born in 1996, growing up around GUI's and shitty OS's like Windows 98-10. When I was 15 I experimented a little with Ubuntu but only now am I starting to appreciate how different Unix-like OS's are. I'm not great with commands yet (man pages are all I do anymore), but I can still figure out how to get the machine to do exactly what I want, even though I don't know wtf I'm doing. These machines won't be around forever.
