The worst VGA monitor ever made - Tandy VGM-225
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- Опубліковано 14 вер 2022
- The monitor that was so bad, it may have led to Tandy's downfall as a computer manufacturer. Built for Tandy by Samsung, the VGM-225 (and almost identical VGM-220) has a very grainy image due to the coarse 0.52 mm dot pitch of its picture tube. It's OK for most games, but not for reading fine text.
Correction: The Secret of Monkey Island was a Lucasfilm game, not a Sierra game.
The VGA240 utility for switching the VGA refresh rate from 70 Hz to 60 Hz:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?...
Modern Classic's video about Tandy 1000 computers:
• The Tandy 1000 - a for...
TJBChris's video about the Tandy 1000RLX:
• Tandy 1000 RLX/HD: Che...
1987 Tandy 1000TX commercial:
• Radio Shack - Tandy 10...
1991 Tandy 1000RL & RLX commercial:
• Radio Shack - Tandy 10...
1991 Tandy computers commercial:
• Radio Shack Tandy Comp...
#crt #retrogaming #septandy - Наука та технологія
This is just like the modern projector market today! There are so many cheap projectors that claim to be 1080p because they can accept a 1080p signal, but are in reality somewhere between 160p to 960p depending on how cheap and crappy it is.
Same with dashcams that claim 1080 but it's just some interpolated carbage.
How true, how true. Walmart had an RCA projector for like $50.
I was curious so I bought one and it wasn't bad but it wasn't good either and it was nowhere near HD resolution.
Even if a cheap projector has an actual 1080p chip it will still look bad because they use cheap plastic lenses.
A genuinely good 1080p projector with a precision glass lens will produce significantly better detail than a cheap 4k one.
Never judge a projector based on specs.
I worked for RS for almost 6 years, ending my career as a store manager in Pacific Beach, California. It was during the high point in computer sales. I could see the competition building & our quality dropping, so I went to seek my fortune in other ways. I, like you loved Tandy products. But by the 1990's there was little left to love. Except for the Sensation. To little to late as the saying goes. You definitely called this product correctly. Good job!
Tandy was really amazing during their high point. In a lot of small towns, Radio Shack was the only computer store. I remember saving up for a Sensation, but I ended up with a Compaq Presario by the time I had enough money saved.
Did a little googling, and the Sensation was way overpriced, given what that $2200 got you. Maybe $1,000.
By 1995 I was running a 486dx2-66 with 8Mb ram homebuilt that I spent a lot less than $2200 building.
My love of Tandy computers runs deep. Here is just some of my Tandy Computers. ua-cam.com/video/MIWmac6ttjE/v-deo.html
By the 1990s, RS started going from being an electronic enthusiast's store to a cell phone store. Downhill from there. Really sad.
@@Caseytify It's difficult to get the timing right when you research the Sensation. Actually RS tried to piggyback off the success from the Sensation 1, by making 2 upgraded versions. By that time RS was betrayed by Microsoft. And the end was near. It's a complicated story. Maybe I will do a video on just what happened. But have no doubt when the Sensation 1 came out there was nothing else like it. RS had invented something they thought they could control. The Sensation was the first ever Muti Media computer & sold out every unit made in less then 3 months.
Another fun Tandy 1000 RLX fact! The 40MB hard drive it came with is the Seagate ST351A/X - the last stepper motor hard drive ever made, and the largest 8-bit IDE drive ever made. To save cost, the drive also stored its internal BIOS on the platters themselves, and setting the jumpers wrong wipes the BIOS out, bricking the drive permanently. Working ones can fetch a pretty penny online (lots of dead ones available, though).
Luckily I bought a few of them before their value started to skyrocket.
Oh. sounds like a challange for someone to make a restore device lol.
Does anyone remember calling an 800 number to have dip switches faxed to you? 😊
@@Yourthoughtsplease Yes, the Tandy FaxBack service.
I hated this limitation. I filled up the 40MB drive quickly, and found I could not upgrade.
The limitation had to do with the Tandy 1000 RLX being what I called a "fake AT". Prior to the AT, PC and XT motherboards did not support hard drives without an add-on controller, which provided its own BIOS. IDE drives did not require a BIOS, as AT computers had IDE support in the BIOS on their MBs.
The RLX 1000 did not have BIOS support for IDE drives. But Seagate made two IDE drives with onboard BIOS, a 20 MB version and a 40 MB version. That was something else that made these computers and hard drives unique.
Your comments at around 15:00 were *exactly* my experience as a kid in the 90s: I grew up *hating* Tandy computers. Every time I tried to use one -- even just at Radio Shack -- I would get a headache, super quickly. 30 years later, I realized that it wasn't the computers at fault, and was just Tandy being cheap with their monitors.
With the argument being - they were cheap. For many people it was the choice between no computer, and a computer that gives you headaches.
I personally had an Amiga without a flicker fixer 😂
@@graealex Strip Poker on the Amiga running interlaced HAM mode images.. happy days xD
@@QuadTubeChannel Exactly. Internet porn in the early days. Flickering, pixelated and not revealing much...
It's really not Tandy being cheap, it's people being cheap. They liked Tandy machines because they were cheap. That cheapness came at a cost. That cost was Tandy computers were junk and they were non-standard.
The positives that you see with Tandy machines is because the machines were close to 10 years newer than a 5150. It's easy to forget that by the time the T1000s were selling really really well, the PC was already years old. They were generally lower speced than any other PC on the market other than other 5150 clones.
@@graealex Not if you knew where to look. You can download thousands upon thousands of scanned images on BBSs. That's why gif got so popular.
My mother's PC featured a 0.51 dot pitch. It was UNWATCHABLE! IIRC, I tweaked the focus just to blur those garishly sharp lines!
I collect old pcs from before i was born (im 14) mines features a 0.56 dot pitch i could actually see pretty well
@@supervisor360 large dot pitch looks worse the smaller monitor you have. just like 720p on a phone is much clearer than 1080p on a wall-sized tv
Interesting how the tables have turned, displays back then couldn't keep up with video cards... modern video cards are now borderline melting themselves to keep up with modern displays.
In 1982 video cards could only do bi-color on the best CRTs. And for TV CRTs they did deliver color at VHS resolution, not what the mask did allow.
You reminded me about soviet monitors. Especially about their CRTs. They got much sharper picture than TV's CRTs. So those guys who got connections to production were replacing such CRTs in TVs to get better picture. I did it as well)
Clever!
Back in the day I used a Commodore RGB display as my TV by hooking it up to my VCR and using that as the tuner. Much better image quality than the TV I had at the time.
@@Deinonuchus Newer dealed with Commodore monitors. But I guess their CRTs were much similar to soviet ones from Электроника МС6106 and Электроника ВТЦ-202. They used 32ЛКД-2Ц tube with better resolution ability. Besides sharper image they got post-glowing. So it reduces flicking effect. I still use them for my retro projects and sometimes put video from VGA in 16 kHz mode. And picture is much different from regular CRTs. Eyes are not getting tired of it. I started describing that project on one of my UA-cam channels. It is in Russian but one day I will translate it and upload to my channel.
@@fixitalex привет, а можно ссылку на канал?)
My first tv as a kid was a vcr connected to a RGB display my parents used for a Atari computer
I actually love this look on the low-res games -- I've always enjoyed the way a CRT can turn dithered graphics into a color cascade. But yeah, completely agree on the text. Thank you also for explaining dot pitch in a way that really explains why some CRT televisions also look horrible for certain use cases!
I most certainly remember flipping through PC catalogs back in the day, and them listing the various monitors they had available, along with their dot pitch. I learned early on about dot pitch and how a smaller dot pitch yielded a much higher quality image.
My experience was with the IBM PS/2 line of monitors, I had an 8512 which had a .41 dot pitch, but was a 14" monitor. I also had an 8513, and while that was a smaller monitor at only 12", it had a .28 dot pitch. Much higher quality image. Nevertheless, I ran the 8512 for years, most notably connected to an IBM PC/AT 8MHz model with VGA graphics. And my findings were exactly the same as yours, horrible for Windows and most things, but acceptable for DOS games, which I spent a lot of time playing back then.
Dot pitch really made a difference for more demanding stuff at higher resolutions. Even as time marched on and I started working on PCs, I could tell who knew what they were buying based on their monitor. I also can't even tell you how many people were running their Super VGA monitors at a low resolution at only 60Hz, usually with their monitor on the tilt/swivel stand pointing as high up as it could. I set a few of those people straight and they would often comment when they saw me again how much better their monitor was since I "fixed" it.
The 8513 was a very nice little monitor, I was MORE than willing to tolerate the 12" size!
I worked for the advertising company that managed RS/Tandy promos for TV and print. We dropped them because of dwindling quality and bad management on their part. But I was always a fan of RS but so disappointed with the way things ended. The downfall was not the blame of the stores but in upper management being so stubborn to keep up with the times. I never used Tandy computers, but respect the legacy. yada yada yada great video - in fact, each one you make is so thoughtful and meticulous. thank you so much. cheers
One big blunder Radio Shack did was when they changed suppliers for their plastic electronics project boxes. The new boxes had new dimensions, which didn't fit any of their prototyping PCBs, the designs for which hadn't been changed since the 60's and 70's. The screw post positions didn't match and for the boxes that had slots to put a board in sideways, the boards were too long or too short to fit across the boxes.
It always surprises me that even today, you can spend a small fortune on a PC and the manufacturer will spend the minimum they can on the Mouse, Keyboard and Monitor. The three parts of the computer you will be dealing with most. Thankfully, I built my own PC, and so do have an excellent keyboard and trackball (don't really have room for a mouse), a fairly decent 4k monitor.
Couldn't agree more, I spent four hundred bucks on my keyboard and mouse. Seems like overkill but when you use them for 8+ hours a day it really pays for itself. Also one more thing no one considers enough: Your chair! Bad posture makes things uncomfortable fast, so having a nice seat can be a huge upgrade for your PC enjoyability. Office chairs can get pricey for fancy stuff but budget ones are usually pretty solid too
@@GalileoAV $400 isn't overkill, it's insane.
Economies of scale. When you're making 200,000 units, even a $1 savings adds up.
@@Caseytify what?😂 if you use a ice ergonomic keyboard like the ergodox-ez, the 400 bucks are just enough to get the board, the mouse is 3xtra. And if you have 2 workplaces (home/office) like me you need two sets, st least if you want the same comfort and typing experience. And we aren’t getting into expensive keyboards here…
I use an IBM model M keyboard I picked up for a dollar at a yard sale, a wireless Logitech gaming mouse I bought used for $3 (also at a yard sale), a 34" Dell 4k monitor I picked up an estate sale for $50, and a leather office chair I picked up for free by the trash at my apartment building.
I can relate to this, we used a CRT display until as late as 2011 (I think?) and for some reason I thought it was cool to run it at high resolutions, which can make pretty much any monitor look like this. After a while you get pretty good at making out the text, but it was far from ideal. Pretty nostalgic though, really makes me appreciate the 1080p and 4k displays in modern devices. Funny thing is, people are trying to emulate this look on modern screens these days.
Indeed, I was still using a decent-sized CRT monitor until 2009. You _could_ run it at higher resolutions, but I never ran it higher than 1024x768. Much above that, things got too small or too grainy.
My upper secondary school in Sweden had CRT monitors until 2015...I had constant headaches.
I've been using a 19" AOC monitor running at 1600x1200@75Hz until early 2013 and I always thought it looked so much better than LCDs. The image was very clear and the blacks were truly black.
I _think_ it used a flat Diamondtron (or comparable) with very small dot pitch. I wish I didn't give it away.
@@TommyAgramonSeth Yeah, that's how it goes unfortunately! Reminds me of when I had amassed quite the Macintosh collection, but I had to get rid of it. Nowadays, these computers go for quite a bit of money and you can't just go out and buy one for the giggles.
many lcd's make me miss my old crt's though as well.. but they where high end monitors not basic level, let alone trash tier like this and many others were..
i had one that would do 2560x1600@87hz and, text was as sharp as my current 1440p if not a bit better, but, again high end monitors i got 2nd hand, that were genuinely amazing... but its dot pitch was like .19 or lower.. i do agree about lower end crt's though.. some lcd's i have had given to me were on part, running well above the panels native res and poorly aligned with the pixel grid to boot... ugg.. when your eyes start to hurt from trying to read the screen.. thats never good..
I feel like this is one of your best videos, and I know you have made quite a few. Such an interesting part of history - selecting a new monitor and zeroing in on the dot pitch. It was price vs. dot pitch after selecting screen size once upgrades started for me. My first VGA monitor was a Cordata - likely cheap with terrible specs as I just wanted VGA at the time. I think I may have stashed it in my parents attic a few decades back - it is probably still there. I moved to ViewSonic monitors in 1992 and always tried to keep new stuff at or below .28.
Seriously - great job. Thank you for your hard work putting this together and taking the time to dial-in your camera on that CRT.
Back in the early-90s when my Mom was a manager for a retail store, we had a Tandy computer at home that she used to type up reports and accounting sheets. I loved it, because a friend of my Dad's installed a bunch of arcade games from the 80s onto it. It's how I got really good at Space Invaders and Pac-Man when I was a kid...so good that I made money off of it, taking bets at the local community center that still had those arcade games in the room next to the bowling alley.
Wow, that is remarkable. They must have had a surplus of tubes designed for CGA monitors, or perhaps television sets. That's like that 5" Radio Shack Portavision I used to have, that had 80 "pixels" going across. Nauseating to look at up close. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't find this monitor kind of endearing in a world of Trinitrons and ViewSonics. Does it accept any SVGA resolutions?
For what it's worth, while the phosphor dots on a CRT can be equated to pixels for calculating the effective horizontal resolution, it can't for vertical resolution, as it's actually possible for just a portion of each dot to be illuminated. They would actually be solid vertical lines (and they are on a Trinitron), if it weren't for the shadow mask getting in the way. So it may be limited to rendering 484 pixels horizontally, but it's a much higher number vertically, limited by the quality of the signal and monitor electronics.
It only supports standard VGA resolutions up to 640x480 at 60 Hz, or 720x400 at 70 Hz.
My first thought was "its a TV tube". Not surplus but cheap because they were being made by the million.
I would say horizontal resolution could still take advantage of partial dots, but not as much as the vertical. Today we might call it subpixel rendering and it's fairly similar to a Bayer filter in cameras. A better way to put this is that the effective resolution for luminance is greater than that of chrominance.
@@eDoc2020 I had the same thought, it definitely does take advantage of it partially but it doesn’t look great, it’s like a semi-transparent screen door is covering the image in a foggy room, it kinda blooms out and fills the gaps but it’s not good looking.
@@MrDuncl Exactly my thoughts. TV over aerial antenna and cable had around 300-350 lines (the "pixels" (there are no pixels on an analog medium) VWestlife counted horizontally). VHS tapes had 220-240. 170 in extended play. Laserdisc had 350-400.
Vertically you'll always get all the lines sharp as the electron beam keeps it correctly at the correct "height" while sweeping the line of picture and only that part of the phosphor glows up
I remember Tandys looking bad at Radioshack back in the day and guessed it to be inferior PC specs. If it was these monitors then they killed Tandy sales.
My memory of radio shack was, it was ALL cheap junk. If something did turn out to be good, you got lucky. Some of that cheap junk was ridiculously overpriced. Always something lacking too. In spite of that, I think the cell phones took over their stores. You couldn't get assistance with really anything else in the store. You could wait forever.
@@pgtmr2713 The radio equipment was pretty top-notch(scanners, AM/FM, CB).
I remember the junk being a RNG of kinda-useful and entertaining -this was before Amazon.
Why y'all usin' all these darn mealahmeeterahs to measure yo' display?
The standard unit round here is Furlongs.
Oh the dot pitches, I remember I was spending a shitload of money on a 14" .28 dot pitch CRT monitor which could run 1024x768 in interlaced mode, though you really thought you needed new glasses when you were actually using that mode. But it made me very happy in the 1990s.
Didn't many of the lower-priced SVGA monitors from the era you're describing only run 87Hz Interlaced, or something like that, when at 1024x768 res.?
My brother had one at that time, and I recall that the flicker in that mode was HORRIBLE and distracting, and maybe there was even an unpleasant noise generated by the monitor?
@@DarronBirgenheier Actually it was actually 85hz, and it worked bery well. Thank you for your time
@@juliedunken1150 Ah yeah, my ViewSonic back then would make this terrible whine noise at 85Hz 1024x768. While friends monitors didn't, it depended on the quality of your tube.
Very nice resolution for the 90s.
@@belstar1128 90's is a long time. by the end of it there were some 2048x1536 on the very high end (like 8k is today), with the "common" highest resolution being 1600x1200
11:30 Did you just refer to Monkey Island as a *Sierra* game? Heh. Anyway, it's so weird. With the terrible dot pitch, it almost looks like a PC-88 game or something along those lines. The pixels look extended somehow.
(Also, having grown up on a PC Jr, I get so much nostalgia from that three-voice sound chip.)
Was looking for this comment.
pc 88 games have some crazy dithering.
@@soberlife Just curious, are you related to Dustin?
The pixels are extended and always were, because 320x200 res games have pixels that are slightly taller than square.
I remember walking into a Radio Shack during the late '80s to early '90s and getting the shakedown like I was at a car dealership or used car lot, the employees would pounce on you to make a computer sale. They were aggressive, sizing you up, and everything. I was always in there to get some kind of audio adaptor or something because I had a TRS-80 COCO as a kid and wouldn't touch their stuff ever again. Very rarely could I just walk in and take a moment to see what was there. I understand it was their job to sale things, but damn, not everyone walking through the door is looking for a computer.
I had an acquaintance that worked at RS in college, and I was amazed at the spiff structure on the items they sold. The employees knew exactly where they money was at and pushed hard to sell those items. (It's probably another reason of many for the company downfall.)
@@Gr8thxAlot Sounds exactly like the Radio Shacks I used to go to back then, they were really aggressive with those sales and they knew their product line.
The last time I was at a Radio Shack was about 10 years ago and the employees were clueless to what they were selling. I was looking for a universal multi-plug A/C power adaptor but the clerk was totally confused and said they've never sold those before, she didn't even ask the manager for help. I just thanked her for her time, went home, and found what I was looking for on Amazon.
I knew she was new because I have bought them from Radio Shack before, not that store, but other Radio Shacks since the '80s.
@@JohnFourtyTwo might not be her fault, since RS goods range getting shorter and shorter.
Welcome to Jurassic Park :)
They used just ordinary TV picture tube inteded for small portable TVs.
Very much so. And they charged a premium for it too.
@@albear972 Yep, you were just paying for a label and not the product.
TV tubes tended to have small rectangular lines of phosphors. Its more likely either left over CGA or EGA tubes, or new tubes made using the old equipment to meet Tandys requirement of something super cheap. Samsung were making junk to be rebadged by everyone back then.
Were home computers at that time capable of outputting 480i and 240p?
@@-dash I also would think that higher frequency means small angle and long tube
Thank you for featuring and linking commercials that I archived! Also love your channel.
Vertical resolution doesn't work that way for this CRT; the phosphors are basically continuous in the vertical dimension. You can display many scan lines across a single vertical stripe. Yes, there are gaps between phosphors in that direction, but they're only small (compared to the ~80% gaps for the horizontal direction). Vertical resolution is more determined by the three electron beams' focus and convergence.
You would obtain better (horizontal) resolution by increasing the scanning width (and obviously height to maintain aspect ratio) of the raster.
Note that the "digital" pixels won't generally necessarily line up exactly with the "analog" phosphors. In fact, they''ll never perfectly line up due to imperfect deflection linearity. Assuming, here, that you have access to width and position controls (probably internal settings for this set). You will always obvserve a moiré pattern if the video bandwidth and focus is up to it. They may choose to defocus the beam(s) slightly to avoid excessive moiré.
This comment may be of interest to the retro computer scene...
Oh man that king's quest brought back memories. Back when i was much younger getting my GED & other schooling, my boss and i worked part time out of a local radio shack, and when we weren't doing work i got to play the game in the office. Later got it for my own home pc as well. Fun times.
As people mentioned here, the problem is, this tube is not PC-monitor grade tube, it’s basically a tube from small color 14-inch TV from that time. Basically, if You hooked up your PC to a 14 inch cosumer TV via RGB connection, the result would be the same.
yep 😉
Wow that monitor is horrible! RadioShack really screwed up with that one.
I still have a working one !!! LOL 32 years later !!
Sadly I was rather too young to experience these computers, but find the story of their metoeric rise and fall interesting as we share a name haha!
thanks for the cool vids man:)
CRTs don't have physical pixels, they only exist in the source's frame buffer before being converted to an analog video signal.
The electron guns paint rows of pixels from left to right and top to bottom.
The image on a CRT is an analog representation of the digital frame buffer.
Dot pitch only affects a CRT's color resolution, not the vertical raster resolution which is an effect of beam spot size, focus, and horizontal scan rate.
This is why monochrome CRTs are much sharper than color CRTs when running at the same raster resolution.
I never thought I'd see a video about a Tandy monitor in my lifetime! We had a Tandy 1000RL with Tandy grahpics (no VGA), and I remember my dad upgrading to the "good monitor" when he bought it. Now I wonder what exactly we got for the upgrade. :-) It did have a stand, so that was nice. Great video, thanks for the memories!
Same thing happened on the CoCo 3 realm. Tandy offered the CM-8 monitor which was RGB Analog to match the hi-res output of the CoCo 3. Problem is the 0.52 dot pitch of the CM-8: horrible for the hi-res text at 80x24 and more so at graphics 640x192. Magnavox had the BEST option for many CoCo enthusiasts with the 8CM515, a 0.42 dot pitch monitor that not only could take RGBA but also RGB digital an do base-band video, even had a switch to turn the composite video in to all green - on the 1989 catalog the CM-8 was $100.00 more expensive than the CoCo 3, itself going for $199.95; buying with third parties you could get the Magnavox for around $260.00
The Magnavox Color Monitor 80 is the same thing as the Commodore 1084. They were both made by Philips.
It's a son of a pitch!
You sir, are 100% correct. I started a small computer business in 94. I had a customer bring in a similar Tandy monitor. I was slightly unfamiliar with dot pitch numbers but could clearly see an obvious difference in quality. I showed the customer using a different monitor and was able to differentiate the the two. That was my introduction into the dot pitch difference. Thanks for the video.
I grew up playing with my grandmother’s Tandy. Of course, I didn’t know what I was doing as I was a kid. I remember printing random things, like clip art of money. I can still hear the loud screech that the dot matrix printer made as the print head made passes across the continuous printer paper.
I have the VGM 220 that I had since new. I was an employee of RS in central Illinois 1990 - 1995. We had a 4825 and a VGM 220 that was ordered and never picked up. it sat for a year and I bought it for a pittance. I still have both. The big disadvantage of the VGM 220 over the 225 was no stand. So the same crappy picture at the wrong angle. Eventually I upgraded to the VGM-300, which I also still have.
90s malls were amazing
@@babagandu working at RS in the mall paid for my college and beer money
@@Birdman_in_CLE Unfortunately, this can't be done today for collage age kids. They end up with a house size mortgage bill by the time it's all said and done.. I did similar, worked for cable company in their community access department. Took classes while working part time, the job pretty much paid for everything while going to school and I still had extra money left over for my Amiga upgrades.
@@marcusdamberger I know that all to well. I see the "kids" at work with huge debt. When I talk with them about it and compare costs for college back in the early 90s and today it is amazing, even adjusted for inflation. I could get by on 30 hours a week at $6.00 an hour. Pay rent, utilities, tuition, food and even have a few beers. That was about the last time that was possible.
The VGM-200 was our first VGA monitor (still have it), my dad got it when he traded his 1000RL in and upgraded to a 2500XL. We loved it. I had a 1000SL/2 and a CGA monitor in my room and when I’d go to his office and look at his setup the difference was amazing…I felt like the image was painted on the screen it looked so good. I’ve hooked that monitor and 2500XL back up in the past year and can clearly see that the image is not “painted on”. I vividly remember being so amazed by how it looked when I was a kid, crazy how things change.
Interesting that this uses the slot mask style shadow mask (instead of the dot mask pattern much more common in later VGA monitors). I know that slot mask was the norm in TVs by this point, but it could be a contributing factor to the horrible dot pitch on this monitor. Heck, the CRT used in this could have been shared with 13" Samsung TVs to help bring down the cost.
My thought exactly. That resolution / dot pitch would perform reasonably for television viewing. And CGA was done at TV frequencies too.
484 x 425...
Well, going back to TV frequencies and CGA for a moment, when 484 is divided by 160, it is 3.025. Basically, three color groupings per pixel. When CGA was run in artifact color mode over composite video, the effective horizontal resolution is 160 pixels.
The Tandy 16 color CGA capability was 160 pixels too.
TV signals, when the colorburst is run in full alternating phase, alternating line mode, one gets 320 pixels of color, all lined up nicely with the NTSC color burst.
That CRT, with the horizontal size lined up just right, would deliver a bright and clear TV image. In computer graphics, it is good to about 320 pixels before subtle mismatches between the graphics pixels and the phosphor pattern on the CRT glass.
Above that, and pixels look different depending on where they are lined up, and the one exception would be to run a non standard resolution to line it all up one for one.
I would totally put money down on those CRT tubes were for consumer TV use, and were just overdriven for VGA.
One other interesting bit might be worth a mention here: next comment due to me being on mobile...
I see this dot pitch on some TV / VCR combos.
VHS divides the color signal by two when recording. Commercial units did not do that, and that is why purchased pre recorded movies looked better. The players could play a full color signal, but not record it.
Home recordings were basically 160 pixels of color interlaced, and that tube matches VHS play back of home recordings. It would actually make them look a little sharper due to the tube size and the nice match up of the "pixels" coming off the tape nicely quantizing everything which implies some resolution that is not there otherwise.
I have one and it looks great when used with TV type graphics signals. An Apple 2, or Atari, VHS VCR, MSDOS as the video mentions, all will be just fine.
Last nerdery from me on this, and it is all about brightness. Low dot pitch CRT tubes can deliver a brighter picture, in general.
They got used in arcade cabinets and that is what I plan on doing with mine. The tube is a great match for early games I like, and mine is super low hour. Basically was new in box, opened and used a few times and that's it.
Should be perfect for a cabinet able to deliver the bright images typical for the time.
@@DougDingus Fascinating about consumer VHS VCR's only able to record half the resolution of the color signal. It makes a bit of sense, as I do remember pre recorded studio movies always looked better than any recording you could do yourself on the same VCR you played that movie on, even if you had a clean source. I always thought it was more to do with the pre recorded content coming from a a high resolution professional equipment with 1st gen copy being played with a better signal to noise ratio onto the VHS tape.
However, maybe the other aspect was the color information was full bandwidth being recorded to the tape as well. Color burst information was about 1.5 MHz across. But VHS played tricks and took the color information and recorded it below the video bandwidth in the 630kHz range. I believe this was done to to account for variations in head speed and tape speed that was not always stable, something like a 0.1% difference in speed could shift a single color scan line from red to magenta. By shifting the color burst information to a lower frequency the variation in speed has less effect on the phase it would seem. They also did a phase averaging of the color information that was split between two fields doing what seems similar to how PAL dealt with color phase issues but with half the 1.5Mhz signal in one field and the other half (750KHz bandwidth) in the next field. Then recombining the two halves when everything was upconverted back to what the TV would recognize as a standard color subcarrier. Maybe when you recorded on the consumer VCR they only recorded 750KHz of the full 1.5Mhz of the color subcarrier onto the tape using simplified circuity, whereas the professional VHS machines would have the extra circuity to deal with splitting the 1.5MHz color subcarrier between the two fields. It must have taken a much more precise filtering network if they wanted to record the full color bandwidth.
Professional U-matic tape machines recorded composite video with the color subcarrier left where it was originally generated at 3.58MHz (NTSC), however the U-matic 3/4" VTR had much more precise tape and head speed control and thus could keep the color from shifting hue. So they didn't have to play the game of shifting the color subcarrier below the luminance video information like they did on VHS. Of course this was back in the early 70's, so maybe filtering technology they would have needed was not up to par then in a tape machine within reason. So they just made the head drum speed and tape travel speed much more precise.
I appreciate your use of metric
It just made sense to keep it consistent with the dot pitch being measured in mm.
👍🏽Man. I learn so much from this guy.
I’ve always been into computers/electronics.
Went to school degree.
So true. You learn something everyday. No one knows everything.
Thanks for great videos.
This video felt like a nice day with a grandpa just telling you about his interests. You have a nice way of taking that made this video relaxing somehow. Good video.
My first PC was a slightly used Laser 386sx with an equally crappy 0.52 dot pitch monitor. It was as bad if not worse than that Tandy monitor. It was so bad that I figured it had to have a problem with the focus so I pulled the back and adjusted it. It didn't help at all. I lucked out and got a nice Mitsubishi VGA monitor that was being scrapped at work because it had some case damage. The difference was like night and day. Monitors and PCs were so expensive back then, especially when adjusted for inflation that a lot of people ended up with sub par equipment because of these cost cutting tactics. I had a double whammy because in addition to the terrible monitor I had the sx processor. Good times.
I recall when the secretary/receptionist at work got allocated a 17" Sony Trinitron monitor to use. Everyone else in the department was so jealous. You are right about prices. It cost about £700 back when I was taking home about £1000 a month.
The convergence being off definitely isnt helping it either which you can see easily on your close up while booting
i sympathize since i had had a similar experience, before the advent of newer PCs, with a schneider euro-at model 40 and its color vga crap it came with around 1990... talking about eye-strain and headaches!
Thanks so much for making this video. I had a VGM-220 on one of my first computers and I feel like it's singlehandedly responsible for my needing glasses. At the time I never had anyone to commiserate with, but now it feels like I finally do!!
Love this video. I think you conveyed the feeling of anyone who has ever owned one. In the ‘90s, I had a 2500 RSX with this monitor, and it was horrid. My 1000 RLX now has the VGM-220, and it’s good one thing: eye strain. I keep it because it fits the part and says Tandy on it.
Omg what a blast from the past. This computer and monitor was my first computer. Which I got for Christmas, 1991. The ram was eventually upgraded. My parents were going to put a hard drive in it and eventually did but for some reason they had to remove it. I forgot what the reason was.
i love the emotion in this video. Thanks, and keep them coming!
Kudos to you for the clip at 4:56 from The Brokenhearts Club!
Glad I missed that.
Thanks for the video, Kevin.
I had a Samtron of about the same vintage... I distinctly remember how bad the picture was and thinking it was just THAT monitor.... After watching this video, I was wrong!! It looks like Samsung had sold a bunch of those picture tubes to other vendors... Great video! Thanks for sharing!
Phosphor dots are NOT pixels!!! Technology connections did a whole set of super long videos about this.
The key here is that phosphor dots need not be uniformly lit. Pixels are always uniform. A coarse dot pitch does give that "looking through a screen door" effect, but the "holes" are not a single solid color like a pixel would be.
Yes, coarse dot pitch sucks, but it's not the same as downscaling the image to a lower pixel resolution.
I never used a Tandy even though they were on display for a very short time at our local store. Computers around here were still very much a luxury item that few people could afford, kind of like cellular telephones of the era. I was fortunate enough to have a computer, but it was dirt old by the 1990s. By then, we got another one but even that one was pretty expensive.
You saying "Well I'm going to do it anyway!" about people telling you that you shouldn't complain about a bad monitor was hilarious, and earned you a new devoted subscriber (Me!). Thanks for the laughs man and have a good one.
If the monitor doesn't have external controls for it, maybe it has internal adjustments but I would have thought you might be able to improve image quality at least a little by adjusting the vertical and horizontal size to reduce the size of those borders and that would allow more "dots" per pixel. Might only be a slight improvement but would be interesting to see.
yeah expanding the image would make it clearer, but you would lose some detail to overscan
Awesome video thoroughly enjoyed. Thankyou for uploading it
I remember how awful this monitor was! But remember the CM-5 from the 80s? Wretched!
And I totally got chills when you pointed out the 17kb cost of that VGA utility. Remember when that was a big deal?! lol.
Thanks for the nostalgia, friend.
That is hilarious! I'm so glad you measured the pixel resolution, that was just like the cherry on top of that turd.
The fact that Tandy were in the game from the beginning and got out when they did shows how quickly commoditization and ever-narrowing profit margins, combined with the high-speed pace of technological development eventually made the industry as cut-throat as Calculators and Digital Watches were 1-2 decades earlier. Electronics has always been treacherous that way, at least in the micro-circuit era.
I just configured a 486 computer, which is right next to me as I watch this video. It is an IPC Dynasty (not exactly because I changed the motherboard, but the 14'' monitor is), and I can tell you that it is WAY better than the Tandy you are reviewing. I was kinda impressed by the image quality, except from the lost space on the X axis (there is a Y adjustment potentiometer). The part number is VDVGA 14#60, I was not able to find something online.
"Radio Shack" traded as "Tandy" here in the UK, so all their shops were called "Tandy". A lot of the products they sold were just cheap tat, but they did sell some rather decent "Realistic" CB radios and walkie talkies.
yep, but i loved a lot of their stuff, i had most of the 'xxx-in-one' kits over the years , they were better around 1998ish, i have a catalogue from then when known as 'tandy unlimited' and they stated if they didnt list it, they'd try to get it in ...that was the only place that had the memory chip for a tv i was trying to repair for someone...
Realistic products were on par with name brands found at larger stores.
My god, what a fantastic video, I came here to see someone complain about a monitor and truly learned much more about how pixels on an old crt were affected in so many ways.
Wow, you're truly ready to revel in the excitement of Tandy!
Wow, this video answered so many questions I had when I was a child.
I suppose at least that dot pitch smeared out the dithering on your Monkey Island night sky there - nice smooth gradient ;)
Sloppy advertising and marketing certainly didn't help Tandy (eg airing a TV ad where pincushion distortion is very evident, offering demos of it in stores etc).
Nice video, i din't though that Tandy would make bad CRTs at all, Also, The Secret of Monkey Island isn't a Sierra game, its a LucasArts one. Still nice video.
There were all sorts of things that I miss about old PCs, especially the comfy UI design, but CRTs are not one of them. The refresh rate might be slower on a modern flat screen, but I'll take one any day over the bulk and testiness of a tube monitor.
Thank you for the upload! :)
Very interesting. I was too young in the 90s to afford a PC and I doubt a lot of people at this time were worried about what is resolution and dot pitch. But something we have to appreciate is the fact this monitor still works fine 30 years later, I don't know if a LED monitor from today will last 30 more years 😅
Very interesting video as always! What do you do with the stuff, like this VGA monitor, that you buy for the channel after you shoot the videos? Do you sell them? Are you keeping this monitor in particular? As you said it has vivid colors and is suitable to play 320x200 games.
This is the matching monitor for my Tandy 1000RLX, so I intend to keep it with the system.
This channel is really Time Travel for technology I don't ever ever ever want to see again. I was so glad when LCD flat screens replaced the CRT in monitors and TVs. Let's give praise and three cheers to the engineers and scientists that saved us from the CRT. Now I can barely tolerate 1024 x 768. All my screens are higher resolution. I don't want to see dots or pixels. Put that monitor in your museum and never use it again except for "Show & Tell". See kids, this is what you don't have to use. 🤣
High quality CRTs still have their uses, but generally I can agree. I once owned a rather cheap 15" CRT that, for some reason, supported 1280 x 1024 but the dot pitch was so bad that anything below about 14 pt font, any font, was completely unreadable.
@@AliceC993 my first computer came with a similar 17" or 18" one, I did run it at 1280x1024 once the Family Computer was newer and it moved to my room. I don’t recall how fuzzy it was but I was like 9 years old and didn’t know much better! Well, I did struggle to read 12pt and had to use Word in 14 or 16. So I guess it WAS bad.
Lets praise the early adopters who spent £500+ on a 15" LCD and then put up with dead pixels which the manufacturers claimed were normal. I came close to paying £650 for a 15" LCD monitor but ended up buying a 17" IBM CRT monitor for £130 new that had a completely flat screen and the most perfect picture I ever saw on a CRT.
@@MrDuncl Yep the late CRT PC monitors of the early 2000s were excellent and I think were in many cases superior t the LCD screens of the same time. Deep blacks and good brightness were not there in LCDs of the time. CRT had both.
When I had a VGA in the 90s, I could adjust the image, to minimise the black borders on the edge of the screen, I think you would get a slightly better view that way. My monitor had dials for width and position. and height and position.
I had a video card, later, where the timings of the signal to the monitor could be well fine tuned, and I made a custom resolution of something like 1024 x 512 for watching video, I had a dvd drive. I squeezed down the image so the black bar space in the image was not processed, so all the compute in the system was used for the part of the monitor that had an illuminated image on it. Then switched the resolution back to 800 x 600 for normal windows programs and expanded the vertical back to normal.
Monitors sure have come along way since those CRTs.
My first computer (that I learned to code Assembly on) was a TRS-80 Color Computer. Absolutely loved that machine. After that, the Tandy 1000 ... with that display.
This display is a migraine maker. Even during this video, I found my eyes constantly attempting to refocus the image due to the blur. I usually watch UA-cam in full screen, but I found myself much more comfortable outside of full screen on scenes where the image on this display took up the full frame. The experience is a bit like using one of those VGA to composite TV adapters and sitting too close to the TV.
I have one or two around here somewhere.Have not pull the set apart to check the CRT part number but they probably used a regular TV CRT in the set.
Same like those Commodore 1700 series monitors.Just a regular TV monitor .Been using them as VCR monitors for years...
Oh wow, this is one disappointing monitor, I’m really shocked they thought this was okay! Especially considering they were marketing it as “crystal-clear VGA.” The font examples you used were really shocking, I can’t believe they let that happen! CRT dot pitch is such a fascinating phenomena, the computer produces a 640x480 pixelated image then it’s sent to the tube where it just scans 480 lines across the screen with 640 horizontal samples, which is then basically intercepted by a screen door to provide the colour, I wouldn’t refer to the triads of colour phosphors as pixels but the resolution can be really limited by the dot pitch, there’s no actual scaling but the detail is seriously smudged and blurred.
My VGA monitor is an old dell from the 90s, the dot pitch is more than good enough for the low resolutions I run it at (640x480 and 800x600 usually) but it looks great even at 1024x768, I honestly think the way the dot pitch effects the image is so fascinating, it looks ever so slightly softened and rounded in a really nice way, I was playing a low res old visual novel a while ago and at its native 800x600 resolution it looked great on my CRT, the pixelated artwork was rounded out by the dot pitch and it made it look way higher quality and so smooth and nice.
I had this very PC as a kid, probably with the same monitor cuz the appearance of the fonts in the Tandy software looks very familiar. I got the machine 2nd-hand at a garage sale with a failing hard drive, so I just used it as a floppy-driven DOS games machine I kept on the porch to play with friends. The ROM boot capability was handy too! Man, I would have done back-flips for an XT-CF back then! I remember trying but being unable to get any non-original hard drive working with the onboard IDE controller.
Wow, that's sketchy. Maybe Tandy thought they could get away with that due to 'Kell factor' (as low as .7 on an interlaced CRT). Taking that idea strictly, the 640x480 VGA resolution would be degraded to 448x336, a perfect match for that crappy dot pitch!
Nice ! A new video just in time about something vintage not nice! Ah the beige color help the monitor a bit
While horizontal resolution is affected greatly by dot pitch vertical resolution is largely irrelevant when the phosphors are arranged in stripes as the electron gun doesn't illuminate the entire phosphor group every scan line.
I have an old Pentium 4 machine hooked up to a 21" CRT TV via an S-Video graphics card. Picture looks almost as horrible as this monitor! In fact, it's still worse! But for emulation, I think it gives a faithful experience! As always, great video!
3:32 You’re forgetting that this only applies to horizontal samples; the electron beam still turns on and off, and any parts of the phosphor not struck by the beam won’t light up. So it’s more like looking at a high resolution black and white image through a frosted stained-glass window.
11:15
[Shows Monkey Island]
Narrator: „Here is another SIERRA game[…]“
Me: Oh that’s unfortunate, it was such a nice video until now. *Searches Pitchfork*
HERETIC!
My first color VGA monitor was a Packard Bell unit with a .52 dot pitch CRT; I have to wonder if it was actually exactly the same monitor as Tandy's, just with a different badge on it. Sadly I don't really have any negative memories about that monitor; it was fuzzy compared to, say, an IBM 8513, but it was "readable" in 80 column mode and it looked nice playing games.
That said, I *am* pretty sure that it sold for a lot less with a Packard Bell logo on it than Tandy priced their version at in their catalog, but the way Radio Shack was rolling near the end I doubt they sold many at list price. (It's kind of shocking just how overpriced the last models of the Tandy 1000 were compared to generic AT compatibles at the dawn of the 90's, but they were also constantly having huge sales on various bundles that kiiiinda made them an okay value if you got the discount. Kinda?)
It is very interesting that we only have the technology now to demonstrate the graininess problem, or more importantly bust old Samsung. They went on to better days thankfully.
I was playing KQ2 just this past Saturday. I downloaded it from GOG. i played it all the way to getting the 2nd key to unlock the 2nd magic door, only to discover there's a 3RD door. I'm continue that next Saturday.
Love the Tandy content. I had a1985 1000 with CGA, two 5.25 floppy drives and i think 64k or 256k RAM (can't remember). Loved that computer, i was 15 at the time.
_(LucasArts name shows up on screen)_
"Here's a newer Sierra game..."
Would've been a little better if they could've made the border less wide, but if it was already having issues with stable geometry when it was new, maybe they couldn't enlarge the viewable area any further without it becoming very noticeably distorted.
What people seem to forget is that CRTs are not equal size, so stretching an image would result in a horrid uneven picture. It’s called a thumb rule. This ensures a perfect circle on the screen at all times
@@The_Studioworkshop aspect ratio wasn't what I meant though, and 640x480 is already 4:3 anyway so it'll be able to go to the edges on all sides of a 4:3 monitor while still having "square" pixels. But in this case it's not anywhere close to the edge on any side, and plenty of monitors existed where the image could go to the edge and beyond and still maintain an undistorted image.
@@Aeduo Usually monitors have an adjustment for size, center and pincushion, but I guess this one is too cheap to have those adjustments on the outside and you have to take it apart to access them.
We did the Trash 80's in high school. We also had to take a typing course with electric typewriters. We got learned real good. We even had to run a checking account in Economics class.
In 1984 our school opted for Apple IIe instead of the TRS-80s. I was a senior that year and helped the teacher teaching Business Admin to operate the computers because she only knew how to turn them on and start the programs. I took the manuals home and figured out how to change fonts, pitch, and set tabs and such with dot commands in Apple Writer which is ironic since most Mac fans always criticized PC fans for their use of dot commands when Apple itself was using them in the beginning also.
There are likely adjustments for the bowing in/out of the screen on the sides, but it is internal and exposes you to high voltages, if you're not careful
When I first got my Tandy 1000SL I have the Colour Monitor (CGA).. I thought it was faulty due to the amoire.. any time of dots in a checker would make it.
Turns it wasnt a fault but a FEATURE!... great computer.. shocking monitors!
You probably had the CM-5 monitor, with a 0.63 mm dot pitch. The more expensive CM-11 monitor has a much better 0.42 mm dot pitch.
Even with top of the line monitors we still had the moiré pattern on Navy ships due to the degaussing system that was used to demagnetize the hull. Eventually they came out with shielded monitors to overcome this phenomena.
Now get yourself one of the monitors that came with a very expensive HP Apollo workstation. My lasting memory of those was how dim they were. You really had to have the lights off and blinds down to use them. I was pleased when the ones at work got replaced with Sun Workstations.You mention "vibrancy" several times I wonder if that is a benefit pf the large dot pitch. Less shadowmask blocking the electron gun (although of course Trinitron had even less).
p.s. You youngsters don't know how good you had it. In 1981 I was having to use my ZX81 on a 5" Black and White TV (which incidentally cost £100 when my Dad bought it, although it did have one of those Hi-Tech LCD Digital Clocks in it).
that sure is blurry, nostalgia kicks in :) i almost want one but i would probably regret it.
now i appreciate how far we got, looking at my monitor which is 3840x2160 28" i can get as close as i want and still i cant see any pixels of any kind. any solid color looks solid.
I love that you counted the maximum resolve-able resolution out.. but I wish you would've maximized the raster usage of the tube before you did it.
I think if you corrected the bad default hsize/vsize the resolution it could resolve would be quite a bit higher.
I had a 1000hx in grad school. Loved it. Hola from Baja where I retired
I've been working in front of screens all my adult life, and I really wish lcd screens had been invented before I ruined my eyes staring at low quality CRTs.
early lcds werent that much better, such as STN type, i have several old laptops with STN panels
Amber on black 72Hz is the professional choice since 1981. I even like the 350p scanlines
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt i have 3 old laptops with monochrome plasma panels, they're orange on black ..
@@andygozzo72 Oh I did not know that plasma could do pixels small enough. I only knew SD TV 43"
@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt these were single colour orange 'monochrome' 640x480, to get colour of equivalent resolution you'd need 3 times the number of pixels
For the bowing out and pinching in on the sides, I remember an old VGA monitor I had had a dial set into the back of the monitor you could adjust with a flathead and dealt with that issue. turn it one way and the sides would bow out, turn it the other and they would pinch in.
Ouch.
Your move Tandy ..
On my Atari STE I had the SM124 12 inch monochrome monitor, and according to the forums it has 72 DPI and 0.35mm dot pitch. I remember that having very clear text despite being small. The colour version Atari SC1244 has 0.38mm, and for rival comparison the Commodore 1084 has 0.42mm
A monochrome monitor does not have any dot pitch. The face of the CRT has a continuous phosphor coating.
@@vwestlife Ahh yes true, I forgot about that.
I have a very distinct memory of the worst VGA monitor I've ever seen very clearly (or blurry? lol), it was a Packard bell with the speakers attached to the side. Dot pitch was .33 and it was painful to look at. I can't imagine suffering through.52!!
My favorite monitor ever was my 19" Hitachi CM771 "flat" CRT and it had a vertical dot pitch of .14!!
CRT monitors were reaching there peak just when everyone decided they wanted an LCD complete with super slow refresh rate and dead pixels.
Watching this on my 6K Mac Pro monitor. ;-)
Yeah the SDE (screen door effect) was VERY apparent with those high dot pitch displays. They should have been ashamed of themselves for promoting a tube that belongs in an EGA display as VGA.
I loved the .25 DP Trinitrons we had in the studio but loud bass mixes caused the grill to vibrate crazy even with two sets of damper wires. So I preferred the look of Hitachi and Nanao shadow mask displays. All 21" and about 80 pounds. The NEC 21XP was probably the heaviest.
My first VGA monitor was a 12inch IBM Black&White screen from their PS/2 line (altho I got it in 1994 and used it with a 486DX2 66)... sure it was small but boy was the picture sharp!