CRT Damage and Replacement - Wyse WY-520 Terminal

[@billyjhamlin]

You should always write "PAINT INSIDE" on fragile things, instead of "FRAGILE". Broken glass is easy to sweep up. Spilled paint can mean hours of getting yelled at.

[@dh2032]

or explosive? it not really lying too, there was defiantly an explosions when vacuum from neck of CRT broken, plus hazard, symbol looks a lot like radiation one, lot little fires coming out something, hast menacing look? of might not want crack the container? yes but paint it gets everywhere? or get best both, stick small tin of spry-paint in the box, (used do not read matter), and total legit packing declaration too?

[@absalomdraconis]

​@@dh2032: Anything like "explosion hazard" is liable to get the packaged segregated and opened.

[@JTSuter]

It's crazy to think that finding a spare tube for the exact model you have is one of the most holy of holy grails. Totally understand. You have a rare video indeed.

[@willgibson8534]

The definition of a holy grail means there can be only one, why do you people keep using the word incorrectly! Get educated

[@Scornfull]

@@willgibson8534 Stop being a pedantic asshole

[@ultrasometimes8908]

Considering religion is man made the holy grail is nonsense

[@rzeka]

WFC 11-12-55!

[@LKComputes]

@@willgibson8534 According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition for grail is: "grail (n.) - the object of an extended or difficult quest." So no, that is not the definition, and this person used the word correctly! Get educated

[@fulz4260]

'crtl-[' is ESC. I use it in Vim on a touchbar Macbook that didn't have a real ESC key either.

[@AlexanderGrotewohl]

exactly .. because CTRL-Z is 26 and ESCAPE (27) would then be the ASCII character after Z :)

[@matthewrease2376]

​@@AlexanderGrotewohlI did not know this, I just figured it was an alternate keybind haha

[@minivanmegafun]

I was yelling this at the screen lol

[@AnonyDave]

Was just about to say the same thing. A lot of things are designed around old school unix keyboard layouts, and things like that mean you don't have to move your fingers far. It's less of a stretch with ctrl where most keyboards have caps lock, much less movement than reaching all that way for escape.

[@anno0001]

I remember my local public library had a lot of these terminals (in the mid to late 90s) for people to do library database searches. Some of the keyboards had been used so much that you could almost see a reflection off some of the keys. Brings back some good memories.

[@dh2032]

they were everywhere, at least if computer close by, the all been going e-waste or just landfill, and as said video no one making them, and even if could the expense, sky high, you would have rebuild factory's, re-learn the secretes of making date back of valves/vacuum-tubes we can even make valves/vacuum-tubes, that look Frankston of a mess,

[@jeremiahmiller6431]

The mistake was writing "fragile" on the box, which translates to "kick harder" in cargo handler.

[@nigefoxx]

Learned that one. The second box I didn't even label fragile; all the additional writing on it was applied by the shipping agent. Luckily, it survived!

[@zeruty]

That box was way too small to safely pack that monitor. No one should ever ship a CRT like that.

[@Noxonomus]

My rule for shipping is if you think it's worth marking it as fragile you haven't packed it well enough.

[@signalcabin]

or KICK HERE

[@MuhammadIlhamuodd254512]

This sums um fedex

[@JDStickland]

When I got my first job at a pizza shop in 2016, they were still using these terminals for order taking. This brings back memories!

[@bouncypear_net]

Your 8086 license plate has inspired me to get an Illinois plate that says 80486 that I can display for a few months this year. I just couldn't help myself!

[@mbob4337]

When Shelby was holding the CRT one handed. I was like: This better not turn into a comedy sketch.

[@CyclingSteve]

and when he tweaked the neck before removing it, I was squinting.

[@Okurka.]

He's not the 8-bit guy.

[@KetsubanSolo]

He's not ScottTheWoz

[@SketchNI]

I was uttering "Dont drop. dont drop. dont drop" over and over until it was on the table. Then remembered that I'm not on LTT.

[@anvz6]

You shoud remember that all special commands in ascii can be generated by pressing CTRL+. Which one? It's easy to know: if you want to send the character 1, you press CTRL+A. For characer 2, it's CTRL+B, etc. Sp of you want, i.e. TAB which is character 9, you count A,B,C,D... I! and press CTRL+I. If you want backspace, which is char 8, then it is CTRL+H and... if you want ESCAPE, you just check your ascii table and see it's character 27, which corresponds to CTRL+[. ENER is CTRL+M, etc. It's not so easy to type like pressing a dedicated key but you should be able to exit vi with this. And you have access to all control codes even if the keyboard does not have a special key for this.

[@humidbeing]

I knew that CRT was dead the moment I saw that box. I'm an ebay reseller and "normal" people just do not know how to properly pack. So much goes into it, compliance, void fill, box resizing etc.

[@zeruty]

I worked for FedEx office for 11 years and have also been an eBay seller. You're absolutely correct, this was not packed properly at all.

[@lo1bo2]

Not only that, but MOVING boxes are not the same as SHIPPING boxes!

[@Jesselovespinball]

Exactly my thoughts, wasn’t packed properly. If it was it would have made it . I have sheets of glass shipped to me on a regular basis and they always arrive just fine . But they are properly packaged and labeled well on how to handle the package .

[@gorak9000]

Those home depot boxes are less than worthless. Need double layer thicker boxes, and then as you said, the box needs to be full, and full in such a way that anything piled on top of it can transfer the force through the packing to the bottom of the box, not into the item in the box.

[@nickwallette6201]

I'm always torn on how to approach this with sellers. There have been a few that are like "Oh great, sure, you got any tips on how to use a tape dispenser, too?" Some that are just like "noted" and then do whatever they want anyway. And some that don't answer at all. A _few_ have actually gone out of their way to work with me, some of which have kinda lost the thread and still ended up doing a horrible job regardless. So I just leave it to luck now, since that's what it has always been anyway. I've lost track of how many CRTs I've had shipped. There have been a few minor plastic incidents, but TBH, I can't even tell you if that was shipping-related or already damaged. Sometimes I look at the box and think, well that's a goner, and out comes a whole CRT. Those things are tough.

[@dreamyrhodes]

I was once told that writing "FRAGILE" on it doesn't make any difference because delivery companies usually just don't care. So unless you hire a special delivery service (and pay the extra coin) you can write on it all you want it doesn't change the handling procedure at all.

[@SilverKnightPCs]

It does make insurance claims a little easier

[@gorak9000]

Don't ship heavy things in home depot boxes - they have no strength whatsoever. You need thick walled 2 layer boxes. You need a box like a microwave, or other large heavy thing comes in. You should be able to stand on the box and not have it break. You also need to make sure the box is full of packing material so that the force of other boxes stacked on top transfers through the box to the bottom, not into the thing you have in the box.

[@tarstarkusz]

It's not always obvious, but always make sure the dag is grounded. The coating on the back of the CRT is conductive and must be grounded. It will cause all kinds of problems if it is not grounded. Some have what looks like a useless spring, but it is a ground. This one was very obvious, the clip on the lower left of the screen was touching the dag. It acts like a great big capacitor.

[@KofolaDealer]

The screen is a capacitor to smooth out the anode voltage. A screen of this size would have around 400-900pF capacity and larger screens (black and white) can be up to 3nF

[@thejackofclubs]

It's so cool that these can be just as useful today as they were in 1978. Looking into x windows terminals lately.

[@livefreeprintguns]

It's gonna be fun to play with but can be slow af lol. I used to forward my X displays all the time, and a hosting provided I worked at had thin clients for us so we were basically streaming our entire window display over the network. Most of us ran tiling window managers (I was using DWM) so as long as your environment is lightweight it should at least be usable.

[@ricdintino9502]

He's dead, Jim. Damnit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a CRT repairman.

[@devicemodder]

Funny story, when i got my 9 inch monochrome green monitor, it came as a bare tube + control electronics (both brand new, zero hours) as it was made for repairing a C&C machine display. i now have it living in a plexiglass box on top of my workbench and it's plugged into a win 7 machine that i use for flashing eeproms and other workbench type stuff that won't run on modern hardware. as for how the tube was packed... factory box, with 3x folded bubble wrap on the face, and two foam sponge blocks securing the neck. tube arrived intact. the yoke was in the electronics box, so i got to have fun "building" my new green monitor and aligning the yoke. i think i have a video of it on my channel.

[@MatroxMillennium]

I felt it might be worth mentioning that after VDC stopped shipping out replacement CRTs, I was able to acquire one (not amber unfortunately, I think they no longer have any amber stock) from their subsidiary, Lexel Imaging Systems. I get the sense that inventory is extremely limited at this point, but it's probably still worth checking with them if you are in need.

[@kiwatech]

i love how easy you can remove the cover that gives you access to the crt, kinda cool. Terminals are a thing i really love but i can't really get because of space, some day though! the amber display is just so good.

[@Gannett2011]

Those terminals are excellent. At university in the 90s we had them in the library, used them to search the library database. The amber screens were always very clear. It was sad when they moved over to Windows PCs with a terminal window, then a fully GUI based front end, just not the same.

[@gorak9000]

I remember the highschool library had Wyse terminals with white, or sort-of gray phosphor. The librarian made a cardboard cover to cover up all the extra F keys at the top, and I had a field day when I realized there were more keys under there. At the same time, at the local university library, they had actual VT100 terminals at the counter. All the systems were connected together, and you could go from library to library and search the catalogs, and there were some libraries where you could also access "the internet" somehow - I spent hours connecting to different libraries to see what you could get to at each one. I always feared I was going to get in trouble for exploring around, and connecting to libraries far away, and eventually out to some rudimentary "internet" type service! Those were the days!

[@livefreeprintguns]

One of my first purchases with my new credit card was a 21" Sun MicroSystems CRT off eBay, which was over 20 years ago when I was big into SPARCstations and BSD operating systems. The entire screen was in pieces when it finally arrived and was heartbroken. I think the limit I had back then was like $300 or $500 and that purchase well used up half my limit. Super bummed and I never bought another CRT I couldn't pick up locally.

[@Okurka.]

The credit card didn't come with an insurance?

[@livefreeprintguns]

@@Okurka. I was 19 years old I have no idea lol.

[@video99couk]

Those things used to pummel the CRT to hell anyway. Very common to have to adjust some resistors in the back to try to get the black level roughly right again.

[@Petertronic]

Loved this video, the stars aligned there for you to get that terminal working. A couple of months ago I had a Tektronix scope (2235) arrive with the crt broken. I knew it as soon as it arrived, you could hear the "tinkles of doom" when moving the box. That was sad. Messy too, bits of glass in all the packaging. Tektronix themselves recommend at least 3 inches of foam on all sides, it's in the service manuals.

[@timradde4328]

Even packing a CRT in the original packing and box may not save it from damage. I moved and took a DEC VT-550 with me. Packed it in the original packing foam face down. Original box too. Still got damaged by the movers. The tube is Ok, but the case got broken. The switch is no more and the pedestal part doesn't work either. Never have tried to see if it's fixable or not. I still have it too.

[@nathantron]

It is the law. You must play the Portal Outro on this screen. This was a Triumph. I'm making a note here.

[@KAPTKipper]

"You can use it to get real work done." - LOL that's what we all did before GUIs. I remember having to mess around with TERM settings in UNIX to get different VT, WYSE and other data terminals to work consistently with the GIS software I was installing. the TERM variable is used by apps to figure out how to display

[@Fir3Chi3f]

Super cool repair! Always happy to hear old equipment getting new life!

[@LucaBlightOfHighland]

Well, thanks to his sacrifice we had a rather special video. Honor to you, old crt.

[@Otakunopodcast]

Ctrl+[ (left square bracket) functions as an Esc key btw. Had that one ingrained in my muscle memory because a surprising number of the terminals I used back in my school days lacked a dedicated Esc key.

[@ronny332]

Since I follow many KZbin channels, I feel confident to say: you explain and demonstrate things among the best of all the channels I know.

[@hangonsnoop]

I loved amber screen terminals. The color was so soothing.

[@jimiphillips1170]

LOL at the escape sequence with the escape pod!

[@shanedownes]

This reminds me of a recent experience with a new-old-stock Esprit 400 Terminal. I got lucky and found an ebay listing in the original shipping box with styrofoam packing. I would not have shipped it otherwise. It also has an amber screen and just works with any machine I throw at it. I've used with with a DEC Microvax as well as modern Linux systems. My favorite features are the split screen 'window' mode and PS2 keyboard with (what appear to be) Cherry black switches.

[@reid4625]

for the escape key: in vi, vim, and probably other programs that use the same bindings, you can also use Ctrl + [ (open square bracket) for escape though a properly mapped escape key is probably preferable as far as any other programs go

[@SomeMorganSomewhere]

FWIW there is ONE company in the US (I don't recall their name off hand, I assume they still exist anyway) who repair at least monochrome CRTs, as in they actually cut the tubes open re-coat the dag and such, replace the electron guns then reassemble and re-evacuate the tube. I think there was a video on Fran Blanche's channel about them. Probably horrifically expensive though...

[@FtG-1001]

As noted by others, Ctrl-[ should give you an escape key. Note that F-keys send a sequence of keys often starting with an Escape. So hitting an F key in insert mode in Vim should get you back to the prompt. But the characters after the Escape could do unexpected things in Vim. The thing with backspace vs. delete key and which one works where to erase left is a bugaboo that I've had to deal with for over 50 years.

[@mistaecco]

I knew most of this in isolation, but this is one of the best explainers ive ever seen, TBH. As an owner of many CRTs, i feel enlightened.

[@tekvax01]

Agetty has three terminal modes to modify the Baud and TTY settings. One for displaying the Login prompt, another when signing in with your password, and the third when Bash is launched.

[@johndray2326]

Trip down memory lane... used to use similar Wyse terminals to these in the late 1980s/ early 1990s. Used to edit termcap definitions to get better emulation ;-) Thinking that VT220 definition is your best bet :-) Good luck

[@elbiggus]

The ES manual is for the MPR 1990:10 compliant version, so it should be fine.

[@Anonsage3]

Mess around with Mplayer and the caca video codec. probably my favorite smart terminal test is running a King of the Hill episode through it and seeing if the shapes are remotely recognizable.

[@borerofhope]

Was it planned that you talk about escape sequences during Star Wars' droid escape sequence? That was brilliant. Also, I love how we humans look at an older thing like this screen and go "Wow! It does black, brown, and - get this - a *slightly dimmer brown*!" when we have a modern screen right next to it that does - to put it mildly - a few colors more than just the three.

[@locnar1701]

When I was in the dorms I had a WYSE 60 in amber at the foot of my bed. I would use it to connect to my main FreeBSD machine at my desk via getty just as you did above. I would use it for email (pine) and to kick off mpg123 to play an mp3 or several without leaving the bed. I had it on a 25' 25 pin cable. I miss that little machine. The flyback failed on it and I was not in the know of how to fix it or, had the resources to afford fixing it. It got recycled. I wish I had kept that boat anchor, it could be alive today.

[@nigefoxx]

Funny you say that- the spare tube came from another Wyse terminal that had burned its' board up so badly at the flyback it was non salveageable. I retained the tube for years on the shelf, this 520 came along and I'm glad I kept the tube now!

[@stevethepocket]

Honestly, removing the tube and shipping it separately seems to just be a much safer way to ship a CRT device. Facing the yoke upwards with plenty of empty space around it and making the box rigid enough to support whatever's being stacked on top of it is enough to protect it from all but the most spitefully abusive worker. Keeping it inside the monitor with the heavy stuff attached to it means it could snap from just being jostled around too much. And we all know what a pothole-riddled mess some of America's roads are.

[@nigefoxx]

That's how the spare was sent. The inside of the terminal doesn't support the neck at all; shipping with the yoke and neck board on was my error.

[@SockyNoob]

​@@nigefoxx you did a much better job on the second one. Wish ebay sellers did that good of a job.

[@nigefoxx]

@SockyNoob Lessons learned!

[@n3ckrad]

Very cool. I just switched to Linux and the terminal is a bit intimidating. This video does bring me back to the old days when I was in school and those terminals was the only way your could look up certain books in the school and public library. Man I feel old!

[@NatesRandomVideo]

First tech job we had multiple call centers full of Wyze 60 and later the cheaper Wyze 50 terminals. I wish I had a couple now.

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Excellent video and additional to your collection! Terminals are crazy expensive, and people sell them with keyboard separately. BTW, couldn't you add delays to inputs and outputs like 10msec? I did that with my pc to connect to my RC2014 to get higher speeds.

[@shmehfleh3115]

Vector yokes aren't the same as raster yokes. Their horizontal and vertical windings have equal impedances, whereas raster yokes have more windings and thus higher impedances on the horizontal axis. The tubes themselves are often the same, though. One relatively common way to keep an old vector arcade machine going is to pull a CRT from an old television and reuse the yoke from the old monitor. As long as the deflection angles are the same, it's pretty much a drop-in swap.

[@ZacabebOTG]

That's the comment I was looking for! 🙂

[@Vile-Flesh]

I've been pretty fortunate with the CRTs I had shipped to me from ebay over the years. I need to figure out why my sweet little NCR 9 inch CRT is so dim. I miss using the Reynolds and Reynolds terminals we used to have at work.

[@ZacabebOTG]

Trivia: In order to improve the vacuum in a CRT, after air has been sucked out and the CRT sealed, a getter pellet or disk inside is flashed through inductive heating. The getter evaporates and binds other gas molecules before sticking to the inner surfaces of the CRT.

[@NERD-FROM-THE-SOUTH]

I had no freaking clue metal jesus rocks had brother who was into retro tech. Instantly subbed for the vibes alone. Im along for the ride.

[@liamwatson5125]

There’s no beeping for this terminal when you press a key. I wonder why. I just loved the way it did that with the Televideo 950.

[@infinitecanadian]

Thomas Electronics makes CRTs for legacy equipment. The yoke also has weight because of the ferrite cores in it.

[@JonathanSwiftUK]

2nd job, 1st day, my boss takes me to a store room, opens the door, points to about 30 new Wyse terminals, and says could you work your way around the museum installing these and connect them to the Prime mini. And I did.

[@MrRaineth]

@TechTangents ncurses includes several wy520 terminfo files, although sometimes the uncommon ones are packaged separately (e.g. ncurses-term on Debian) and/or stored in a different location (e.g. Debian puts the ncurses-term ones in /usr/share/terminfo but the base ones in /lib). 'toe -a | grep ^wy520' should list the descriptions for any that ncurses can find installed.

[@cbfrider]

About the magnetization problem on CRTs, just to add this: Most 'modern' CRTs have a de-Gauss function :)

[@markevans2294]

Typically a coil briefly energised via mains voltage. Though a monitor intended to be powered purely by 12, 24 or 50 VDC would need an oscillator to drive it.

[@theblubus]

The entire time I was thinking "Telnet Starwars would be awesome on this....." Then you did it and put a big smile on my face haha

[@Fury9er]

I used these in a retail job until about 2020, they started to blow capacitors but had been chugging away for decades.

[@williefleete]

I was thinking control [ would have worked to send “escape”, I’m guessing you tried that

[@gregorymccoy6797]

Check for a control flow setting. If enabled, you can reliably use higher baud rates.

[@michaelpelley2815]

Used to support these "back in the day" in college computer labs. I still like the DEC VT220s much better including the keyboard. Ours Wyse terminals were white on back/black on white.

[@Mechjoc]

Ages ago, I'd shipped something that ended up breaking. While tyring to get them to insure it, I was basically told the best way to secure items for shipping. Foam and bubble wrap for shock impact. Then put the entire thing in a hard sided cooler. Why? It's plastic and rigid foam. You're basically armoring it up. It's also just about the only way a shipper will go, "Wow yeah it's our fault."

[@dan3a]

I am curious, how feasible (or not) would it be to recoat the CRT and remake a vacuum? Has anyone ever tried doing this?

[@ZacabebOTG]

There have been factories rejuvenating monochrome CRTs, washing the old phosphors and conductive coatings away, cutting the faceplate, funnel, and gun apart and applying new coatings before welding the parts back together with glass frit and reevacuating the CRT. But that has been to restore CRTs where the phosphors have burn-in and/or the emission from the electron gun has decreased. If the funnel is cracked or partially imploded, it might not have been fixable even by those companies. Also, with CRTs in industrial applications having been replaced with other display types those companies aren't around anymore. Now the focus is on properly recycling the materials in CRTs instead of remanufacture.

[@G_Fresh_UK_Extra]

I would have to change that green LED for an orange one, it would send me mad if I left it like that, I would have to cover it up.

[@AntonyTCurtis]

You should be able to use VT420 mode which can support graphics with customisable fonts.

[@Electrowave]

It has been a few decades since I used to repair these so this video brings back some memories 🙂

[@pavuk357]

I wonder how they were delivering TVs and monitors back in the day to the shops and factories. Was there a high rate of damaged tubes or there was some kind of now lost institutional knowledge how to handle fragile stuff?

[@MrModamanReviews]

They were shipped in bulk on pallets to a store and you then bought it from the store. There never was a huge amount of crts shipped individually.

[@JamesPotts]

F11 is marked (ESC) on DEC keyboards. Also, Ctrl-[ == Esc

[@Graham_Rule]

termcap and terminfo provide slightly different solutions to terminal control, although I think terminfo has effectively replaced termcap. Neither is particularly difficult to write if you have the manual for the terminal (or for the standard the terminal is following).

[@spacedock873]

I still love serial terminals. I have 3 including a genuine DEC VT220. when I started as an undergraduate on my Computing Science degree we used dumb terminals connected to a VAX-11/780 through terminal concentrators that didn't handle backspace correctly during login meaning that if you made a mistake with your username or password you couldn't correct it and had to enter the pair again. To this day (40 years later!) I still pause and have to think if I mistype whilst logging in to one of my Linux machines! 😆. One of my terminals is hooked to a PiDP-11 and another is on my homebred 6809 machine.

[@DavidWonn]

Where is the revived ASCII Star Wars site these days? I thought the old telnet site went down a few years ago. BTW, Control+[ should be the Escape key (or was it Control+] ?) I often get those mixed up.

[@CyclingSteve]

I just tested it, towel dot blinkenlights dot nl is still up and running.

[@Gadgetman1989]

Hey Shelby, love your videos, I know you said how you're also in AZ, but had a question if you've ever pursued the warehouse of stuff at Emerald Computers here in AZ, they have.... Quite the assortment of unique things that you may find interesting, I know I do everytime I've visited, anyhoo, will enjoy your video and hope you have a great day!!

[@tarstarkusz]

ALWAYS ship them face down. This happens with old radios too. The speaker is attached to the front of it, a lot of old radios have 1 or 2 large transformers on them, plus a thick steel cage. People drop the box and the inertia just rips the speaker right off of the wood or in the case of a crt, all that mass of the yoke can neck the CRT. Also, they should have double the padding you think and then the box put into a bigger box again completely surrounded with padding/foam/popcorn. Given that was shipped to tech tangents, they should have opened the monitor and taken the yoke off. You cannot do that with everyone, but you can with tech tangents or a guy who wants to restore it.

[@nigefoxx]

It was face down in the box, the box was marked which was was up, but it was dropped hard on its side. Yes, I had considered pulling the yoke and hindsight is 20:20....

[@tarstarkusz]

@@nigefoxx If you are the person who donated it, it wasn't meant as a criticism of you. Just kind of the best practices. I get it, the shipping companies are horrible. Damage to CRT monitors is so common that it's really not even worth shipping them.

[@nigefoxx]

@@tarstarkusz All good! It wasn't packed badly, I just didn't figure one step off the journey would be via trebuchet. Lessons learned and a highly instructional video later, here we are.

[@KeritechElectronics]

Interesting failure mode. I'm very surprise the device is not completely destroyed due to implosion. Nice fix!

[@polygonvvitch]

Would it be possible to reinforce the yoke's location temporarily so this doesn't happen during shipping?

[@landspide]

I think the inplosion band can get magnetised, but a degauser will fix

[@jamesdecross1035]

Question: other than getting them up and running, what can you do with a terminal today? Thnx.

[@Torbjorn.Lindgren]

19200/38400 - did you try enabling hardware flow control (RTS/CTS) on both sides? (agetty -h, options on the console). I expect you could use vt220 mode on both ends for a little extra functionality (F11+, additional european character encodings), all VT terminals are upwards compatible so I expect the vt3xx mode you use will work with vt220 terminfo on linux. Most terminal emulators today are at vt220 supersets with some function from vt320/vt420/vt520 so can handle vt220. As someone already noted, ctrl+[ (left square bracket) should work as escape.

[@yatapaws]

Gosh, this reminds me of the mint ibm 8513 i had shipped, that got necked in transit.

[@computeraidedworld1148]

The starwars blinkenlights demo being called "streaming starwars" cracked me up.

[@shaunclarke94]

The fact that back cover just pops off exposing high voltage is kind of scary. Definitely wouldn't pass todays standards.

[@matthewrease2376]

27:18 Ctrl + [ I actually use this sometimes cause escape is hard to reach. Also a vim key emulator for Windows requires this. :)

[@sentry4944]

This would go great with the Plexus P/20 that Adrian's working on in his Digital Basement.

[@thomas-i5o7h]

I see you are running Kubuntu. Have you ever used Fedora ?

[@michaelcloutier2225]

It is not permanatly magitized or damaged! All you have to do is degased the damn things and many CRTs had Degasing coils built in that cycled on with every power cycle. I fixed thousands of TV back in the day with a Degasing coil or by repairing the built in one. A degasing coil is a large open coil of wire more than a foot wide with no metal in it and the way you used it was to turn it on and mover it all around the CRT and then take it away before you turn it off again. If you turn it off clost to the tube would reintroduce directioal chagess. It produces a random directionless magnetic field that interacts with the magnitized part to randomized the direction of the magnitized moliculse. This randomizing of charges negates the magnetization. It was a little fiddaly but with practice you could get very good results. I might add that the magnetizing of the CRT was not just of the shadowmask but also of any Ferris materials in the caseing that could be deflection the beam.

[@coyote_den]

Ace Ventura: "We're going downtown!" FYI, those dielectric supports are glass, they're often a unique color, and jewelry makers will pay good money for those because nobody knows exactly what blend of glass they are. It seems the tube manufacturers kinda melted down all kinds of leftover cullet to make the supports.

[@oliverw.douglas285]

I'm in the process of getting rid of several old Dumb Terminals. All of the CRT's are intact, however I don't know if the terminals are functional. Is there a better place to liquidate them, aside from eBay? It's a mix back of DEC, HP, TeleVideo, TeleType, ADDS, WYSE, etc...

[@SteveChisnall]

so does this terminal work with your DECtalk?

[@Sanchaz12]

Seeing the thumbnail of this video gave me a mini heart attack, getting a flashback to when I was about 10 years old. I was given an old non-working CRT monitor by my dad to take apart as I loved looking at the inside of electronics. All went well until I was a little too rough taking the neck board off the CRT, breaking the neck while air violently wooshed in. That, in combination with being able to see inside the CRT from the front and specifically looking at the black area where the neck is/was, scared the living hell out of me. It was probably a B/W CRT as it looked almost identical like in this video. I could not sleep in my bedroom until I asked my parents to remove the TV and monitor from my room and I never had any CRT in my bedroom from there on. That left such a mental scar that, to this date, I am still not comfortable handling CRT monitors or TVs despite this happened nearly 20 years ago. I still own the little bedroom TV which still works since it was barely used after that happened. I'm glad that I kept it because now I like using it occasionally for retro gaming, but setting it up is still somewhat of a mental challenge. It's amazing and scary at the same time that watching this video takes me back to the exact time and place where I was when this happened. I still wonder why this left such a permanent 'scar' though.

[@alexanderwhite8320]

I have two CRT monitors I would like to repair. One have failing yoke coil. Other have damaged grille/mask by kids with magnets. How hard it is to obtain new yoke or get it rewound and is it possible to degauss the mask by degausser?

try sweeping a strong-ish magnet from the screen to outside that's how I do it

[@alexanderwhite8320]

Bad advice, this is how the screen got damaged in first place

[@3dvultworld1234]

you are an absolute gigachad and just earned a subscriber

[@adrianrobey7716]

Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

An excellent example of why we need convincing flat panel rebuild kits for dead CRT's

[@freednighthawk]

Wyse, like Dell Wyse? I'm assuming they were bought out?

[@Bobis32]

going to give a major tip about shiping delicate things Double box it the outer box will take the abuse while the inner box will be suspended away from impacts

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

An example of why we need convincing flat panel rebuild kits for dead crts

[@yeninja]

I think I like the amber ones better, they look like they’d be easier on the eyes.

[@ruben_balea]

The three strips holding the electron gun components in place are made of glass.

[@KyleMahaney]

Are you running into any issues with modern terminal applications expecting UTF-8 support?

[@TechTangents]

Not really, just them hardcoding VT-100 escape codes is enough of a problem on all other terminals. That's where screen comes in handy because it can swap then out before they get to the original TTY connection. It can probably do the same with UTF-8.

[@KyleMahaney]

@@TechTangents I've been unsuccessful to get Screen to actually behave well at substituting UTF-8 characters not covered in ASCII, but you're right its super useful for translating escape codes.

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

It's like you'd think the shipping companies are in cahoots with display makers to try and make us buy more monitors 🤔

[@zeruty]

That box was way too small to safely package that monitor

[@ZeroHourProductions407]

​@@zerutyit's impossible to think that the shipping companies _don't_ do this on purpose. It's always the most irreplaceable that gets tragically destroyed. It's always electronics and computer gear. You never hear this crap happening with some overpriced dinner dishes or glass sculptures.

[@memriloc]

Bummer about that, but great move making a shit situation into something very bloody useful! Great work man!😅

[@gomergomez1984]

Man wish I could find a non burned in amber crt for use with HGC card

[@alexkindl861]

Have you tried something like a DB-9 to RJ45 connector that they use for network boxes? Just add a second stage noninverting opamp with appropriate gain? Then tell us if it works, 'cause it sounds like a completely shady hack?