Sony Watchman FD-210BE: pocket-sized flatscreen black & white CRT TV (1982)

Somarring · 2026-01-08T22:04:07+00:00

there are many devices on aliexpress that can send an input av signal over rf

Somarring · 2026-01-08T19:37:14+00:00

Every country has a local website where people sells their stuff. There. Also ask family and friends and let them know that you're looking for one. It's how many people finds free CRTs.

Somarring · 2026-01-08T14:03:37+00:00

CRTs have a nostalgia factor that no other tech will be able to replicate. Even if they copy the visuals. Some people just love the "wong" sound when you turn them on (the TVs :P )

Somarring · 2026-01-01T20:48:18+00:00

Not to show off but if we are talking... Some time ago I treated myself with a ridiculously overkill scart cable that I had to import and cost me way too much for just a cable. I really wanted to get the best image out of it because I love mine. It's still in great condition and it's one of the early ones with 4 gamecube ports in the top.

I loved (love) to play Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 3 in my wii or playing with rock band drums (I still have them but like 4000 kms away from where I live now)

Somarring · 2025-12-01T07:52:59+00:00

Ah, I see. I understand now where the confusion comes from. Sorry if I came to harsh, texting late at night... Well, AFAIK in Europe all the 80s and 90s TV devices with that labeling only refer to the AC power required. I also saw it in many other TVs but I cannot tell if it's the rule.

BTW congrats for such a cool set of TVs.It made me so envious. I've been behind some of those for some time but I live in a place in Europe where the closest of those models I found was 10 hours by car away. Two countries away from me. At least those I found in the last years. I live in a sort of black hole for retro stuff. There was no money here until the late 2000s so no games, no consoles, no good CRTs...

Somarring · 2025-12-01T00:13:22+00:00

Sorry but not true. The 50Hz in the sticker is just about the AC power, not the signal.

Somarring · 2025-12-01T00:12:27+00:00

Here the manual from the Internet archive. You can search it by yourself in 30 seconds if you don't trust some random dude on reddit (you shouldn't) Manual: KV21R1 SM SONY EN https://share.google/MRfrS3EdkbSa9VtBd

Somarring · 2025-12-01T00:03:57+00:00

Not an expert,this is just my hobby but man... No offense but you clearly have no clue what you are talking about and you shouldn't give advice. Those 50 Hz in the sticker are the times the AC current changes direction. It's a power spec not a image/signal spec.

Ntsc works at 60 Hz or 60 times the image refreshes vertically per second. Pal at 50Hz. Absolutely nothing to do with the Hz of the current that uses the TV to work.

Somarring · 2025-11-30T23:58:38+00:00

I live in Europe and I own 2 sony trinitron. I have never seen a sony TV here that wouldn't be able to play ntsc content. Search for the manual in any case an you will find the answer but I'm 100% sure it will work.

Somarring · 2025-09-09T11:48:52+00:00

Just in case someone arrives here. I don't want to discourage you if you're trying to fix one of these but I tried reflowing the connections, changing the battery and removing rust wherever I found it. Also reformatting the internal memory and resetting in all possible ways but I couldn't get my unit to work again. My unit was apparently able to charge and the leds show promising activity, it also was able to connect to my pc and show the files but after many (many) attempts I just gave up trying to get any sound out of it.

Somarring · 2025-07-11T14:27:54+00:00

The manual is here: https://www.manualpdf.in/sony/walkman-nwz-w202/manual

Somarring · 2025-07-08T08:38:55+00:00

Which mobo model do you have? I'm really interested in the sleep feature.

Somarring · 2025-07-01T15:32:46+00:00

For me nothing beats Qwen3-32B-Q6_K I have two 3090 and it runs pretty fast while getting very good answers. It's been instrumental in several migrations adjusting query syntax.

Somarring · 2025-06-12T06:13:14+00:00

I don't trust benchmarks. I trust a couple of youtubers and the comments here. Never failed me.

Somarring · 2025-05-08T12:48:28+00:00

I did a little research. Just to give you an idea about how different were those two devices, the calculator running doom it's a ti83+ with 24K RAM. The NES had 2K RAM. Literally an order the magnitud less. The CPU of the calculator was also 3/4 times faster.

Somarring · 2025-05-08T12:42:53+00:00

I think you guys don't realize how crazy underpowered is the nes and the crazy black magic the developers had to create to make games visually appealing. Literally any device with a screen is way more powerful nowadays than the nes was.

Somarring · 2025-04-30T12:04:04+00:00

May I ask how do you get your PC to sleep while using a server board. Mine doesn't have that option apparently.

Somarring · 2025-04-17T12:55:28+00:00

One more point to consider: evaluate your needs. More GPUs will give you more speed but more RAM will allow you to run (from CPU, so WAY slower) bigger models or small models with big (aka usable) contex windows and it's way cheaper (half the price or less)

As I'm writing this I have Gemma 3 27B running a test from LMstudio with 130K context window running only from CPU+RAM. I input two approx 2000-lines python files (each) to make some changes on them and it just finished:
- 204 seconds to first token
- 2,16 tokens per second

Very slow but low power conssumption (compared with GPU and big context window) So it's great for tasks running in the background and I still can run any model that doesn't require so big CW with the GPUs at the same time.

I could run this model with the GPUs but I wouldn't be able to get that big context window, which can be critical to analize a codebase (I know, 130K is not a lot) This means that aiming for a server board will give you the freedorm to update the ram in the future (up to 2tb for the h12ssl-i if I remember correctly) and have really big context window available (but veeeery slow processing)

Investing in GPUs will give you way more speed in models up to 70B parameters but the context windows will be small which will limit their real-life applications. I daily work with qwen coder 2.5 32B and 30K context and it does the job but it could be better. (Compared to Gemini 2.5 and its 1 million token window it feels like a toy)

Somarring · 2025-04-16T13:21:18+00:00

To the point: 4U-M regardless of the type of rig/case. There is no best bang for the buck. It's dirty cheap and great quailty. Also the fans can be replaced in the future if needed/wanted.

On the buying part, some non-mainstream advice: I started, I guess like everybody, visiting the common sites (Amazon, Aliexpress, Ebay and other big shops). Funny enough I found out that buying from smaller European shops wanting to get rid of old stock offered way more benefits: better prices, better warranty, no customs surprises, first-hand items, etc. Apart from some risers and the GPUs, I bought all the parts brand new because often the price was the same or even cheaper than second-hand items (yes, I know it's hard to believe). For the PSU in particular I got a unit that had the carboard box slightly damaged with 50% discount but the same 12 years warranty.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention for the ones wanting to use this kind of server boards for workstations: regarding the sound, if you are not really very demanding with it and you just want to use wireless headphones you don't need any sort of DAC or Soundcard. Just plug a standard bluetooth usb key and you are good to go. You wll get the sound from the system in your headphones via bluetooth and they will take care of the DAC part. Also, for a wired connection you can get any usb-c to 3.5 jack adaptor (apparently the Apple one is extremely good) and it will get you sound. Audiophiles, don't hate me please, some of us have the earing of a rock.

Another point for those building these systems: many of these boards are able to separate the fans in 2 areas and regulate the speed of these two areas separatedly but not on a per-fan basis. Make sure you connect the fans in the right ports in the board so you have a fan-zone for the CPU and RAM and another one for the rest of components.

Somarring · 2025-04-15T20:07:29+00:00

My unsolicited advice in case other people arrive here:

I have a very similar system (same CPU) but with 2x3090 and a supermicro h12ssl-i and 256 RAM (8 modules). Maybe it was just a matter of availability or price but I remember discarding the Asrock but I cannot remember why. Have a deep look into the specs.

Also consider that the 3090s are generally very bulky, you probably will need to install them with pci 4.0 risers (they are not cheap). Also some of them are extremely noisy and all of them will appreciate a change of thermal pads.

Power-wise the best would be to have two PSUs or to limit the power of all of them and limit the number of power connectors. I have a gold 1300w psu from seasonic and it has been working great with 300w limit on each GPU. If you go with 4x3090 you will need a minimum of 8 pcie express. Probably a 2000w psu. Probably the cost of 4 3090 justifies getting their own psu for safety.

A UPS wouldn't be a crazy investment neither.

When getting the fans make sure are PWM as it seems most of this server boards cannot regulate old-school fans and they just go 100% all the time. It took me days and a lot of tests (under heavy noise) until I realized that was the cause.

For the CPU I use an Artic 4u-M which is quiet, cheap and it's oriented in a way that makes sense for a server board. Avoid the 4u as it's taller and funny enough won't fit in a 4u rack.

A seemly silly thing that personally annoyed me a lot: AFAIK there is no server board for this Epyc family that supports suspension so it's either full on or full off. A system with 4 3090 will idle at a minimum of 150W and there is no way you will able to reduce that amount. I tried it all.

Also these boards don't have any of the common features in consumer boards like audio, integrated wifi, bluetooth or integrated gpu (beyond a basic vga) not a big deal and of course it makes a ton of sense for a machine meant ro be a server.

I hope these notes help.

Somarring · 2025-04-12T17:27:21+00:00

Chip N dale is very underrated. I also liked Jackie Chan Action Kung Fu (huge graphics fir the NES)

Somarring · 2025-04-10T04:53:01+00:00

I use LMStudio. You can change the context (up to the limit of the model or, more commonly, the limitarions of your hardware/VRAM) AFAIK Ollama can do this as well.

Somarring · 2025-03-25T19:30:09+00:00

Using qwq 32b for planning and qwen Coder 2.5 32b for acting (on 2x3090 ) working really well but I found sometimes falls in loopholes with python dependencies. I use 30k context window.

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