LGR - Unboxing a New 1980s Amdek Monochrome Monitor
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- čas přidán 19. 07. 2018
- This is a new old stock Amdek 310A display built in 1988! Amdek made some lovely TTL monitors in the 80s and I've wanted one for ages, so I bought this one still sealed. Exploring the history of the company and testing the CRT with an IBM PC AT!
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Midnight Vibe, Not That Serious 3
www.epidemicsound.com - Věda a technologie
Monitor after sitting for 31 years in a box: "AT LAST!"
*XT LAST
I couldn't resist.
"After 10,000 years I'm free!!! It's time to Conquer Earrrrrth!"
Amazing that those thirty-year-old capacitors are still working well. Props to Amdek for quality parts selection.
This is sad that today technology compared is much more superior and any kind of device could work longer than similar items from the 80'. Only if manufacturers wanted to. And wouldn't sell such stuff as consumables, which you have to throw away and replace with a new one after a year or so... Literally, things now are made to be used up, rather than used (for years) with a smile on a face... :/
@ungratefulmetalpansy Bad batch? What you're talking about? Shitty caps on the hardware was/is not an accident. It's happening today as well.
@@override7486 think he's talking about the capacitor plague of the early 2000s. Taiwanese factories making mediocre products led to why most products from that era have shitty caps. Original Xboxs being one of the big examples.
@@charlotteritchie9969 even a little before then there were a few cases of the same type of thing. The xbox was definitely one of the worst cases though. I've got a few in the closet that swelled and went bad stored inside in 3 out of 4 of the xboxs i still have. A lot of stuff used to be relabled at much higher ratings or even outright counterfeited as known quality caps when they were garbage. The home and car audio market were plagued with them for a while. I do agree with his point though, a lot of older caps were amazingly well made and unless they are visibly showing damage or are causing issues they are best left alone. Usually filter caps are the only ones that need regularly replaced in the tube audio world, don't know if there's a pc equivalent to filter caps but I've never seen anything similar.
Yes there are bad cap times.
Cheap caps used instead of quality.
Old caps with ustable materials
And caps used out of spec or.too close to tolerance.
And many other reasons
I've found that the amber displays were always much more visually appealing than the green phosphor displays.
Dunno. More appealing maybe but also a bit dark
Wouldn't they be lighter on the eyes as well?
Yellow is a less energizing wavelength, less energizing wavelengths are usually less straining, it is the reason why some computers have red text since it is less straining on the eyes.
I know some people may say that red hurts their eyes, but the reality is that the eyes themselves are not strained as hard as green or blue, it is a placebo effect that makes them feel like red strains their eyes more.
I was born in the 90s but i remember seeing a monitor like this at a train station when i was a kid and i asked to the guy working there why is your screen orange? and the guy said i don't know kid i hate all this modern technology why can't we just use paper like in the 70s i hope its not broken we only got this 15 years ago.
lmao this comment is so cute
@@Featherogue "Only 15 years ago"
I'm 15 and I've never felt so young
@@aidancommenting Lmao!!
Take your story time lies to reddit
Watches movie on projector: wHY CANt We JUst USE papeR
*The Amdek 12" video monitor - (Fallout New Vegas edition)*
beat me to it
Dammit me as well XD
i would love to get my hands on a monitor like this!. Someone could build a custom os for the raspberry PI! ohboy i cant wait.
you played new vegas i thought no one played it anymore oh and good reference
I see you are a man of culture as well! ;)
Wow, I love amber version for intro C:\> Lazy Game... 👏🏻🤣
Please, use it more! 😊
It´s pure gold.
It's so sexy... AHHHH!!! New Vegas vibes!
I totally agree
I didn’t notice!!
It reminds me of those old Compaq Luggable monitors.
Amdek also had a white phosphor version of these monitors -- but it was not "paper white" phosphor like many monochrome VGA monitors. It was the old-fashioned black & white TV phosphor, with a slightly blueish tint.
White phosphorus?
"New Amdek monitor - now shipped with a potential war crime!"
@@Pijawek I had a color 300 as well, at least thats what i think it was.
no....it was a color 3. I still have the box complete with the rma number i had when i had to send it in for service. Just looked at the box 2 minutes ago....LOL
I love these new old stock things, it's interesting that stuff can sit in a warehouse untouched and packaged for so long.
not gonna happen with todays garbage.. planned obsolescence went a long way.
That amber intro is comfy.
New Vegas LGR.
I think the specialness in old displays is because they really do effect how everything looks with your computing experience. Something like Windows can look completely different just by using a different monitor. Display technology really ties the experience to a certain era.
One of my first Windows 3.1 computers had a white monochrome monitor. No idea what brand. And it was indeed a very different experience, yet perfectly usable for most of what people used Windows for back then.
Yeah. Quite true. I still have the memory of a green monochrome display burned into my mind.
As well as the various white phosphor displays of our first PC and the Mac Classic we'd briefly borrowed from my mother's work a few months before that...
I'm actually using a Plasma display right now, for older computers, and as a secondary monitor, and among the many things buried in it's menus is a colour calibration tool that lets you show a single colour channel at a time.
Sadly you can't permanently enable it, it's strictly for calibration, but showing an image in monochrome through just one channel did hit a pretty strong wave of nostalgia for me. Especially when viewing the green channel only...
Of course, what you CAN get to stick, usually, (especially in this case, since it's a hybrid monitor/TV) is turning off colour entirely, giving a monochrome image in greyscale...
For that... Semi-retro experience. XD
I know! I was surprised about these types of computers. I think they must have testing this out in real time for a tech competition so something went different inside these computers. :-)
As someone that works with monitors from CRT to Digital, I can agree.
The effort LGR puts into a simple unboxing video is phenomenal! Outstanding video as always.
Can you run Fallout New Vegas on an amber monochrome? Really bring out those oranges in the game :P
Dont think it'd look any different
Jea, the FONV colour scheme was really great.
For a moment I thought it was a microwave on the thumbnail
Real1Gaming I thoguht it was a toaster oven (no joke)
Real1Gaming initially thought it was an LGR Foods video
same. lol
YES. Thank you, I wasn't the only one who thought this was a microwave.
THANK YOU! I was thinking exactly the same, now I know it's not just me being weird!
I quite liked the warmth the monitor had when you were playing King's Quest. Even through the camera it just looked like a very nice experience.
As a kid I spent so much time playing with my IBM XT clone trying to make it run games on a display not so different from this one. My Hercules clone display adapter could be set to CGA 40 or CGA 80 with jumpers (figured out by literally messing with everything inside my PC). Running commander keen, jill of the jungle, test drive and so many other CGA games on it felt like such an achievement. The family PC was a 486 DX4 100 with 16mb of RAM and a 2mb graphics card but I spent far more time messing with the old XT I got from my school on auction :D
A few months on I got a box of old XT "junk" from the guy who sold us our family PC and managed to get a 10mb MFM hard drive working by combining the PCB from one with the mechanicals from another identical drive (both were dead). My love for tech only grew from there.
You take random old tech that I have no nostalgia for and often little understanding of and turn it into fascinating entertainment. Thank you!
Hard not to get excited when I get an LGR notification.
I found one of those in a thrift shop for really cheap, but it had real bad burn-in of some spreadsheet program. There was a green monochrome one next to it, with lets say "suggestive" Ascii-art burnin. *cough*
Thanks, now you've got me wondering why someone would have to have erotic ASCII art open for so long it burns into the monitor.
jk, but that mental image though...
On the art?
@@DanielLopez-up6os Sure, you can talk about the art if you want.
There's something so charming about these monochrome monitors.
I loved how in Fallout 3 you could make your Pip-Boy amber monochrome. It's what I've used in every Fallout game that' had the option.
The puzzle game MHRD is set in the 1980s and its interface is entirely monochrome, like you're using a period computer to write your hardware-description language. It's got an option for the colour of the display. The game's audio is just the fan of the computer, so put on some music if you don't like working in silence.
LGR: New Vegas
lasarousi He said early Bethesda-era Fallout. That means the first Fallout games by, well, Bethesda, that being 3 and partially New Vegas
Wasnt NV made by Obsidian?
Mr Mürk Indeed it was, which is why I said "partially." Bethesda distributed the game, provided the engine and made a lot of the assets, including the computers and such, Obsidian wrote the story and the game.
fair enough, sir
Orange-ya glad LGR posted this video today? 🍊 ... I'll see myself out.
That's right GET OUTTA HERE!
Badumm-Tsss!
Uh Uh you don't tell someone to get outta here because you have no right to tell this person what to do, do you understand me? Now then you're gonna leave this person be, back off and stay away from here or else I'll see to it you are thrown out of here so fast that you'll wake up in an emergency room in another nation mainly England or wherever you'll end up at.
Boo hiss
*claps loudly...slow clap* wait for me, I’m right behind you.
"Oi, mate! You wanna buy a monitor?"
"I don't know........is it any good?"
"'Course it is! Good as new!"
Ah, that takes me back. My first PC had an amber monochrome monitor with Hercules graphics. For games without Hercules support, I'd run SimCGA for graphics.
I still remember when I upgraded to vga. I couldn't afford a color vga monitor, so I got a black & white vga. It was pretty classy!
I think these games look even more amazing in monochrome. I can only imagine the looks on people's faces back in the 80's when they first layed eyes on technology like this and imagined the possibilities.
as soon as i saw the orange intro my immediate thought was, "Oh no i accidentally downloaded New Vegas again"
Color Me Twisted so you dont keep it on your PC and dont always have it downloaded and ready to play?
got that upgraded internet babeeeeeeey!
Me: has super large extra-thin high-resolution color monitors with vector fonts and GUI software development environments at my disposal
Also me: uses vim on a terminal emulator
Same!
My 25" 1440p monitor screen and inside my tiny 80x25 gnome-terminal using vim instead of gedit. :p CLI still charming even in 2021.
@@alexandrebouvier7731 the *nix cli is as powerful as a thor's hammer thrown by a nuclear explosion and as precise and delicate as a one-atom thick diamond scalpel. And everything in between.
Thanks for the video and I had much fun watching it. I really loved these retro tech.
Know what I miss about old color monitors? Degausing.
Was anything more satisfying?
Harry Warburg a monitor with degause? Typically they would degause upon turning on.
If you mean the PCs boot and post. That's a satisfying crunch as well
TUUUNG
Oh man! Now I need to find a crt just so I can press that button
(Goes off to hunt for CZcams videos of monitors being degaussed)
Oh yeah! I also used to enjoy smacking the side of them unnecessarily.
Coffee and a LGR video, thanks life
Tincho West I also have a bowl of cereal. A nice breakfast, sitting outside with a beautiful morning, and a new LGR video. Life is damn good to us sometimes. It's the little simple things sometimes that make life worth living... :)
Tincho West exactly my thoughts
Tincho West exactly my thoughts
I think i've seen one of these before. It was in the late 2000s with some old system that was still being used because it still worked just fine, they were using it to measure reflexes or something for a research study I was in. It was such a beautiful display. I've always loved amber phosphors.
Uh, I remember my first Kings Quest 4 on a amber monochrome Monitor... Great experience till I had to look for a golden ball under the Bridge... 🤔
OOF.wav
This looks just like the first monitor I can remember having.
Cannot be Tamed
showin yer age there ;)
My first monitor was definitely an amber monochrome monitor, but I don't think it was an Amdek. It was replaced by an IBM 5153 pretty quickly.
Was about to say something similar. The first PC compatible we had was an XT clone, and graphics on it looked exactly like on this monitor. Since we had that computer well over mid 1990's, I was envious for years to my friends who eventually had 486's with VGA and sound cards... Yet now in sort of a perverted nostalgic fashion I'd really want to own an amber monitor again to use with my Hercules card, and I feel sad that our old XT clone is probably scrapped a long time ago already.
You used to have that monitor? When did you first see it?
Did you start gaming when you were like 2 years old?
5:10-5:25
Definitely the funniest part!
I'm always getting good mood when LGR boss sniffs and adores those old cables :D Thanks for the great and informative video!
I just started watching your videos and I was blown away when you brought up Kingdom of Kroz II! I think that was my first video game experience that I can clearly remember. Made my day, thanks!
WOW!!! This is very very very good to see. Thanks man!
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.
My first x86 computer was a clone of the IBM PC XT and had an Hercules graphics card with a Samsung amber monochrome monitor 😃
Dude, thank you for the upload. I needed some "new" retro goodness to check out. Keep it up Clint!
Fervently researched and executed. I am extremely impressed, Clint.
Nice twist for the intro to go along with the Amber monitor!
Nice, that monitor gives such a unique looking image. I did experience EGA, but not something like this. I'm not sure I would want to play games like this, but it was really neat seeing such a monitor in action!
PhilsComputerLab I did a lot of gaming on my old Mac with a 9 inch black and white screen. This seems like it'd relieve some eyestrain..
I'd play Lands of Lore, Ultima, or Xcom on it.
I loooove the research you make on these abscure companies thats what makes your videos of a supreme quality! You put hours of hours of research. Dude you are a true pro. And many many thanks! I cant thank you enough?
I've been messing around with computer stuff since the early 80s. I love your videos of old hardware n stuff like this. It's a detailed trip down memory lane.
Thank you!
6:58 Impressive collection of earwax you have there.
And it's glowing.
These monitors were the shiznit back in the day. Amber instead of green, about half the price of an IBM monitor but still well-made and reliable. Every computer in the office that I worked in during the late '80s and early '90s had one of these. Excellent monitors for the text-based applications of the day.
I love the fact you truly get a buzz out of this. Keep up the good work.
I was born 2 years before the millennium age and I LOVE old computer techs and stuffs because I grew up still using Windows 98 and ME even after everyone already started rocking on Windows XP and 7. Thank the heavens a channel like yours who mainly focuses on said old computer techs exist on CZcams.
Ahhhh the memories. And Amber > Green all day!
I agree! Never owned an amber monitor growing up but always loved them.
The hours and hours and hours (3am waiting for the linker to finish :-/) I spent sitting in front of Amdeks monitors programming Fortran and C using Epsilon and writing documentation using Final Word.
dos looks good on that monitor
Another cool back viewing session Clint! Great to know about these classic monitors from back in the 80's! The overall aesthetic is vintage and classy! Looking forward to the next one! Stay safe (due to COVID-19), more power, and God bless from the Philippines!
Amazing that you found this new!!
my first monitor was an amber, we upgraded to a white.
I definitely missed it afterwards.
I need to see that Pen Plotter in action.
I'd love to get one to demonstrate. Plotters are rad.
People today, have made pen plotters that are compatible with the old devices.
Very impressive to watch in action. It is made to print CAD vectorized things. It follows each lines and bezier curve as it was drawn in the actual file, not necessarily in a logical, machine wise, way.
While visiting my grand father at its work, I loved to watch them plot things. I even requested prints of compressor heads, cylinders, crankshafts to watch them print things.
I also remember badly burned up amber screen of their stock management terminals. The HP server running the system had an uptime calculated in YEARS when it was finally disconnected.
Wish I could had salvaged things, but everything was thrown away...
Paul Rickards, the guy who made the WiFi232, recently got a Roland plotter, and has been using it to good effect. twitter.com/paulrickards/status/1019408192395206656
I just picked up an xy plotter yesterday, but I believe it's only analog.
boy, i can't wait for monday!
keep it up, you're one of those youtubers i can get interested in that doesn't clickbait and do this just for money.
thank you for this blessing
Great video, thanks LGR!
Amber gives me a cold and clinical vibe because I only ever saw them running work programs. Green seems so alive and amber seems so desert-like.
I have the opposite opinion. Green is what seems cold to me. It also is kinda harsh on the eyes, imo.
Defocus the camera slightly to get rid of the moire pattern.
Thanks. This is so nostalgic to me as this kind of amber monochrome display was in my youths computer which began everything pc computer related to me.
Finally the dots are connected between the Rolandplotter we had at work back in the early90s and the Roland color screen i had for my Roland s750sampler ten years later. Thanks Clint. Awesome research and presentation as Always. Loveing the amber logo at the introsequence. Nice Touch! /Datalux
Test Drive 2, amber Hercules monitor.. A brief summary of my youth!
Amber monitors please me so much.
It's why I want to add an amber backlight to a GameBoy Pocket.
You could probably sell these. That's a great idea...
I know Handheld Legend sells orange backlights for the original DMG and the Game Boy Pocket, mostly wanna do it to the pocket though because of it's more energy efficient circuitry and because of the clearer screen.
Welcome back! Man I love these types of videos it brings me back to my childhood and the my first computer from 1985 🙈
The memories!! Damn I love your videos. Such a blast from the past.
With how much you fondle your electronics, I'm surprised CZcams doesn't take the video down immediately! Also, I wonder how Fallout New Vegas would look on this...
I always think of the end credits to portal when I see a monochrome display like this.
I have no idea what you're talking about but yet I can't stop watching. Great video as always, Clint.
I love the old Amber displays. I find them to be very soothing to the eyes where the green gave me eye strain. I also remember them at the library, probably my first introduction to the Amber monitors. In the early 2000s someone offered me their old 8088 which had a genuine Hercules card. I played a lot of herc games but also used a cga emulator for games like paratrooper. I can't remember if Prince of Persia had native support. I eventually installed the Hercules card in my old 33mhz 486 as I was running into ram limitations for a number of games i wanted to try in that mode.
Great video as always!
imagine playing new vegas with that display...
You need to hook that bad boy amber screen up to a modern system and see how far you can push it... Amber doom.
I love see all your old hardware pretty awesome
Oh, man! Played a ton of TD2 the Duel on my ZX Spectrum back in the day! Awesome vid, Clint! Thanks for sharing!
Oh man I got a 301A at a thrift store a while back. Thing's sharp as hell.
Also, the "anti-glare coating" isn't really a coating, it's a sheet of thin pantyhose-like fabric over the screen.
My first monitor was amber one, attached to 12MHz 286, no HDD at first, later got MFM 20MB Seagate. The whole kit sounded like jet plane’s APU on startup.
What an awesome setup it made LGR, and that Amdek truly rad dude :D
Wonderful! I had an Amdek composite color monitor that we used with our Apple IIe (and later our Sega Master System). The image was a little crooked and it was rather blurry, but it didn't matter. Going from green/black monochrome to color was mind-blowing at the time. Keep up the great work!
Ah, and I thought the Amber color option in fallout was just a theming thing for New Vegas.
Nice new color for the intro orange instead of green.
Love the vids. Being 47, I have seen a lot of the hardware and software you show. I also used to work at Iomega on both the Zip and Jazz drives and media. keep 'en coming!!!
I quite enjoy watching your stuff LGR. You are amazballs
Great video Clint, but please, can you do a Best Cover Art part 4 and Worst Cover Art part 2? PLEASE?
I used to play, I think, Reader Rabbit and Little People Firehouse Rescue games on this. Man, this is _ancient_ :P
LGR is the only guy who can somehow make me enjoy watching a video on something that I've used before, genuinely dislike, and absolutely have no nostalgia for, hahaha. I didn't remember until he busted the thing out about 5 min into this video and mentioned the anti-glare coating, but then my brain was like, "Oh yeah those things? Pffffttt", but then you still watch the rest because _he_ enjoys them so much it just makes you think _you're wrong_ , haha. 6:44 "There's nothing special about it at all... but it's special _to me_" - XD
You *know* you're good at what you do when you have that effect on the people, LGR ;)
I know right? Back when we had monochrome monitors, most of us hated them and wanted a color monitor but typically couldn't afford one, or work wouldn't buy us one. They were a necessary evil. But lo-and-behold, when you spent a long time using something and then see it again 30 years later, it's a cool feeling.
Wow awesome ! Thanks for sharing!
This was the best unboxing i have ever seen!
a salt lamp?
Helps keep the amber mood?
NotSoGoodGamer18 good Fung shui
low-pressure sodium lamp? (LPS?)
@@aretard7995 severely underrated comment
BAN A SALT LAMPS NOW!
orange/amber?
how very New Vegas.
Here’s the funny thing, Clint. I grew up with these but never actually had one. When I was a kid I thought they might as well have been green. Noticed that they were a different color then went on my way. NOW, however, I feel as you do that these things are just plain awesome and I’d like to experience one first hand myself. Strange how much they grow on you!
Nice detective work Clint. Certainly jogged my memory regarding guitar effects pedals back in the day.
I remember only having a Herc card, needing to run cga.com emulator to run allycat from IBM
Wow! Computer history in Illinois! I feel proud to be an Illinoisian for once.
I live in the state next to it
teh_supar_hackr 0010101 Which one? Indiana, or Missouri?
Missouri
Indiana boi here
Some of the first supercomputers were made here too. Stuff was going on with computer science at UIUC that MIT or Berkeley didn't really get until later. But people tend to miss that one.
And the Chicago area was pretty big in electronics manufacturing until everything got offshored over to Asia starting in the 1980's. Clint could looking at the labels of 1970's TVs and stereos and similar in Goodwill. Tandy/Radio Shack, Sears, Emmerson, Admiral, Zenith, etc... Much didn't come from China (or even Japan) back then.
Love it ! Great work
Amazing to see how far we have come in technology! Makes me appreciate what we have today even more after seeing this, though its still an interesting piece of history!
3:15 Wow, she's gorgeous! She's probably in her 60's now.
Yes super hot i would tap it hard
You should play the Portal end credits on it.
There must be someone out there who's actually written a program to recreate those credits in text mode.
Loved the video dude!!
I know nothing about computers, literally nothing, but yet I always find myself back here. Your voice is so perfect for videos, you really should do radio or advertisements
4 dislikes? Hmm, maybe they were disappointed at not seeing 'Farts' written in amber text.
#TeamAmberIntroText
Road to 1 million subs LGR.It's fantastic.
My very first PC display was a green mono.
I was able to run the mono video card right next to my CGA card and use both monitors simultaneously in my mighty 7mhz and use a TSR to copy text from the main display to the mono display. This allowed me to collect local dial-up BBS phone numbers to call.
I still have a soft spot for a good green or amber mono display.
Clint you rock as always!