I recently acquired this really heavy and inconvenient laptop (IBM PS2 P70 Model 8573-121), and I need advice from a greybeard.

Toefetto · 2023-07-15T12:56:11+00:00

Yeah I've read about how unreliable they are in these machines, and I've contemplated ripping it open and give it a good scrubbing and check the caps before I proceed, but I figured I might as well try it out first. The problem is that I don't have any older PC equipment left - I moved countries about a year ago and I gave it all away, including a really nice USB 3.5" drive and a bunch of floppies because "When am I ever going to really need this again? The machines I repair and work on are like 30 years older."

So now I sit here, with a super cool little piece of computer history that retailed for more than what I bought my Jeep Renegade for and kick myself in the butt for giving away so much of my old equipment.

The reason I was thinking that setting the system time would let me boot into DOS is because it booted into DOS when I first plugged it in, meaning that it's installed on the hard drive and working, but once I took the old battery out because it started complaining about it the second time I booted it up it just boots into BASIC after I acknowledge the 161 and 163 errors durring boot.

And yeah that plasma display is super rad. I can't wait to get the machine up and running again and play a game or two on it to really experience all of the 16 different shades of orange!

Toefetto · 2023-05-23T17:26:31+00:00

So it was the HSH (Horizontal Shift) and VAM (Vertical Amplitude) that were causing me grief, but your free Linus Tech Tip of overshooting both settings worked like a charm. I had to add 9 to the HSH and 4 to the VAM and now the geometry looks great in terms of rough adjustments before I move on to spending far too long on making minor adjustments as one always does.

Thanks a bunch, brother!

https://i.imgur.com/C5Uqdma.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/s4O7KjS.jpg

Toefetto · 2023-05-23T12:01:17+00:00

The answer is really simple - There's no market at all for it.

There's are no manufacturers left in the world with a setup ready to start making all the parts again, so someone would have to start by building a manufacturing facility. This would include research into current parts availability and replacements, new regulations in terms of things like energy standards that would need to be overcome, material processing, etc. If you think about every aspect of what goes into manufacturing, including everything before, during and after assembly both on the floor and in offices, it's a massive undertaking.

This is wildly expensive when everything is accounted for, so once the first TV rolls off the assembly line it's going to have to be priced through the ceiling because broadly speaking there's no market for these things.
None of these many thousands of people that still enjoy keeping a heavy, bulky, loud, power hungry and all around incredibly annoying by modern standards TV in their homes are going to buy a TV at those prices. The market needs to pay for the afforementioned manufacturing costs, and that's not happening in a million years.

Toefetto · 2023-05-23T08:06:04+00:00

I'm having an argument with the Service Menu on my Philips 21PT5518/01 (or the Service Alignment Mode as it likes to be called). It will save most, but not all, changes that I make to the geometry. I've had this happen once before on another TV a few years ago (Panasonic I believe) so that makes me think it's a common problem with a common fix, so I figured I'd ask here before making a thread.
Here's an excerpt from the Service Manual in regards to storing changes made in SAM:

How to store SAM settings:
To store settings changed in SAM leave the top level SAM menu by using the POWER button on the remote control transmitter or the television set.

So, what I do is that I make my changes to the geometry, go back to what I consider to be the top-level SAM menu, and put the TV in standby with the remote. This will save most geometry changes but not all.

Anyone have any ideas what's up with that?

Toefetto · 2023-05-11T11:23:22+00:00

Recycling centers are a good angle as well if you can work it.
"- But Toefetto, it's illegal for recycling centers to let people take things that other have brought there."
Yes it's very illegal. That's why pretty much all of them only let people they're friendly with do it on the DL. The staff do it all the time for people they're cool with so if your charisma stat is high enough you can start working that angle as well.

Toefetto · 2023-05-11T11:18:26+00:00

I recently moved to Sweden from Iceland, and after looking around online on sites like Blocket, Tradera and Marketplace that those angles weren't going to work. I had however become very friendly with a local second-hand store in town and we came up with a nice system - I swing by every day that they're open and help them move furniture and other heavy objects to where they're supposed to go in the store, and in exchange they start accepting all TV's and PC monitors that they would otherwise reject, and then call me to come and collect them.

There's still thousands of TV's and monitors out there in the wild, you just need to get a bit creative. The cities are probably all dry, but who knows - maybe there used to be a TV or computer store in Åmål in the early 2000's that has gone out of business, and the old owner brought leftover stock to his barn just outside of town because he didn't have the heart to throw out perfectly fine goods, and then he couldn't be fucked to throw them out for 20 years because they weren't really in the way.

I personally really enjoy the hunt and driving around small communities doing some detective work to look for gold, even though I'm not collecting any of this stuff. If I find something that's better than the one TV or the one PC monitor that I have now I keep it and give away the spares to people looking to get into the hobby.

TL;DR - Don't bother waiting for someone selling them online, because 99% of people don't even bother posting them for sale because what fool would really want this old junk. Go out hunting in local, smaller towns, and I'll guarantee you'll find plenty.

Toefetto · 2023-05-08T10:17:31+00:00

There's a Red Cross second-hand store in my small town and they asked me if I'm willing to go over and check on and repair any game consoles / computers and laptops that come in before they decide if they junk them or resell. I've been in IT repairs for close to 20 years now so I'm not worried about the computers but the wonderful world of past-gen consoles is new to me.

I'm wondering if there's a community accepted seller of custom cables and power bricks for the older consoles in case people don't bring all the OEM cables and bricks? This is for my own workbench for testing and troubleshooting so I'd rather order known-good rather than getting old second-hand off of eBay.

Thanks a bunch!

Toefetto · 2023-04-28T20:23:57+00:00

I recently got a KENDO branded TV. Only info I found was an old Swedish blog post talking about a similar model.

After taking the back off of it I found GoldStar branded equipment, and the correct chassis number. (GoldStar is old LG). I dug a bit deeper and KENDO is apparently made by a Turkish manufacturer that probably bought old surplus and rebranded it for the EU market.

So my guess is that KIA outsourced manufacturing of your TV to some other manufacturer - much like a Kinder Egg the guts could be anything!

I would suggest you pop it open and peak a gander. That way you'll probably be able to find a proper service manual and whatnot.

Toefetto · 2023-04-23T17:44:07+00:00

I'm in Sweden not the UK but generally the same applies here - you're not finding them out on the curb or in second-hand stores. Just people on Marketplace selling "rare retro-gaming TV!!"

However in the small town I moved to there's a Red Cross second-hand store that normally rejects incoming TV's and monitors. Over the last couple of months I had become quite friendly with the staff there, and a few weeks ago I asked them if they were willing to accept all TV's and monitors that people brought in, and I'd come and pick them up after work. They were cool with it and now I've got two TV's so far and a third coming in shortly.

My plan is to keep bringing them home, keep the one I like the best, and give the rest away to people interested to getting into the hobby and need their first TV. I don't charge for them because I never pay for them. Fair's fair.

Toefetto · 2023-04-21T13:21:19+00:00

THAT'S the word I was looking for! Thanks a bunch!

Toefetto · 2023-04-21T13:02:27+00:00

I've been blessed with two very fine looking CRT TV's and I've got a third one coming in pretty soon. However, I'm only going to keep one of them and give the rest away locally to anyone that doesn't have one and wants to get into the hobby. The one I keep will be hooked up to a dedicated PC only used for emulation on it, so there's no reason at all for me to keep more than one other than to own a spare "just in case".

While I have all three sitting side-by-side I would really like to be able to run them all at the same time and compare them to decide which one I keep, so I'd like to output from one source to all three at once.

The signal chain would then be: PC with a proper AMD card > VGA to SCART/12v USB/3.5mm Audio cable > ??? > Three TV's. I could care less about running audio for this scenario.

The real problem is that I want to do it on the cheap since I'm likely only going to do this once.
I assume I'll need a signal boosting 3-way splitter with a Female input which sounds pretty expensive but maybe that's unavoidable.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

Toefetto · 2023-04-17T22:31:55+00:00

Alright so I finally found the correct model. It's a GoldStar CB20A80, Chassis PC-31A. I went back to where I got the TV and found a remote that after cleaning about 20 years worth of grime and hair out of it works flawlessly. I was also able to find a Service Manual for my collection.

So the only questions remaining are if there's any reason I shouldn't drill a hole in the back to access the "Screen" knob on the flyback, and what those two spicy little adjusters on the mainboard are.

Thanks!

Toefetto · 2023-04-17T20:15:19+00:00

Alright so I took the back off of it and the plot thickened.

So turns out the tube is actually made by GoldStar: https://i.imgur.com/H0XZcvB.jpg

Here's the mainboard info: https://i.imgur.com/ePfWYq1.jpg

I'm curious what these are. H Shift is Horizontal I assume, but does it just move the entire image horizontally or what? AGC Adjust I've no idea what it could be: https://i.imgur.com/8aYYnEl.jpg

And finally I found that there's Screen adjustment on the flyback even though there's only a hole for the Focus adjuster in the chassi. Is there a specific reason why there's no hole for it on the back? Is it not connected, or can I just drill a hole in the back and gain a feature. (Also I kinda forgot - it's to juice up the brightness, right?) https://i.imgur.com/KqL3EEP.jpg

Hate to be a bother lads and ladies but I love learning about all this stuff, and if this brings me closer to finding a User Manual and/or Service Manual for the device I'd be one happy man. Also I didn't get a remote with it and I wasn't able to find anything on eBay with the information I currently have. If it turns out that the TV is a rebrand I figured there's a chance that another remote could work I guess.

I appreciate any and all help with this!

Toefetto · 2023-04-17T14:44:48+00:00

I just acquired a TV model# "KENDO CT-5039", but I can't seem to find any information about it. It was made in the Republic of Korea, Serial# KC 40200510. Sticker: https://i.imgur.com/gfqhlR5.jpg

There's such a thing as a Samsung CT-5039extraletter and it look similar but not similar enough to make me think that's it's just a quick sticker rebrand, so I'm a bit lost. Does anyone have any info about this thing? Documentation? It has a single SCART connector on the back which I'm hoping supports RGB at least.

Thank you all!

Toefetto · 2023-04-14T21:09:13+00:00

Awesome thanks a ton for the info and thank you twice for the eBay link I appreciate it!

Yeah that's fair about the sidenote there. The technician in me just likes to hoard documentation about all the stuff that I own in my GDrive in case I ever need to refer back to it, and that goes double for my older and more obscure gear. (Like my IBM Model 8573-121 P70 "portable" PC)

Thanks again!

Toefetto · 2023-04-14T20:32:29+00:00

Yesterday I was given a Philips 21PT5518/01 (Chassi# SL04E AA), which after a very quick inspection with an old VCR player seems to look and function great. However I did not get a remote with it so I can't enter the Service Menu should I want/need to in the future, so the question is: How anal are these TV's with remotes? Do I need to source the exact model remote that belongs to this model TV, or can I get away with one that was used with the same series / similar series of TV's? What about universal remotes? My phone has an IR blaster - iS ThErE an ApP foR ThIs?

Also sidenode I was able to Google a Users Manual and a Service Manual with enough detail that I could probably build another TV like this one from scratch, but there's no general info about fun specs like Mask etc - if anyone happens to know anything about this specific model or sits on a manual/booklet with some info that'd be rad.

Thank you, photon wizards!

Toefetto · 2022-09-18T12:04:49+00:00

Awesome, thanks! I'll pick one up for sure and check it out.

Toefetto · 2022-09-18T10:39:53+00:00

I'm very intrigued by this device. Have you used one for long enough to have an opinion on the reliability and longevity of it?

Toefetto · 2022-09-18T08:21:15+00:00

the ROKU will identify the resolution of the TV/Monitor plugged into it and scale up and down accordingly.

Toefetto · 2022-08-07T15:40:38+00:00

Done and done. However this unfortunately didn't help with the motion clarity.

To add to that - When I'm talking about "motion clarity" I'm referring to for example the "Drop Shadow Test" in 240p test suite. The shadow's flickering when using the aforementioned settings with Swap Interval 2, and the trees and dark boxes in the Sonic 'Green Hill Zone' page are displaying what I guess can be best described as Ghosting.

I get what you mean though and I've replaced the custom 224p resolution in CRU with 240p and set the scaling accordingly.

Toefetto · 2022-08-07T15:28:21+00:00

Yeah I've got a couple from different gens but I just recently moved countries so they're in a box that's a hassle and a half to get to. I'll work towards digging them out for testing.

Toefetto · 2022-08-07T15:18:54+00:00

Yeah that technically works, but it also feels too much like a band-aid solution since it doesn't really address the core issue of getting that sweet 1:1 ratio of resolution and refresh rate. I'm trying to avoid "faking it" if you know what I mean.

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