[upbeat jazz tunes] [computer buzzing, beeping]
[cardboard plopping boxily]
- Oh yeah, it is new old stock
retro tech time once again here on LGR.
Greetings and check out this lovely looking box with
presumably a lovely looking CRT inside. Yeah.
This is the NEC AccuSync 70, 17 inch CRT from around 2001.
Or at least that's when it first hit store shelves, and yeah.
It's something I picked up new
old stock, unopened, sealed up,
never been used because well,
one of the monitors I was going to be using for a project is
kind of on its last legs I think.
It was just being a little weird.
So I grabbed this one as a backup because yeah,
I prefer to get new old stock ones because they're,
they're obviously unused. So that's nice.
You don't have a lot of hours in the CRT,
but also just because it's all nicely
packed up from the factory,
you don't have to worry as much about shipping these across
the country. Yeah.
Because I don't have another video lined up this week,
that is what this is gonna be,
just a simple unboxing video,
taking a look at this monitor,
seeing how it looks works and all that kind of stuff with an
old PC. But yeah,
the reason I don't have another video this week is because
I'm going to actually be at
Vintage Computer Festival Midwest in Elmhurst, Illinois,
September 11th to 12th.
And you know, some days before and after that, if all goes
according to plan but just kind of hanging out,
doing an LGR Thing there.
[chuckle] Yeah,
I haven't actually set up an exhibit, a table at a show like
that before, and that's what I'm going to be doing.
If things work out as I hope, I mean it's 2021,
you never know, but we're going to try anyway.
So I needed a monitor, a nice one.
Nice reliable one.
So I'm going to be taking a few and this one I just hadn't
opened yet and I was going to open it anyway. So I,
you know, whatever,
let's go ahead and do exactly that in this video. And yeah,
I mean,
it seems like a pretty decent little monitor for again,
like 2001, 2002. NEC/Mitsubishi AccuSync 70.
So yeah, $200 0.27 millimeter dot pitch.
Maximum res 1280x1024 at 66 hertz.
I think it goes up to 120 hertz at lower resolutions.
Just according to which series of specs you look up,
this I found on CNET.
It seems to say that actually has
a 0.23 millimeter dot pitch,
which would be really nice and yeah, 120 hertz,
maximum vertical refresh at lower resolutions. We'll see.
[jazz music continues]
All I really want is a nice beige-y, white, gray,
whatever, you know, that kind of late 90s,
early 2000s CRT look to fit in with my computers.
Okay. That part is already coming apart.
Looks like the tape on each side was.
It actually shipped to me in this box,
It wasn't like protected or anything.
So this part is still sealed at least.
Yeah. As long as it looks like a period
correct monitor and it functions.
That's all I need.
I just need something nice for the show and for future LGR
videos, because CRTs don't last forever.
So it's good to have.
A couple extra.
Ooh, this is feeling fresh already, nicely packed.
Oh yeah.
I can smell the smells.
All the plasticky computery-ness of it.
All right. So we get a fresh power cable,
fresh documentation.
Don't know if this will have any like software,
probably not, but we'll see.
Base right here, basically.
All right.
Look at that.
I don't actually have any monitors from NEC.
I do have a couple LCDs but no CRTs from them.
So this is neat.
I like the way this looks.
So the monitor cable is attached.
Just nice classic VGA, right there.
Smells delectable. Now the little thing right there,
it's just offset with a bit of gray. So that's fun.
Nice round power button.
Lovely looking tube. Or at least the glass.
And I was admiring the top of the back here
as I was unboxing it. 'Cuz yeah,
it just tapers together in a nice end there.
It's not as angular or squared off as
a lot of my other monitors.
Nice NEC logo looking clean.
The whole thing looks clean, of course.
Okay. So this actually says April 2004.
So a little bit later than I thought
in terms of when it was manufactured.
These went on sale in like early 2001 originally.
So I guess they kept up the range for a little while. Yeah,
I'm fine with it being manufactured as late as possible,
as long as it's got the right look to it for my purposes.
And this does.
All right. Go ahead and get the base.
Nice.
Oh man.
Fresh power cables.
[laughs]
[sniffs] Almost toxic smelling.
Look, you got to smell your old components.
They've been around a while. They've earned that aroma.
Check that out. Always exciting.
Going back like 17 years, having a new,
old display to try out.
All right, enough of this,
let's go ahead and get it plugged in and then
see how it looks,
just gonna check and see if there's anything in here.
Eh, not really just some basic stuff
like here's how to clean
your monitor, don't ruin it.
Make sure you're sitting in front of it. Not behind it.
Press the controls to do things.
Let's get this turned on, plug it into some stuff.
And play with an old PC.
Okay. All ready to go here.
Plugged into the LGR Megaluminum Monster,
which is one of the machines
that I'm going to be taking to VCF Midwest.
Let's get it powered on.
Nice little dunk from the degauss doing its thing.
There we go.
Ooh, yeah.
Warming up already looking incredibly sharp.
Nice.
Yeah.
That's looking great.
Very nice and bright, as expected.
Super sharp. That is a pretty nice shadow mask.
That's what it looks like anyway. Yeah.
[Windows 98 startup sound]
- Oh yeah. Crappy speakers over there doing their thing.
And this looks,
absolutely fantastic here in person.
Hopefully that's coming across on camera.
So let's see what we got in terms of the settings. Yeah,
the 640x480, 16 bit.
That's what I had before this.
The other monitor I had plugged in.
The monitor itself detected just as "plug and play monitor."
That's fine.
And oh, hey look at that.
So we can go all the way up to 120 hertz at this resolution.
So let's give it a shot.
Ooh, that looks real good.
At least in person, you might be able to see a line.
Yeah. It's just synchronization
not being quite right with my camera, but here in person,
I mean, that looks phenomenal.
[laughs]
Like sometimes if you're looking at a CRT and I can just
like, look off to the side a little bit and I'll see sort of
a flicker going on. There's none whatsoever.
That just looks beautiful.
The brilliance of high refresh rates. Old displays,
new displays, whatever, it's awesome.
Yeah. Skifree at 120.
[laughs] Not like it really makes too much of a difference,
but hey whatever.
Dude this CRT looks fantastic.
Geometry looks amazing, a little off center right now
since I changed the refresh, but that's okay.
Colors are nice and punchy, super crisp.
I was reading in the manual that it is, in fact,
a 0.27 millimeter dot pitch, not 23,
like the CNET spec sheet said.
Which it also said the 27 right on the box,
if I had been paying attention.
So that's that. Whatever though it looks great at this size
and refresh rate.
But even though 120 hertz is amazing here in person.
It's not terribly useful for making this video,
especially since many of these games I've got on here,
won't run at 120 FPS anyway.
Both due to the lacking horsepower of this PC,
and the fact that most of these games are just gonna
default right back to whatever
vertical refresh it normally uses.
60, 70, 75, whatever.
It'd make perfect sense for like, old 3D shutter
glasses, for instance.
And 120 hertz was a big selling point back in the day for
low flicker,
less eyestrain while doing actual work and stuff.
But that's that.
So there's not a whole lot of point to me having a high
of a refresh on here right now.
So let's just put it back down to 75.
Like I think it was before.
Yeah. And yeah, this is the spread of games and software.
That I'm going to be having for folks to play and mess
around with at VCF Midwest, some of them anyway.
These are just some of the main Windows ones I have on here.
I've got an awful lot more in terms of DOS games and things.
So just gigabytes and gigabytes and gigabytes of games,
various types. Try out this menu system,
on-screen display here.
Brightness and contrast,
some RGB individual settings for the colors.
Button was sticking there for a second.
Horizontal, vertical adjustments,
panning around, stretching.
All your standard geometry stuff,
pin cushion rotation, all that. Degauss here.
Oh yeah.
Nice. And you can just go through some presets for color
temperature and whatnot.
Cool.
Oh hey.
And we can change the color of that.
I like that one.
Now that's handy, so that shows the
current status of refresh rates for
whatever mode you're in at the moment.
Let's try a game or two real quick just cause why not?
How about Command and Conquer: Red Alert?
Yes.
[intense music]
"Rescue Einstein." Okay.
[gunfire, assorted gameplay]
Such smooth scrolling.
Looks real good.
Nothing like a nice new sharp CRT for any of these kind of,
just little characters going around,
sharp pixel art and all that kind of stuff.
Well, anyway, now I'm just gonna get sucked into
playing Red Alert.
We can go all the way up to 1280 by 1024 if I remember.
Ooh, well that's a thing, such resolution.
Of course now my camera is not cooperating, but.
We'll fix that.
Turns all the way down to 60, which eh,
it makes sense for a monitor like this, this size,
this max resolution supported and all that.
Look at all this real estate. It's too small for my taste.
You know, 1024x768 is about the max
I really like optimally on a monitor
that's this size, 17 inches,
but still look at all that. You can just move the card
all over the place.
Now ski free is just ridiculous.
[laughs]
Little tiny ski man down there somewhere.
Let's see.
I'm assuming Yoot Tower actually will
benefit quite a bit from the high resolution.
Eh we're at 256 colors, it's fine.
[Yoot Tower startup sound]
Nice, nice.
Again, it's you know, on the verge of being too small,
but still.
That's awesome. You can see so much of your tower at once.
So if you ever take it down to yeah.
768.
Yeah.
Let's see. Ah, here we go.
Again, that's optimal for my taste and
really for what this screen is designed to handle.
[construction noises]
Anyway, yeah.
I'll probably put it down lower for the actual show just
cause so many other games on here are going to run
at a lower resolution. Like Duke 3D, for example.
[explosions]
- [Duke] Let's rock.
[pistol firing]
- [Clint] Yep. This looks great.
Time to die.
[laughs]
I don't know. It's pretty awesome, dude.
So yeah.
I guess that is about it for this video.
Duke 3D is actually something I'm going to be having also
set up at the VCF table, the LGR Things table.
So I'm going to have this computer and another one or maybe
one or two others who knows at least a couple of computers
linked together, networked. So we can play multiplayer
Dukematch, among other things, you know.
I'm gonna have all kinds of stuff set up there so yeah,
I'm pretty excited as you can tell
to get this going and I'm really happy
to have another new old stock monitor to fall back on,
especially since one of my others was kind of not doing so
great. I think it's just capacitors going bad, but still,
you know,
I don't have time to fix it between now and the show,
which at the moment the show is probably ongoing when you're
watching this, or it's already happened. Like I said,
September 11th to 12th, 2021.
And that's pretty much it.
I hope that you enjoyed seeing this very quick ramble
unboxing thing. This was going to be a Blerbs video,
but like I said,
I didn't have anything else going up this week here at LGR.
So I just figured eh, I have this,
it's better than nothing I hope.
And if you did enjoy this,
check out some of my other videos that are usually much more
better put together than this one. And that's yeah,
that's it, man.
Thanks for watching!