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Monitor Setup Options

Smack2k

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OK,

Curious of what you all will say to this and what opinions you'll have:

If I were to setup the following machines in a huge lab or "retro" room, what monitors, what connections to them and how many would you setup? I know I'd need different Monitor types and versions, so looking for that as well..

Here are the machines:

Amiga 500
Amiga 2000

Atari 400 / 800
Atarl 800XL
Atari 1040 STf

Commodore 64
Commodore VIC-20

286 IBM PC
Compaq 386
486 IBM PC Compatible

Curious of which machines could use the same monitors and what hardware is available to swtich between them (for the older monitor types).
 
thm_magnvox_colordisplay.JPG

The Magnavox Professional Series Displays are pretty flexible. With this display you would also need a vga monitor too for some of these on you list.

The most flexible monitors were made 1986-89

Lastly you'll need a box of various jacks, cables, and adapters.
 
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the Magnavox Professional Series display pictured is not VGA. I corrected my post.

UPDATE - but if you really want to make your life easy, why not just use a modern monitor?
 
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My Mitsubishi AUM-1381A Diamond Scan monitor can do everything from composite to Super VGA (its official maximum resolution is 800x560, but I've gotten it to display 800x600 and interlaced 1024x768), but the image quality with its composite input is rather poor (it probably doesn't do any comb filtering, so you get lots of rainbow streaking), and it doesn't have any built-in speaker(s). But for an Amiga or Atari ST it does a fine job, as long as you can find or make a video cable that works with it!
 
You could do this with a single monitor if you had a true Multisync, or you could do it with two monitors if you don't.

Commodore 1084/S/D/Dx series would run anything with CGA, composite, chroma/luma, or RGB video. Ditto for the Magnavox Professional series. FWIW, that's everything on your list except for the PC's :) You would need to wire/obtain the appropriate cable if you have one. Also, for the Atari ST, note that you can't run the hi-res mono mode on this monitor.

A VGA/SVGA will obviously run the PC's, but with the correctly-wired cable, will also work fine with the Atari ST's hi-res mono mode.
 
Offers from the VCF folks not withstanding, it can be difficult to find a decent multisync. My suggestion, for availability's sake, is a 24" professional LCD or television that has VGA and composite inputs, and that would handle just about everything except the Amigas which require a monitor that can scan at the lower 15.7KHz horizontal rate. For those, you'd need a multisync or an Commodore/Amiga monitor, or a modification to your Amigas.

This assumes your PCs all have VGA or CGA. If any of them have EGA then you'll need a multisync or a true EGA monitor.
 
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