Does anyone know/have a 9-inch CRT monitor that supports Apple II color graphics and 80-column text? I have a 9-inch color monitor, but it does not support 80-col text. I also have a Color Monitor IIe that works great - color graphics and 80-col text, but it is a 12 or 13 inch display. I like the old-school look of having the monitor and 2 Disk II drives on top of the Apple II case and need 80-col support. I know I could use an LCD screen, but it does not provide the old-school system look.
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Composite color monitor? Crt? Youd be hard pressed to find one smaller than 12 inches.
My advice get a small 9 inch color crt tv with composite inputs. I bought a 9 inch rca color tv/vcr combo for $15.00 at a tag sale. It does composite and it has a coaxial input so i use it on vintage hardware that is rf only.
I think that you missed the 80 column text requirement. A television will not have the mask needed to allow crisp 80c text.
That is not a composite CRT!!! that is the difference! That is an LED or LCD display...?!?!?
He wants something appropriate for the era.
I will try to find a list of display models that meet this criteria, as this is also something that I want, although I want even smaller displays for modding an Apple II into an SX64, I would not kicj an 8 to 9 inch colour 80 col CRT out of bed, by any means.
There were some oddball studio monitors that fit this criteria, but I need to find their model numbers. I ordered a PELCO PMC9 to see if it can do 80c. and when it arrives in two to four weeks, I will respond.
Sorry, I misread the post.
Here is a general rundown of the Pelco. There are other models in this series that are all nine inch studio displays. The PMC901 is similar, but IDK if it auto-detects PAL/NTSC, while the 9A does. There is a ten-inch version, the PMC10A, that is also a good display. Note that the PMC part of the model number decodes as Pelco Monitor Colour. Monochrome versions have PMM* as their model, where the second M is for Monochrome.
Thus you have PM ( M | C ) ( Numeric Size ) ( Submodel )
Again, I will report on how the 80 column text looks from a //e, and perhaps also on a standard Videx. While these do not have a monochrome button, they should allow tuning out colour fringes if you want, and if you want to go one step further., you could put a switch on the colour circuit inside the ][.
What nine inch monitor do you have at present?
Right now, my 9-inch color monitor is a PANSONIC BT-S900Y 9" COLOR VIDEO MONITOR. My B&W monitor I use for 80-col text is a Sanyo VM-4509.
I sadly do not see any spec sheet on a quick search, so IDK the resolution and pitch, nor the capabilities of the Panasonic BT series, other than that it is 8.5 inches and had SVideo and BNC in. I am not sure if this was made for broadcasting or live feed, or something else.
Try a Sony Trinitron. You are probably lookng something from an TV station or industrial application. If memory serves they made some 9" pnes. Probably more like 1983 and beyond, not pre 1980 as I recall. The 80 column text wont be perfect because of the way the color is generated on an Apple, but it will be about as good as you are going to get and way better than any TV.
I was able to find a spec sheet on my Panasonic 9-inch color monitor
https://videoindex.ru/pdf/10910.pdf
It has composite RCA and S-Video inputs and Horizontal Resolution of more than 300 TV lines. I know this is not good enough for 80-col text. A quick search on eBay for a 9-inch Sony Trinitron monitor found this model: Sony PVM-8022Q. Looks nice and appears to have been built in 2000. I could not find a spec sheet on this monitor. Thanks for everyone's input. For now, I will continue to switch between using my Sanyo WM-4509 and Apple Color Monitor IIe when using my Apple II Plus.
You will have to get a professional PVM Sony or similar, any professional monitor (broadcast quality) should work. The downside is that they get pretty expensive.
The Pelco colour monitor was not very legible. The dot pitch of its colour mask (*I did not use a mag glass to see if this uses an aperture grille, but I suspect that it does not, simply from the shape of the characters) was clearly not fine-enough to handle 80-c.t..
I suppose if I recover, I might look into a smaller Trinitron. I do have some very small Trinitron tubes, but they are televisions, so they also won't be designed for that, and I would need to make a custom analogue board for them to convert them to be used w/o the tuner. Keep in mind that broadcast colour monitors are designed for analogue video sources for television, and while the image is exceptionally good, the issue with 80-c.t. is that it needs a very fine pitch on the colour (shadow) mask, or a very fine aperture grille (better).
Because monochrome displays do not use this mask, the full electron beam will hit phosphours, with no issue, and you will have nice crisp text. Colour monitors need to be designed with text in mind, or they will suffer from poor readability.
A dead IIc 9" monitor with an LCD conversion?
2nd generation original iPad screens work great for this (and are a near-perfect fit in the case) with aftermarket screen controllers from eBay, but you cna also buy bare 9" LCD panels already included with controllers that have VGA, RCA (A/V), HDMI and various permutations of the previous.
Best of both worlds, I'd say...
Hmm... I have never seen a dead Monitor //c. :D
It is one of the most reliable monochrome CRTs ever made.
Again though, you are missing the OP's point. he wants a studip 9-inch display so that it looks like the standard Apple ][ photo image, but with a colour display that has legible 80.c.t. I do not have a 9 inch studio Triniton. If I survive a while yet and recoup some of my recent expenses, I may buy one and try that, too.
I was finally able to find a small color monitor that supports 80-column text. The Sony PVM-8221 has a small 8-inch diameter screen, but has more than 400 lines of resolution. That resolution supports 80-col text. The screen is only 8 inch diameter and is noticeably smaller than the Sanyo VM-4509 9-inch screen size, but the color on this Sony is excellent. The Sony monitor case size is small and can sit side-by-side to my 2 Disk IIs on top of my Apple II Plus.
The Monitor //c wasn't really that reliable. I had one go bad on me, and I knew a lot of people who had the same problem. They'd lose one of the caps and then either you'd get no picture or an unstable picture that would wobble horizontally.
There are two variants I know of with the IIc monitor. One made by hitachi and one by samsung. The Hitachi model seems to be more common and they seem to be more problematic. There is one electrolytic Cap on the schematics that is labeled wrong and it tends to get hotter than the samsung model drying out the caps. I have alot of success recapping both models and having them run well. They are really only slightly less reliable than a monitor II (but nowhere near as reliable as the Monitor /// jugernaut.. those things just dont ever break it seems).
I'm pretty sure the one I had was made by Hitachi.
And the Monitor /// is indeed a tank. I have one that has been through hell and still works fine.
Somebody gave me a monitor /// they fished out of the long time flooded basement of an abandoned dilapidated house. They let it dry in the sun and brought it to me,. The plastics were all in tact but rust poured out like sand! After opening it the entire PCB rusted away to nothing.. All that was left was some copper and fiberglass. The Tube was in tact and not broken. The implosion band was badly rusted. I carefully used a dremel to grind off rust from the implosion band unti it was all bare metal again. I used the tube in another monitor III that had a broken tube. And wouldnt you know, it fired up and look so bright and vibrant as if it never really saw much use! So all in all I got a good plastic chassis and a CRT picture tube out of the deal.
I think a Sony PVM-8044Q or PVM-8045Q may be suitable, but I haven't actually tried them yet. At that small a CRT size, the phosphor dot or stripe pitch is an issue. The PVM-8044Q and PVM-8045Q were specifically designed with very fine pitch Trinitron CRTs and described as high-resolution monitors (450 lines), vs. the standard resolution PVM-8040/8041Q/8042Q (250 lines).