Taxan RGB Vision 425, what type of monitor is it?

[Benson86]

One of these came with a recent storage unit pickup, and the seller didn’t have any info on any of it. My pre 1990 knowledge is a little lacking so I’m trying to get some more info on this guy. Google doesn’t turn up all that much. I’ve seen a few things like IBM compatible and Apple II compatible, but what does that mean, would this be a CGA compatible display? I assume it’s too old for EGA.

It has a switch for color or green and that seems to work, monitor turns on without making any funny sounds and displays a bright image. But I don’t own anything with an RGBI output right now to test it. Any more info would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[Plasma]

I believe that monitor supports both TTL RGBI and analog RGB. It should work with a CGA card (and 200-line EGA) with an adapter cable.

 

[VERAULT]

Can you post pictures of the rear and cable pinout so we can actually see the connections on it?

 

[Benson86]

Can you post pictures of the rear and cable pinout so we can actually see the connections on it?

For sure, should have done that last night but it was late and forgot, will post that when I get home in a little bit. But it only has 1 display input, a hard wired 9 pin. No composite or anything else.

 

[VERAULT]

Shame. Somw the the better taxan monitors have additional or universal rgb as well as ttl and analog RGB inputs.

 

[Benson86]

I believe that monitor supports both TTL RGBI and analog RGB. It should work with a CGA card (and 200-line EGA) with an adapter cable.

Can ask what TTL RGBI support would mean in terms of what systems/cards it would work with? I always thought it was just CGA or Composite but now realize that’s quite incorrect.

 

[VERAULT]

It will work with any CGA device, Any apple II with an RGB card (as far as I know they are all based on the same ttl rgb card) BBC micro, Commodore 128,. Im sure the list is alot longer and hopefully folks will chime in but off the top of my head thats what came to mind. Possibly Atari ST but I dont remember.

 

[Benson86]

It will work with any CGA device, Any apple II with an RGB card (as far as I know they are all based on the same ttl rgb card) BBC micro, Commodore 128,. Im sure the list is alot longer and hopefully folks will chime in but off the top of my head thats what came to mind. Possibly Atari ST but I dont remember.

Oh ok more versitile than I thought then thank you. I have one of those Samsung desktops that has the TI Cyrex “486” clone chip that’s based on a 386 design. So it’s basically a 386SX in terms of performance. Would I be able to add a CGA card to that to use this display? Or is that machine too fast for CGA? I assume this monitor would not support EGA at all? Also here are the photos of the back and the plug.

 

[Plasma]

Can ask what TTL RGBI support would mean in terms of what systems/cards it would work with? I always thought it was just CGA or Composite but now realize that’s quite incorrect.

To clarify, we are talking about 15.7 KHz TTL RGBI. In addition to VERAULT's list, you have low-res EGA (320x200 and 640x200 modes) and ZX Spectrum 128.

High-res EGA (640x350 modes) needs a TTL RGBI monitor that can sync at 21 KHz, and there are some other oddball TTL RGBI systems like Olivetti M24 (25 KHz). Those would not work with your monitor.

Based on the connector, I suspect they cut out analog RGB support from the 425. So I will correct my earlier post and say it's likely 15.7 KHz TTL RGBI only.

You can put a CGA card in any PC with an ISA slot, but an EGA card configured for a CGA monitor (disabling 350 line modes) would give you more capability.

 

[Benson86]

To clarify, we are talking about 15.7 KHz TTL RGBI. In addition to VERAULT's list, you have low-res EGA (320x200 and 640x200 modes) and ZX Spectrum 128.

High-res EGA (640x350 modes) needs a TTL RGBI monitor that can sync at 21 KHz, and there are some other oddball TTL RGBI systems like Olivetti M24 (25 KHz). Those would not work with your monitor.

Based on the connector, I suspect they cut out analog RGB support from the 425. So I will correct my earlier post and say it's likely 15.7 KHz TTL RGBI only.

You can put a CGA card in any PC with an ISA slot, but an EGA card configured for a CGA monitor (disabling 350 line modes) would give you more capability.

Thanks for your help! That makes sense and I appreciate the clarification. Would one of the EGA/VGA cards like this one: https://www.ebay.com/itm/324838590492 do the job? My main concern with one of them is it seems like you can only select EGA with the dip switches and not what mode. Or would I just need to spend the money and get a proper EGA card that allows me to select the individual line mode and color mode with the switches?

 

[Plasma]

It looks like it should work based on this info.

Set the monitor jumpers to color, and adapter to primary. You could try display mode set to VGA, but most likely that requires a VGA monitor so you may need to select EGA instead. CRT interrupt is not usually needed, so you can disable it if you want IRQ 9 for something else like MIDI.

 

[Plasma]

On page 15 of the datasheet you can see the supported screen modes for the color monitor setting. You have all the CGA modes plus the low-res EGA, but no VGA or Hercules modes. So I think the display mode jumpers should be set to either CGA or EGA.

 

[Benson86]

On page 15 of the datasheet you can see the supported screen modes for the color monitor setting. You have all the CGA modes plus the low-res EGA, but no VGA or Hercules modes. So I think the display mode jumpers should be set to either CGA or EGA.

Interesting. Thank you I was able to find the jumper stuff, but didn't see the data sheet that's very helpful I saved it. The seller sent me an offer for $60 so thinking I may grab one since it supports so many different modes. Would be useful in being able to test pretty much any monitor I come across.

 

[Benson86]

To clarify, we are talking about 15.7 KHz TTL RGBI. In addition to VERAULT's list, you have low-res EGA (320x200 and 640x200 modes) and ZX Spectrum 128.

High-res EGA (640x350 modes) needs a TTL RGBI monitor that can sync at 21 KHz, and there are some other oddball TTL RGBI systems like Olivetti M24 (25 KHz). Those would not work with your monitor.

Based on the connector, I suspect they cut out analog RGB support from the 425. So I will correct my earlier post and say it's likely 15.7 KHz TTL RGBI only.

You can put a CGA card in any PC with an ISA slot, but an EGA card configured for a CGA monitor (disabling 350 line modes) would give you more capability.

Just wanted to update you guys that I finally got some hardware to actually be able to test this monitor out. Picked up an Epson CGA card and also recently a marketplace Tandy. CGA looks really great on this monitor, and the monochrome switch does a good job converting to mono as well. Also it seems to fully support TGA color off the Tandy which is neat! I’ll post some pics here in case anyone comes across this in a google search. I’ve got like 7 tubes at this point now I have to decide which ones to keep and which to sell lol.