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Vintage Computers Any vintage computer systems, calculators, video games etc., but with an emphasis on 1980s and earlier equipment.

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Old 19th Apr 2019, 7:35 am   #1
Argus25
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Default Vintage amber VDU project

Recently I built two vintage NOS Zenith amber CRT VDU's into special order Takachi enclosures. One thing was a successful CRT gasket/mask that was machined out of 10mm thick black acrylic. Using thicker acrylic this could also be a method to recreate masks for vintage CRT's too.

The article/story is here:

http://worldphaco.com/uploads/THE_AM...DU_PROJECT.pdf
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Old 19th Apr 2019, 8:24 am   #2
Kentode
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Default Re: Vintage amber VDU project

That's a very professional looking job, congratulations!

How did you arrive at the 700 mm radius of curvature of the crt?
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Old 19th Apr 2019, 8:40 am   #3
peter_scott
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Default Re: Vintage amber VDU project

As Ken has said, a truly professional job! Beautifully executed.

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Old 19th Apr 2019, 12:14 pm   #4
Argus25
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Default Re: Vintage amber VDU project

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kentode View Post
That's a very professional looking job, congratulations!

How did you arrive at the 700 mm radius of curvature of the crt?
I used a long string with a pen and drew curves on thin card, then cut them out and held them to the crt faceplate, in the end, through iteration, I found the radius of the faceplate.
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Old 19th Apr 2019, 1:35 pm   #5
Karen O
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Default Re: Vintage amber VDU project

That is REALLY nice!

Mounting 5.5" CRTs has been a real bugbear. Sometimes I use the metalwork that comes with the TV. Other times I form a large hose clip into a kind of rim band. Your solution is better by far.

I like the SOL 20 too: perhaps the only desktop computer with an S100 bus card cage...?
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Old 19th Apr 2019, 2:00 pm   #6
Argus25
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Default Re: Vintage amber VDU project

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Originally Posted by Karen O View Post
That is REALLY nice!

I like the SOL 20 too: perhaps the only desktop computer with an S100 bus card cage...?
One oddity about the Sol-20 is that the S-100 cards were mounted horizontally, unlike many other S-100 computers of the era where they were mounted vertically. They wanted to keep the whole case low profile and oddly that was because they had fixed height wooden sides because the company sourced the wood from a gun stock supplier and it had a limited height.

It is not ideal for cooling as the heat builds up between the S-100 boards. On my Sol-20 I added an extra fan to combat this. In my computer I run three 16k ram cards so I can run 48k CP/M and the heat between the cards is an issue. Also these cards have issues with their digital delay lines.

Here is an article about the cards, if you go to page 24 you will see the cooling fan I added:

http://worldphaco.com/uploads/PROCES...A_RAM_CARD.pdf

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Old 21st Apr 2019, 2:23 am   #7
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Default Re: Vintage amber VDU project

I just made a very short video of my Walking Man on the Amber monitor. This program was written in 8080 assembly language and uses plots of the $ symbol, since the Sol has no graphics screens, just text:

https://youtu.be/D8PEJsoEWUc
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Old 21st Apr 2019, 8:28 am   #8
Kentode
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Default Re: Vintage amber VDU project

That does look good. I'm sure I've seen something similar on a European pedestrian crossing, possibly in Spain.
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