Re: ctx monitors
On Sun, 6 Dec 1998, Chris Frost wrote:
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> I know this is /way/ off topic, sorry if it offends anyone in advance.
>
> I'm thinking of buying a CTX PL9 monitor (19", 1600x1200@75Hz), what are
> people's feelings towards ctx or this monitor in paticular? I'm a student
> on a budget and this will be my monitor for the next 4/5 years so I just
> wanted to make sure I was making a good decision before I bought one.
I was lucky - I bought a CTX PL9 monitor, and when I got home and opened
the box, I had a CTX VL950. It has a larger viewable area (I measured) and
some slightly better specs. (I forget the details now.) I did *not* bother
to correct the mixup.
I've been very pleased with it. The picture is clear aand sharp, the
color is nice (of course, I'm mildly colorblind so take that as you will)
and I have had no problems with it.
I did some vidmode hacking with X and got it to do some... "unusual"
modes, which it accepts happily. (I have an old S3 video card w/2MB of
RAM, so mode hacking is necessary to get decent performance.) I got
1152x864@65Hz in 16bpp, and 1416x1062@67Hz in 8 bpp. One nice thing about
the monitor is that if you give it a video signal that's beyond its
capabilities, it'll refuse to display it instead of burning itself out
trying. :->
One thing I noticed about the specs: The manual claims it has 135MHz
bandwidth, and 1600x1200@75Hz capacity. This doesn't work - you need at
least 144MHz of bandwidth to get 1600x1200x75 pixels per second to the
screen, and this doesn't count the guard times - I figure you'd need at
least 150MHz to get 1600x1200@75Hz. If you really need or want ultra-high
video modes, you may want to look at other monitors.
The best my card can do is 135MHz, the same as the monitor's rated
bandwidth. At that speed, I did get 1600x1200... at 53Hz. Painful to use
for any length of time, and I can tolerate more flicker than most people.
This is why I have that 1416x1062 mode, at least I get a decent refresh
rate. I have no idea what the monitor would look like with 1600x1200@75Hz.
Sincerely,
Ray Ingles (248) 377-7735 ray.ingles@fanucrobotics.com
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder,
but when you do you blow your whole leg off." - Bjarne Stroustrop
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