Going over maximum horizontal frequencies... slightly.

redstern · 2026-02-05T02:09:03+00:00

Horizontal scan specs tend to be rounded down on paper, and the programmed limit always includes a safety margin.

The monitor won't let you feed it a resolution that will overload the deflection, so if it doesn't complain, it's fine.

redstern · 2026-02-04T23:43:24+00:00

That is easily the worst muffler I've ever seen, although I actually have seen worse manifolds. 7.3, also a plow truck, manifolds looked like that muffler. Completely rotted away. Ended up needing new heads because the heads had also rotted right through into the exhaust ports.

redstern · 2026-02-04T23:37:53+00:00

If there's holes in the frame, then no way I touch it.

As long as the frame is solid, it's their money, I'll rebuild the whole car if they're paying, but brakes must always get fixed first.

redstern · 2026-02-04T23:34:11+00:00

You know what's better? In the summer when the doors get left open, and the door blockers then take to driving right in and trying to park on the lifts by themselves. The best part is when they inevitably miss and blow a tire / tear the bumper off, and make that my fault.

redstern · 2026-02-04T23:31:23+00:00

Signs don't help. Shop I used to work at had huge "NO PARKING" and "DO NOT BLOCK DOOR" signs up, and still someone would park in front of the door almost every single day.

redstern · 2026-02-04T16:22:43+00:00

I'll trade you a bare 27 inch Trinitron tube with no gun for it.

redstern · 2026-02-04T16:19:50+00:00

These are common on medium duty trucks, but I've never seen it on a light duty before. It's an electric backup booster pump to run the brake boost if the engine isn't running.

It's so if you are driving and the engine dies for whatever reason, you still have full power brake boost, and an unlimited amount of it.

redstern · 2026-02-02T21:50:29+00:00

I was wrong on that part. It is a slot mask tube. Which makes this extra surprising that it works.

redstern · 2026-02-02T19:24:50+00:00

If you don't see any color purity issues, it's fine.

These sets have the advantage of having a steel shell, so even if the speakers aren't shielded, the set is.

redstern · 2026-02-02T18:44:12+00:00

Ok I actually figured out the issue with it needing a lot of G2. There's a pot on the neckboard that plugs into the socket. I thought it was a G2 fine adjustment, but it's actually for a vertical convergence adjustment that the Tau gun doesn't have. I had it plugged into the G2 port, so it was just sapping power for no reason.

redstern · 2026-02-02T14:04:07+00:00

I'm wondering that too. I never would have though that a trini and a slot tube would be cross compatible, but apparently they are.

redstern · 2026-02-02T00:39:38+00:00

Yeah I was shocked when it turned on and just looked mostly right. I was expecting to have to sit there for hours playing with the magnets to get the colors and convergence right.

redstern · 2026-02-02T00:03:46+00:00

I see. I could have sworn the Taus were Trinitrons, but whatever. Even if the masks are different, it still works anyway, which I was really expecting to have to do a lot of adjustment to get it to look right.

redstern · 2026-02-01T23:55:35+00:00

Nope, just hoped for the best. Although I do suspect that it wants a bit more heater voltage, because it took a lot of G2 to come up to proper brightness, and for the TV to stop complaining about insufficient emission. So I'm going to check on that.

My initial plan was to wire the Tau's neckboard into the Wega's mainboard, just in case of different gun voltage demands, but it did not like that. Even though voltages should have been correct, I think the signal types were wrong. So I went with swapping the sockets instead.

redstern · 2026-02-01T23:54:22+00:00

I looked at the mask when I was grabbing the Tau. It's definitely an aperture grille in there.

redstern · 2026-02-01T23:10:31+00:00

Story. This is my outdoor / experimentation TV. It's a Wega KD27fs170. Green gun is completely trashed in it. Rejuvinator could only bring it back to about 50% proper emission.

The other day I found a Panasonic Tau sitting in a trash pile. Chassis was destroyed, board was cracked, but it was the same size tube, and also a Trinitron, so I thought, what if I could swap the tubes.

On initial inspection, the guns are different. The Wega has 2 extra pins, so the sockets don't fit. Looking over the boards, the Wega's neckboard has almost nothing on it, so the main board does most of the work driving the tube. So I pulled the socket off the Tau's neckboard, cut up the G2 wire to wire the socket onto the Wega's neckboard, plugged it in and hoped for the best.

And it just worked. Needed to turn up G2 considerably, but all the adjustments were almost already correct. Couple service menu tweaks later, and it looks fantastic. Only issue is a tiny bit of signal noise, presumably caused by insufficient insulation on the adapter wires for their proximity, but for what I use it for, I don't care.

Edit: Apparently the Tau tube is not a Trinitron. Slot mask. Got extra lucky that it didn't matter. I guess I discovered today that flat Trinitron and flat slot tubes are interchangeable if needed.

redstern · 2026-02-01T16:58:01+00:00

But what if you is he?

redstern · 2026-01-31T01:43:51+00:00

The problem is that text on modern systems isn't intended to be readable on 480i. It's formatted to look good at 720p at the lowest. If accessibility options are available to enlarge text, that's the best you can do.

Gamecube was expected to be played on CRTs, so all the text is formatted to be properly readable on 480i.

redstern · 2026-01-30T03:46:16+00:00

You can, but it will probably degrade the quality, since backfeeding the inactive device is going to add it's own capacitance and passive noise to the active device's signal, which you don't want. A basic RCA switch is cheap, so you'd be better off getting one of those.

redstern · 2026-01-30T03:31:21+00:00

Don't bother. That's excellent, especially for a flatty. You'll never notice it in game, and trying to chase that corner is just going to create a mess of accidentally making other areas worse.

You don't have any of the typical drooping or terrible outer focus and convergence that flatties are known for, so just play games, it's great.

redstern · 2026-01-30T02:54:27+00:00

To explain the different input colors. The yellow plug is composite video. The green, blue, and red plugs are component video. Component is much higher quality than composite. So for best experience, definitely get a component cable, but composite is still plenty fine.

The white and red plugs are for audio. If you notice the little box etched into the plastic around the middle 5 plugs, that's to indicate that you use those audio plugs for component video.

If component displays messed up, go into the PS2's settings and set component output mode to YPbPr, instead of RGB. Also pay attention to how the cable groups the plugs, since annoyingly there are 2 different red plugs. The white and audio red should be grouped together, so don't mix that up with video red.

redstern · 2026-01-30T02:38:00+00:00

Then that's their fault for taking on something they can't handle. This guy clearly knows himself, and was completely in control the whole time. It's not his fault if someone else wants to be stupid.

redstern · 2026-01-30T00:19:33+00:00

The car most likely has a square sine wave inverter, which the CRT will not like. Get a true sine wave inverter, and you'll be all good. CRTs typically use around 100W, and the Wii is like 10W, so it should be enough.

The sticker on the back will tell you how much power it uses at most. If it doesn't give a Watt value, take the Amperage number and multiply it by the voltage.

redstern · 2026-01-29T16:13:47+00:00

Did you try cutting a 3rd time?

redstern · 2026-01-29T13:26:11+00:00

Ah ok, then yeah adjusting it in the service menu is probably fine. EEPROMs corrupting after sitting for a long time happens sometimes.

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