Beautifully old-school Web in so many ways. Besides the obvious (the layout, the "Sign the Guestbook" link) it is the whole "love" displayed by the site.
Kids, this is what the original web was like. Dedicated (maybe obsessive) site creators that (by hand) put together a site as a tribute to their passion—perhaps hoping to find other like-minded souls out there.
I wish there was a way to find these sites more easily... I know they're out there. I miss the original idea of The World Wide Web from my childhood :/
How feasible is it to make a crt from parts? I find crt's fascinating learn best by doing- I at least want to demonstrate horizontal and vertical sweeps. But I've never seen a DIY CRT kit before.
> How feasible is it to make a crt from parts? [...] I've never seen a DIY CRT kit before.
The closest thing that springs to mind: A friend of mine once drilled a hole into an empty Vodka bottle, stuck two wires in it (one at each end), a hose adapter for a vacuum pump, "sealed" the whole thing with a hot glue gun and hooked it up to several scavenged microwave oven transformers in series. Yes, the output was rectified and capacitors were also involved.
I suppose rearranging the electrodes (using a piece of sheet metal with a hole in it; both fed through the neck of the bottle) and wrapping the sides of the bottle with 4 strips of aluminium foil could get you a beam and some crude deflection control. Not sure tough what you would coat the end of the bottle with, but I guess vacuum coating would be applicable.
If that sounds absolutely insane to you, I'd wholeheartedly agree.
At least to my ears, trying to build a CRT from first principles, combined with learning-by-doing and learning-EE-from-youtube-tutorials, sounds like a fast path to end up either dead or in a permanent care facility. Not exactly something I'd hand out in beginner-friendly kit form.
The parts for making neon signs are not as uncommon and it would be kind of an introductory approach to building the skill necessary for more complex electron tubes.
In some ways it's never been easier to get all the equipment you will need. But if you're wanting to make ones even half as good as the ones on this page, you'd probably want to become a skilled glassblower and outfit a lab that looks something like this:
Last week a couple of colleagues and I opened an old VGA CRT monitor to try to fix the broken front control buttons. One of my colleagues started his career as a TV repair technician, so he knows how to do it safely, but even then running a CRT without the case is scary as hell.
Anyway, the more I learn about CRTs, the more magical they seem to me. It's incredible what very smart engineers were able to accomplish decades ago with only analog technology!
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 24.8 ms ] threadKids, this is what the original web was like. Dedicated (maybe obsessive) site creators that (by hand) put together a site as a tribute to their passion—perhaps hoping to find other like-minded souls out there.
No ads. Wild, I know.
I wish there was a way to find these sites more easily... I know they're out there. I miss the original idea of The World Wide Web from my childhood :/
i also like how they use a through-hole transistor as a scale for their miniature CRTs section
be sure to check out another more modern labor of love for CRTs: crtdatabase.com
The closest thing that springs to mind: A friend of mine once drilled a hole into an empty Vodka bottle, stuck two wires in it (one at each end), a hose adapter for a vacuum pump, "sealed" the whole thing with a hot glue gun and hooked it up to several scavenged microwave oven transformers in series. Yes, the output was rectified and capacitors were also involved.
Here are some pictures:
https://chaos.social/@itsyndikat/107846783094589995
IIRC what he wanted to do was plasma etching.
I suppose rearranging the electrodes (using a piece of sheet metal with a hole in it; both fed through the neck of the bottle) and wrapping the sides of the bottle with 4 strips of aluminium foil could get you a beam and some crude deflection control. Not sure tough what you would coat the end of the bottle with, but I guess vacuum coating would be applicable.
If that sounds absolutely insane to you, I'd wholeheartedly agree.
At least to my ears, trying to build a CRT from first principles, combined with learning-by-doing and learning-EE-from-youtube-tutorials, sounds like a fast path to end up either dead or in a permanent care facility. Not exactly something I'd hand out in beginner-friendly kit form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxL4ElboiuA
Anyway, the more I learn about CRTs, the more magical they seem to me. It's incredible what very smart engineers were able to accomplish decades ago with only analog technology!