Philips CNC Machine. CRT Monitor replacement?

[padstar]

Good day fellow forumers...

so i'm looking to replace a dead CRT on a Philips (80's vintage) cnc machine..

I've had good luck with tasks like this in the past, and most of the displays have been just simply VGA and I've just needed to find a display to fit and Bob's been my uncle, but recently I've had to do a bit of fiddling and it involved a scan converter, but once I got the pinout, and made up an input cable, it was again all good.

So fast-forward to this project.. and I've been around the houses and I've not got anything working.. so I wonder if anyone has any ideas?


The original CRT was connected to the control with a 9 pin din connector..

******************************G8GzZ4DCVrSB87vz5

which makes you think of all the old IBM MCE,CGA,HGA, formats.. but on examination of the signals on the cables we seem to have a H sync V sync, a colour signal and ground. That's it.


Now this is the three different signals..

******************************Ez2w59bZKHzfkNEx7

******************************NAYUtz6t757ys1Kk6

******************************Vh7uwrF42Qx6CN1Q7


Now maybe I'm seeing this wrong, but I don't see this as composite video, but can someone maybe point me in the right direction?

Thanks, Pad.

[padstar]

Sorry I mangled getting the images on the post, here you are, it should make more sense now.

Thanks, Pb.

[TonyDuell]

There is a lot I am not 'getting' here :

Is the original a monochrome or colour monitor? What is the fault (blank screen'?) and why do you assume it can't be repaired?

Can you post a photo of the insides of the original monitor, please. Somebody might recognise it. (Although Philips made monitors, they also used ones made by other companies in some of their products, so do not assume it's a Philips chassis)

You have identified, I think, Hsync and Vsync signals. What frequencies are they? What pins are they on the DE9 connector?

IBM CGA uses a DE9 connector and could match up with the wiring of the DE9 plug in your photo. I find it odd, though, that the same pins are not used on both the plug and the socket and that the wire colours are totally different.

[Station X]

Not a CNC Machine Tool Manufacturer I've ever come across.

Was the machine made by "Philips" or by Phillips"?

[roadster541]

Philips did not make the machine tools, just the controls, the same Dutch based company as the radios etc. I have worked on machine tools with Philips controls and remember them as being very good. One which I recall was the DSG Monarch CNC lathe.
Rod

[Maarten]

Philips might have made the tools as well, though it's more likely it's a 3rd party machine... But a lot of information is missing from the startpost anyway. The type number (and brand if not Philips) of the machine, and the type numbers of the controls and the monitor would be a good starting point. Possibly some pictures of the monitor electronics.

[Radio Wrangler]

That isn't a DIN plug, that's a 9-pin D subminiature connector.

You've found horizontal sync, vertical sync and what must be video, but it's difficult to be sure. You've set your oscilloscope inputs to AC coupled on come relatively low frequency signals. This means you lose sight of where ground, zero volts, is. Unlike TV, these will be DC coupled signals. You need to use your scope set to DC coupling, and things should get clearer. I'm expecting these to be %v or TTL level logic signals.

As they are, they either have an odd, 3-level structure or else they are being distorted by overshoots, AC coupling.

Just showing scope pictures to people doesn't tell them enough. You have traces but you've not named them yet. It's also difficult to see whar vertical and horizontal scales you're set to. Some title like "Pin 2, at 1v and 10ms per division" would save people magnifying and trying to read off the display. As it is, it looks like 50Hz vertical sync which is believable and mainstream. It may even be locked to local mains to reduce flicker/strobing effects with local lighting. Horizontal sync looks to be near EITHER 45.4kHz OR 16.357kHz the scope display is showing both these values for the yellow channel. It's not clear what the frequency displays are counting. Maybe someone used to that make/mode of scope can tell what it's measuring.

80's vintage means that the display format could be based on a TV standard, or it could be based on an early PC format. But it's Philips and they're perfectly capable of making up their own format just for this machine!

Looking at the signals, I'm expecting it to be monochrome, I don't see any colour encoded signal. Is it?

Use your scope in DC coupled vertical mode, adjust the timebase faster to get a picture of one line of horiz sync, one line of the video, one frame of the vertical sync one line of the horizontal sync and one frame of the video. Say which is which, say what the vertical and horizontal scaling are for each picture. It will make it a lot easier for people to help and more people will take the trouble.

David

[padstar]

thank you for all your responses..

lots of very handy information and quite rightly some errors and admissions are in my original posting... which i will address now...

so...

yes, its phillips (the dutch electronics brand i think at the time.. )and its not the actual entire machine.. just the controller... it was a green screen CRT, made by unipol, but it has had a catastrophic failure, with the end of the tube being damaged, and the main PCB being burnt quite badly... making me think that a nice and easy repair wasnt really an option...... oddly this control is fitted on a Dean Smith and Grace Lathe (shortened to DSG by many) and in this instance, being that is is an older machine, the cnc control is basically just replacing the meat servo that used to twiddle the handles.. and it does it with some large servo motors.. with no care or distinction for anything thats going on ... so if you wanted a wild ride, operating this machine with only a modicum of experience has a certain pucker factor..

so ... in my initial investigating I'd scoped out the H and V sync. and the single colour channel, and i'd tried and failed to get any of my normal monitor options to display anything.. which then lead me to believe that i was looking at something that pre dates VGA, and i went off down that rabbit hole... MCA, CGA, composite.. etc..

so fast forward to me putting this post together.. i was at the end of my tether.. i needed to get the machine running as there was a job that could only be done on this machine.. i'd already been down the route of ordering a expensive replacement from a specialist, and when it showed up it connected and i got a display, but the mechnical install didnt allow it to fit... (the screen has a set of hot keys on the bottom of the display and they need to line up with the membrane keypad on the bottom of the bezle.. ) so we sent that back... and i started trudging down the road of getting a bare LCD panel and driver, and figuring out what a way of converting the video signal...

anyway... knowing the way that modern VGA monitors are sometimes mega clever.. but also mega fussy in equal measure I'd always thought that i needed some sort of scan converter... and my limited knowledge of VGA was that there was a legacy standard that sometimes wasn't supported (15khz or something.. ) but sometimes monitors incorrectly identify and display garbage... so i was stuck in that mindset...

but then one of the apprentices wandered over asking what i was doing.. obviously wanting to try to justify the weeks i'd spent looking in the back of this control, i stated explaining all the parts of the puzzle.. and i plugged in a random VGA monitor in directly to the control cable (using a 15 pin vga breakout header), and this is where my bias made me look a bit stoopid, as when i plugged it in .. the VGA monitor immediately displayed that the display resolution wasn't compatible.. (which i'd not actually registered this message.. ) and then it made me question my scan converter, as all the while when i'd been looking at what the scan converter was seeing on the input , and it wasn't showing any signal... (and it has lots of options to try all different levels and resolutions) Hmmmmmmm went the old grey matter... could it be that my scan converter was not behaving correctly.... so again the apprentice said.. why dont you try plugging it into the bare LCD panel.....

so i did...and boom... it Verks...

thank you and good night...

no no... i need to again thank everyone who replied...

yes i've gone and got my copy of "identifying connectors" and put it to the top of my reading pile... and i can only apologise, i know its all about the details, i should know, being the chairman of the pedants society in our house...


the attached images are the bare lcd panel on test.. and the big blue thing is the naughty scan converter that has been fibbing to me all the while...

I'll look into it and do some testing, as ive used them before and they have worked very well.. you have lots of options and controls.. (via a wifi connection and web interface) but clearly i need to be a bit less trusting...

so in summery .. it works.. and it was VGA all along.. whoop whoop...

PS the apprentice deservers a payrise

Pb

[McMurdo]

Philips CNC controls were affiliated with Grundig CNC and became absorbed into Heidenhain. The monitor specs are very rarely anything standard but so long as you identify the syncs, a good modern scan converter (or multisync monitor) will auto identify the signals and work. Note that there are some very iffy scan converters from the usual online retailers that promise the earth but are next to useless.

I'd have thought a philips-badged cnc would be very old by now and due for replacement?

[Nickthedentist]

Well done, good result!

[McMurdo]

oops post crossed

[Radio Wrangler]

Very nice result, and keeps a good old DSG going..... self-confessed DSG fan, with a side of Jones and Shipman!.

David

[factory]

Originally Posted by padstar

so fast forward to me putting this post together.. i was at the end of my tether.. i needed to get the machine running as there was a job that could only be done on this machine.. i'd already been down the route of ordering a expensive replacement from a specialist, and when it showed up it connected and i got a display, but the mechnical install didnt allow it to fit... (the screen has a set of hot keys on the bottom of the display and they need to line up with the membrane keypad on the bottom of the bezle.. ) so we sent that back... and i started trudging down the road of getting a bare LCD panel and driver, and figuring out what a way of converting the video signal...

I've had to put up with the failing LCD in a Siemens CNC for more than 3 years, before they finally decided to ask for a replacement, of course changing the LCD was not going to be a quick job, but I asked if there was a VGA port inside and yes there was.
We are now using the temporary.... er ....permanent solution of an old Dell computer monitor (surprisingly not everything got trashed by the wasteful company I work for ), it's much brighter & easier to read than the original LCD panel, for the hot keys we labelled both the monitor & CNC panel keys with letters & numbers.

David

[ValvoStef]

Originally Posted by Station X

Not a CNC Machine Tool Manufacturer I've ever come across.

Was the machine made by "Philips" or by Phillips"?

Eaten up by Mori DMG. There were a few of them around in the 80s I seem to remember

[Station X]

Four posts moved to a new thread here:-

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=212341