 Hey everybody, welcome back to Data Retro Tech. I wanted to make a special episode where we just kind of went and checked out some pretty interesting things I've been seeing online for CRT stuff. And this is just random social media things and also an update to a wiki that's been worked on behind the scenes that's going to be compiling a lot of information for CRT. So I wanted to talk about that for a second. But first I wanted to go and have some fun. So first off we're going to look at the CRT group here. It's called the Professional and Broadcast CRT Monitors Group on Facebook or META, whatever you want to call it, Mr. Zuckerberg. But there's some fun posts on here lately. One thing is if you want to get in this group and you're on Facebook or META, then come and find it and ask to join. I am an administrator on it so you can get in. If you answer the couple questions and ask for approval, I can get you in there pretty easily. And one of the best things about this group probably is the fact that people go on here and they will list things that are for sale. And lately they've been a little bit less than what you'd expect to pay on the market price. For example, this one was just a couple hours ago. It's $650 for a local pickup of a good condition 1953 MD, which is not a super savings deal. But for one that's in good condition and works, that's a really good price. That's less than what you'd expect to pay anymore. But that's not the real thing I wanted to show in here. But I did want to give this a good plug. And same guy here. He was selling two 8042Q monitors that were for basically the price of one on that level. But the real post I'm looking for is a video. So yeah, like check out this cool video. First off, this is from Matt posted all four or five days ago. Look, you can see this is a tube that has totally had the so this is what happens when you'd say drop a tube or drop a CRT and the aperture grill with the grooves in it that when they comes dislodged, then of course the beams can never line up. And that's what's happened here to Matt's tube is the grills become separated. And that can happen in both any kind of tube really the shadow mask or the aperture grill. Here's another one. This is a 32. So think about the disappointing part on this is how impossible it would be to find this actual tube. This is another like that's a sign to me that this one needs a new tube. See how all the convergence is just way out of whack. That's probably because again, the aperture grill is not lining up there properly. Now that might not be the case. It could have like the yoke itself could be pulled back and not all the way against the tube where it needs to be. Here we go. Check out this one from Max. Max Lyle. This was yeah, 10 days ago playing with power. Oh my goodness. Alright, so you do realize what he's doing here in this short video clip? Seriously, Max, are you crazy? So that's the anode cap right there and he's got some leakage where he's losing losing some of that electricity that's obviously turned on that that wouldn't do that. They wouldn't make that current go if there wasn't like live current going in there. So that's probably like the scariest thing I've ever seen anybody do. Now look, I know Max, he is a talented guy. He knows how to work on CRTs. So I'm not going to say, you know, he's not, he doesn't know what he's doing. He does know what he's doing. But man, there's some things that even I'm not crazy enough to try out and I don't want to have even a little bit of the current from the anode cap to be using me as a pass through to get to ground. Let's just watch that one more time. Man, yeah, I love it. See, look, guys, Max, you have wonderful workman hands. Okay, that's exactly the way my fingers look. So I know you're in there working on CRTs a lot. But and that's just a fun post from Max, post all kinds of cool stuff in this group. He's not he's another administrator, but it's just one of those things that I definitely wouldn't want to see anybody else do. So that's the group. You have some other cool stuff posted in here. Again, mostly sales things and also some like experimental things where you'll have somebody post about a problem and you try to get them to give them some good advice and you know, hey, do this. And sometimes they listen to you, they fix their problem, they follow up with you about it. Sometimes they just ignore you and think you're wrong. But that's okay. That's social media. Alright, now we could talk a little bit more about this CRT wiki, which is being hosted over a console mods.org. And this is something that behind the scenes, I've dreamed about, you know, having a good solid place to store a lot of FAQs and data and just documentation kind of compiled in one place with, you know, links to service manuals that are backed up in appropriate places. And this is already like structured to have a lot of things included in it. A lot of these are not actually, they're not going to have any data in them at this point. But the models are listed here. And the idea of the wiki is for people to create their own account, and come in here and kind of help by contributing any information they have if they want to contribute that to the site, then they can go in and contribute for their individual televisions. However, I did get some information that this one was ready on the Sony like for example, the KV36 FV310. So there's information here, we've got a chassis number and operation manual linked so we can, you know, pull up this Sony Vega operations manual. And then the idea is to get all this kind of stuff centrally located on this wiki. Because it's just that that's it's just a nice place to go when you need information on each individual thing. So I told him I would help by plugging the site, the guys who made it and you know, definitely asking people if they wanted to contribute in any way by information. And again, we're talking about even even consumer CRTs are represented here, the VGA monitors and of course professional monitors. Now, there used to be a good place on Reddit, but I'm gonna be honest with you man read it. So yeah, Reddit used to be the place to host a lot of this information. But then all of a sudden a lot of those links kind of went bad. And if you go over there, a lot of times you'll get, you know, again, dead links on some of the things for monitors. And so we need a better more centralized, more tailored space. And I'm hoping that that's what this console mods CRT wiki will turn into. Because there's also other things I mean, I've got my own stuff going on and I plan to have a better conversation about this whole wiki upcoming on an episode of the Cathode Ray podcast with Lewis. So guys, definitely if you're in to say your CRT stuff, we've got more stuff coming for the community. There are plenty of other very talented people that are creating CRT documentation online like Andy King. And again, even Lewis and myself have been working on our cathode ray blog site. That's just cathoderayblog.com. And it's a blog site where we're talking about different things whether it be for example, Lewis and his exploits with adapters here and trying to basically go from VGA to S video. And then also I'm documenting further things like restorations and rebuilds in here. And then, of course, again, the podcast is a place where we talk about other things that are going on and I really a chance to see our check out the CRT wiki and talk about it more in a discussion with him because I feel like if we can all just contribute a little bit if you want to and you're like looking for ways to if you come across service manuals and documentation, then it's definitely beneficial if we can, you know, centrally put this in one space and not have it. I mean, obviously, like my biggest concern is the fact that the site would grow and be a really good place and then eventually get sold, which I hope is not the case to some kind of commercial entity. So that's like more of what I want to discuss with Lewis. But I don't think that's going to be the case. I think this is going to be maintained and tailored within our community. And that's a good thing about it. Look for more like cut in, cut a breakup videos like this to come from me so that you don't just always have to see me working inside a CRT. Sometimes we could talk about other things that are going on the community. And that's it, everybody. Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you next time with some more retro content.