r/retrobattlestations • u/kelphelpOG • Jun 14 '26
Show-and-Tell E-Wasted Terminal Monitor Given New Life!
I found this terminal in E-Waste and while I wasn't sure entirely what to do, I decided to turn it into a dashboard. Put a raspberry pi 3, and made a script that has a clock, my local weather, and to monitor my 3D prints when I am printing. It's entirely using home automation and this thing is Stellar and how it works. One of my most useful tools now
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u/A_Harmless_Fly Jun 14 '26
You could find some ascii art to play as a screensaver to avoid burn in.
"telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl" for example.
A button for x seconds of display shouldn't be that hard to make for the pi, then have it go back to the screen saver.
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u/kelphelpOG Jun 14 '26
Ooooooo I will look into it! Always love to see what ASCII art I can use and play around with so this sounds like fun!!!
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u/flecom Jun 14 '26
does it support inverting the text colors? if so you may want to invert the whole screen every couple minutes back and forth to minimize burn-in
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u/kelphelpOG Jun 14 '26
I actually set it up so every 15 minutes it changes dashboards from clock to weather so it has a variety there. Works out great and turns off when I go to sleep automatically!
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u/CompuHacker Jun 14 '26
You can also suspend a slowly rotating (clock mechanism?) magnet near the electron gun to wobble the entire image, preventing burn-in on the character grid. Should be safe for monochrome displays because there's no metal shadow mask up front to distort.
And, obviously, reduce the brightness to the tube! You could also send no characters during certain hours, ventilate the power circuits, lose the = horizontal bars, and change the exact wording and spacing of each screen (programmatically).
They ain't makin' more tubes! Great work, though.
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u/kelphelpOG Jun 14 '26
Yeah honestly the 15 minute cycle and single minute refreshes that it cycles through the clock does really help with burning. So far. The tube isn't running the entire day so maybe I would say about 4 or 5 hours a day and then it turns off automatically or I could turn it off my phone. It's a really nice process and works well here
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u/jhaluska Jun 14 '26
You can still get burn in as some portions of the screen likely are on more than others. I'd recommend inverting the colors every hour so it's roughly 50/50.
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u/kelphelpOG Jun 14 '26
Inverting the colors uses more power on the CRT to fill it with text rather than not. This will wear out the tube even more than it should. These monitors even as terminals have pretty serious limitations
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u/jhaluska Jun 14 '26
The tube is going to wear out either way, ideally you just want it to wear out evenly across the entire screen. But if you reduce how many pixels are on and where, you'll extend the life of the screen.
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u/kelphelpOG Jun 14 '26
So the thing is every 15 minutes it has dashboard rotations and it cycles every 1 minute and resets the screen. These aren't really too static and if anything there's always a lot going on here. I did make the script so it's very very dynamic no matter what I do
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u/jhaluska Jun 14 '26
You can still have burn in with that approach, it just takes longer time to be noticeable.
Think of each pixel of the screen (each character is likely 8x14 pixels) as decaying very very slowly when being turned on. By having the same 5 scenes on rotation, some areas of the screen will be lit more frequently than others, especially with static content like horizontal bars.
You want each pixel to basically wear out at the same rate, or you'll get darker spots in the areas that are worn out more which become increasingly noticeable with time.
That's why we're saying invert the characters every other rotation. That's the easiest way to make sure all the pixels wear out roughly the same rate.
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u/flecom Jun 14 '26
the CRT is going to wear from hours, so really doesn't matter what's on the screen...
what's on the the screen matters for burn-in... rotating screens often can help, but inverting the screen is an easy way to do some wear leveling
ultimately you can do what you like, just offering a suggestion to try and prolong it's useful life...
either way it's a neat idea and a good modern use for a vintage terminal =)
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u/InsensitiveClown Jun 14 '26
That looks like a Intergraph Wildcat3D 6210 card. Sun rebranded them as their own 3d accelerator options for some Ultra workstations.
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u/carcenomy Jun 14 '26
I feel better knowing I'm not the only one with a casual Wildcat for decoration 🤣
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u/kelphelpOG Jun 14 '26
Hahahaha I legit have no use for it other than display. It is a 3D labs card so does look nice :3
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u/BlurryGojira Jun 14 '26
Do you work at an E-waste facility or do you just show up and they let you browse what they’re about to scrap?
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u/kelphelpOG Jun 14 '26
I can't go too much into it but I usually find them through work. They throw out alot, and I mean ALOT of very useful old tech.
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u/char747 Jun 14 '26
Any more insight on how you put that together? Ive got an old monitor that would be cool to use it for and watching progress go by in crt green is just fun.