A Good Future for CRTs? Open Source Replacement of Electronics

[seastalker]

Start here:
https://www.retrorgb.com/interview-with ... eator.html

I haven't found much discussion after that interview, but I am quite excited by this. So arcade owners or those of us with many CRTs need only to have a good glass tube and neck board and the rest can be brand new? Fantastic! I could even see something like this handy to convert a roadside consumer tv into an arcade monitor. All the more reason to SAVE CRTs wherever you can.

One question I have of CRTs in general is: What hardware actually determines if a screen is monochrome vs full color? Is it the electronics or also something in the tube? The same question for B&W tvs. I had just figured a tube is just glass and the 'magic' happened in the electronics. I have some gold, green and white monochromes I'd consider converting, some small B%Ws, terminal monitors, and early 90s VGAs. I wonder if this new hardware can swap between 15 and 31 khz. This project opened so many questions for me.

Even more exciting:
https://vimeo.com/user159036195

Wow- if ever there was something to have a transparent case for! Not just for the look but also to see when things go wrong. I REALLY like the idea of housing all the dangerous parts in the main box and having the fiddly adjustments in a separate and safe environment.

[Reed_Solomon]

Yeah this is pretty cool. I have a cute 8 inch trinitron that would be fun to replace its guts for modern features.

[Shogun]

So am I understanding this properly....this project would allow you to take any compatible tv, gut it, and use the open source parts to basically make that TV a multisync monitor that can do 15,24, and 31khz? So you could have that TV do PC resolutions to some extent, or a PC monitor could do 240p for example?

[wodmarach]

One question I have of CRTs in general is: What hardware actually determines if a screen is monochrome vs full color? Is it the electronics or also something in the tube?

It's mostly the tube and it's contents like the phosphors, shadowmask, the number of electron guns...

[seastalker]

The thread is a year old so I thought to ask if anyone has heard of updates about this project?

[Atohmdiy]

The project is clearly not dead, there is regular activity in the github.
But it's a pretty obscure project, i don't know if it will come to completion. It would be awesome though, we really need something like that.

[szhach]

The future for CRTs seems grim, but if eventually small-scale hobbyists can replace CRTs without needing large facilities and companies, that is a future worth working for. If projects like these are obscure, it just means that every knowledgeable person who contributes to them is making that much more of a difference building toward a solution. Even if a particular project does not come to fruition, if the information is shared then someday there will be a cottage industry. As a user with little knowledge of electronics, I am seeing all the new-like-old parts being made by hobbyists (or for the hobby market) and I think this is going to be an exciting decade.