Revenge from Mars LCD fit and how to make sync adapter

Hi all,
I have spent hours looking everywhere for the diagrams to make a sync adapter for my RFM so I can fit an LCD screen. I have finally done it and got it working, so thought I would share it here.

I bought a cheap cga to vga converter off ebay first - shown in the pic. You will then need a vga monitor cable and a 74ls02 chip to convert the H&V sync to a combined sync. I used a Dell 19" LCD computer monitor I had lying around.

First job cut off one end of the VGA cable and strip back the wires. You will need to find the red, green, blue, horizontal sync wire(usually grey) and the vertical sync wire(usually white). All the ground wires can be twisted together. sleeve each of the wires with heatshrink.

Next solder the red, green, blue and ground wires to the respective pins on connector P3 on the board.

Now for the 74ls02 chip. You only need pins 1,2,3,7 and 14. Solder the Horiz sync wire(grey) to pin 2 the vert sync wire(white) to pin 3. Pin 1 is the combined sync ouput and a wire from pin 1 goes to the pin marked 'S' on connector P3. Add a wire to pin 7 for ground and a wire to pin 14 for +5v. This power can be got from within the p2k PC case. Don't forget the board also needs +5v power so just tee together the power leads then off to the pc case for your supply

That's it!!! plug in your new lead to the p2k PC monitor socket and put another lead between the vga socket on the adapter (P4) and your monitor and off you go. Mine worked first time so good luck!!!

Will add more to this when I actually fit it into the RFM.

Feel free to ask any questions.

Kev

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No probs tony hope it helps!!

Kev

Well I said I would do it and I have finally got around to fitting a LCD monitor to my RFM, ably aided by my son Matt !!

I fitted a 19" dell monitor which has a supply range of 100-240volt, which is handy as the main supply in the RFM after the transformer is 110volts everywhere.
The pics have all uploaded in a weird order so I have put text next to each pic.

Feel free to ask any questions. I can tell you this looks amazing compared to the old CRT that has some convergence issues !!! I have 2 videos of the old crt and the new LCD - there is no comparison!!! I don't seem to be able to upload them to here so if any wants to see them let me know and I could stick them on you tube.

Cheers Kev (and Matt!!)

This pic below shows the cable mounts screwed back in place with all the cables nice and tidy, the CGA converter screwed to side of cab and the 110v power supply(the old green, white and black lead that powered the old CRT) spliced to the monitor power lead. This means the monitor power works through the main switch under the table as well as everything else.

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Pic here shows a quick rough test of everything to make sure all is working before final fix in place(note monitor was upside down at this point!!)

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The image below shows how much space is left when finished, without the old CRT in there. As shown by my son Matt round the back of the RFM !!! Only thing left to do now is get a couple of brackets made to mount the fluorescent to light the translate now.

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This image shows a pickup of a 5v supply for the cga to vga converter
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This shows the monitor fitted in the hole where the old wells gardner monitor came out off. the monitor fitted perfectly and sat in the recess that was already there. You can see I made a wood surrounds and sprayed it black (well my son did!!) before I screwed it into the case. This actually held the monitor in place very tight. We had to remove one of the wood pieces to turn the monitor through 180 degrees (as the image was upside down at first) as it was that tight we couldn't get it out!!

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Attached Files:

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Ok here goes the CRT video first then the LCD one. I don't know why but you are better going to you tube directly to watch these as the res is better

Let me know if they look ok and you can see the difference!!

Cheers Kev

Currently own STTNG, TZ, FT and RFM

Used to own ToM, TAF and Shadow

its a 4:3 monitor and any 74LS02 should work - check your wiring out

Cheers Kev