Comments on: HackIt: New uses for old CRT monitors

By: idisjunction

idisjunction — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 07:49:12 +0000

Actually, he’s probably just watched the “VCR Hack” video too many times.

By: Halexander

Halexander — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 17:57:36 +0000

Chachee sir, you have -almost- made me vomit from the sheer amount of ridiculousness encountered in your post. Good job. Maybe next time I’ll actually throw up on my Asus Netbook. Then I’ll take your advice and gut up that ol’ russian television from the attic. Who knows what I’ll find. Vacuum tubes maybe… ENIAC will live again.

By: chachee

chachee — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:37:39 +0000

There are tons of things still in perfect condition inside your CRT. If you disassemble the glass off the front of the monitor and reach in the back you will find that CRT monitor was powered by 12 AA rechargable batteries (reuse them). Look to the left of that and remove the Graphics card. You will find that behind the it is a eee Asus Netbook. If you then remove the back cover of the bulb you will find a portable DVD player. Finally remove the motherboard and you will see that there is a Troll guarding the prized possession of a brand NEW iPhone 4. Enjoy! CRT technology was far too advanced for our fathers’ generation.

By: Warbo

Warbo — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:30:19 +0000

You could (carefully) replace part of the front with a thin sheet of metal to create a Lenard Window (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Lenard ). This allows electrons to escape the tube and be used for some purpose. The tube should carry on functioning, so a video signal could be used to control the beam.

Of course, cutting a hole in the front of an evacuated glass tube is not an easy task. I was thinking the most straightforward way would be to score the outline onto the glass, attach the metal over it (eg. using some form of epoxy) then tapping the metal to snap the glass where it was scored; the circle falling backwards into the tube. Would take a lot of prior experiments on glass scoring, metal thickness, material adhesion, etc.

By: end tables and coffee table sets

end tables and coffee table sets — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:32:52 +0000

metal end tables: Hillsdale Furniture’s Brookside Occasional Table Collection features the lustrous depth and beauty of fossil stone and the classic effect of transitional designs! A thick patterned ivory colored fossil stone veneer graces the …

By: pete

pete — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:27:22 +0000

You can break the tube with a hammer and use the electron gun for something.

By: Ipswitch

Ipswitch — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:24:26 +0000

Lol…awesome ideas…was well interested in what answers were going to be posted.In my 3rd year studying electronics and computer engineering…already taken on some old computer projects like making old pcs into firewall/spam filter,media server…the likes….
Put up an advert on my uni site saying stuff about it and if anyone had old electronics they wanted to get rid of….one guy offered an old CRT monitor…Lol…had no idea what to do with it and remembered that it stores high voltage even after its unplug…Lol…go a way to go with life so decided not to mess with old CRT monitors :)…
But awesome ideas guys…thanks.

By: gabe

gabe — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:56:08 +0000

Me and my brother built an portible xbox. simely take out the ctr, put in a moderen LCD screen. Simply attack an xbox in the rear, connect (Tight squeeze) then rig up a power supply then boom, portable xbox, perfect for road trips.

By: anon

anon — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:07:43 +0000

there is a old peice of software to turn your crt moniter into a am transmitter

By: Cyber WonderBoy

Cyber WonderBoy — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:20:27 +0000

Sorry if anone’s posted anything similar, didn’t seen anything. Anyway, you could use them to make holograms, like the following link shows:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/864238/make_a_cool_hologram_illusion/

But, what I’m thinking is if you keep the brightness settings normal, get some cheap wood and build a cabinet around it (or convert a suitable cabinet), you’ll have your own retro gaming machine, just need to chuck in a joystick and an old console, or better yet an old pc with loads of emulators on.

By: Steve Nordquist

Steve Nordquist — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:11:14 +0000

Doh! Monitors; no IrDA, no tuner; use the twisted-pair video Tx/Rx (plus 0-power power-on-when-video-present switching) methods Maxim's advertising with (and selling via the usual distributors) and add a kenpo-mask kind of thing for the front controls so it's hardened against mishap.
It's fine to use it in winter of course if you need the room temperature kept up. With that in mind, may as well attach a few rowing ropes to opposing walls and wire those up to a 64-bit paint program on a some box; you can then paint violently without feeling as bad about it.
If you like NO enough, you could power the monitor and some Jacob's Ladders (n.b.: that air arc gets hot; have a ceramic ceiling!) off the rowing gearboxes. (Then row or do kenpo.)

Maybe finally sculpt and paint (test compatibility first), dye or antique the cabinet to offer a better matte, comping and facing angles than _| , add light tables to the sides of it, and generally treat it as less deferentially than you did when it was an irreplaceable investment.

Put a big acrylic block over the front and use it as a video cutting jig.

This safety stuff kind of kills it given the logo here; just have someone willing to do chest compressions around (100bpm) in case you forget to bleed a capacitor on that 40" 2300x1900 CRT you were going to shoot up. Maybe you expect something like the mirror scene from Army of Darkness to happen if you get in there and bust things?

By: Steve Nordquist

Steve Nordquist — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:35:25 +0000

Wow, lots of really bad dangerous and wasteful uses!
Let me add one by suggesting keeping them as-is (maybe with a power cut-off so an unacceptably high quescent draw of 20W doesn't pollute and impoverish) and using them by sending your own NTSC broadcasts at them; monitors for VHS stuff you haven't trashed^Wrecycled, sure, but moreover:
House it high in a corner or center of a room, under cloth dust blinds, where either the front-heavy weight is of some use as >> ballast for a bass speaker

By: krusher00

krusher00 — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:31:07 +0000

I’ve a couple of dead crt’s that I’ve gutted and turned into bins :-) the perfect thing for a nerd to have in his house.

Just put the front and back sections back together, add some hooks on the inside if you want it to hold a garbage bag and be very careful with the insides of the monitor.. act as if it’s all going to zap you :-P

By: Toast

Toast — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:20:33 +0000

would it be possible to turn that old crt into a projector of sorts?

By: Newfie

Newfie — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 23:31:30 +0000

Right now rather than going out to buy a HD TV or a new LCD monitor, I picked up a VGA Female-Female adapter from a local PC store and am using it for a HD 360 monitor.