This Monitor is the Future | Nostalgia Nerd

hi folks this is a quick video about a monitor but this isn't any old monitor this monitor is the future the future for retro Tech and I bloody love it if you follow me on social media you may remember I first posted about it back in April this year from a stand at oll 22 and I was sold pretty much on the spot if you're anything like me you've got a plethora of machines and consoles along with several monitors or TVs to use them with the problem really is there isn't one job fits all for everything whether we're talking Atari St high res mode Amiga super high res mode VGA CGA EGA scart component s video even HDMI sure you can use something like a retro Tink or equivalent but say you wanted something neat something contemporary and something expandable in a modular fashion that is where checkmates retro styled IPS display comes in so basically this runs apparently uh assuming I haven't messed up this image um it runs at the equivalent of like a 46 33 does it perfect yeah perfect so 33 megahertz without FPU yeah um but it's if you I've started probably getting on for 100 of these sets now with the mister it's over 100 actually because I I sell them without the Mr as well and I must have some 40 50 packs of that I love this thing what you're seeing here is a mister that comes literally in the Box as an option complete with tons of machine distributions in an excellent little package if you're not aware of the Mr Project then you should really get out more or possibly less basically it's an open source project to recreate a lot of classic systems on an fpga de10 Nano board so you can just use this monitor as an all-in-one solution if that's your thing but for me the main draw is really all these interchangeable ports on the back the world is really your oyster the bottom pod is the driver and comes as standard featuring HDMI VGA component two composite inputs and one composite output all these inputs scale and stabilize flicker instantly without the use of a frame buffer they're fed through in 4x3 or 5x4 aspect ratio in 50 or 60 hertz and they can display 15khz the head's inputs no issue which is pretty mandatory with old systems but then you can add all these additional optional pods in containing RGB scart EGA or anything else you can think of the beauty is these pods are modular and can be built and will be built for all sorts of requirements and you can even make your own the only problem is this monitor doesn't exist outside of two prototype versions which I had in the office a couple of weeks ago it's a Kickstarter run by Steve Jones from Czech mate at the moment to give you some backstory Steve Jones has been in the scene for years in the late 80s to the end of the 90s he was involved in designing Amiga hardware and software his story of which is in the new book by David Pleasants called Commodore the Inside Story over the last three years he's had two successful kickstarters with custom desktop computer cases inspired by the Amiga 3000 which are very popular and liked due to the quality of build and the presentation and in his own words he's now trying to add this quality and flexibility to the monitor Market any Amiga fan will likely be aware of these kickstarters but this one has only about a week left and so I felt it my absolute duty to let you know about it before it's too late both as a favor to Steve but also because I really do want this project to succeed I should say this is not a sponsored video well not by Steve Jones or checkmate at least in fact when Steve came to my office a couple of weeks ago for a chat and demonstration I actually bought him the coffee outrageous anyway I guess I should introduce you to the man himself I'm just going to introduce you and say you've done some good stuff yeah because we haven't got the introduction yet I told you you have to properly hello everyone so I'm here with Stephen Jones of Checkmate and he's got a new product out well coming out on Kickstarter which is this Checkmate monitor which I'm very excited about because basically it allows you to connect everything to your back of this screen pretty much and it's in this nice look at this this nice slim CRT form factor and yeah this is like my dream product so I'll let Steve it's very nice thank you this is very nice I've got loads of monitors around here and I can replace them all with this yeah yeah I don't think you will because I think the CRTs are still great but it's like it could be like a general purpose yeah oh absolutely absolutely so I'll let you explain about the monitor okay hi everyone um so the concept the monitor was I wanted to create something that looked retro but was Modern so we have modern IPS panels so you get that great quality um so as you saw the depth I think more depth for no reason so what we have on the back is we have a thing called pods which are probably going to have to have a problem with the name um but at the bottom we have the main controller but then you have two other pods so in those pods you could put anything um we have a pod that does scarp and CGA and EGA we have a pod that puts a mister into it we have another pod that can put an S video card into it and then uh there's another one with the Raspberry Pi you can put into it so basically it's expandable and as you can see it's got a handle so you can pick it up and carry it around it's quite light as well isn't it uh yeah it's kind of in that point where make sure you get hold of it because it's it's not as heavy as the big old 20-inch CRTs no what is uh which you know um it was killer yeah um but um it has inside this um is a steel chassis and it basically holds everything bolts to the steel chassis um so uh it does have a bit of weight um uh hence I don't know if you can see the the bag but we have a carrying bag as an option as well so you when you if you want to take it somewhere like this one here this is my one I taped all the shows and meetings and stuff um and it's great because it's got my mister in it so I can simulate any piece of vector hardware and I can play any games and it's just a great thing to take around but I wanted to protect it these have got different cards in them yes this is more of an experimental one with some experimental boards we're working on yeah yeah the standard one comes with VGA HDMI two composite ends a composite out and component in there's a lot of information on the kickstarter the one above it um that one's got the scar RGB scart interface uh it's got another component but it's actually we'll do none into to lace as well as interlace whereas the basic one won't but it's also got something new which is one of the reasons it's been delayed it has CGA and EGA which I'm very excited about yeah because it is difficult to find that absolutely so um and also the one the other thing it will do is if you've got a Commodore 128 your 80 column mode you've probably not used you can plug into the back of this and then you can on switching between the different modes you can have 80 column or you can have the normal the 64 display and it will do both quite happily in fact the the design is an absolute lover of the 128 s video at the top here yeah it's just basically a hanger to put an S video card um we do have a I bought um I did as I explained I did I got a whole load of um chinesist video converters in to explain and I picked one that was inexpensive and it worked well I think 90 of people pleased with it having said that we're going to do fitting kits for the Retro Tink mini and the pro so you can use that if you want to and just either 3D print the mounting chat the mounting frame or you could buy the mounting frame from us so it's really expandable whatever you can think of in there the one thing I think one thing is quite nice if you look down the front now Ben one this is a prototype with prototype issues but if you can see down the front which is hanging out at the moment it's a utility panel so the idea of that is you can 3D print a panel that goes in there that can hold anything it can hold USB it could have for example an LED display so if you want to put a gotek somehow why put the display on the front or if you've got um mt-32 Pi which has a display or you can also fit inside here the ossc I notice you've got one over the back here yeah um you could fit one of them in and you can take the display and remove it and run it on a lead and mount that on the front and then have the infrared receiver on the front so you can control it it's just the idea is for makers so it's trying to cover a lot of a lot of it there's so many possibilities with it it's only it's just the modular aspect of it I love yeah the fact that you can pretty much decide what you E1 from the options on the back yeah yeah and then plug anything into it and you've got I'll create your own yeah create your own and then you've got a very high quality potentially IPS screen yeah and you're good to go and I I can just use it for filming anything and it looks great on with so many machines I suppose I should cover the um the panels because uh when you go onto the kickstarter it's very important to understand that what you're buying is the main chassis and the control all the electronics what you're not getting with that is the panel and there's a really good reason I know it sounds stupid but it's a good reason later on when you come to sorting out your payment you'll be able to choose between one and three panels so one will be this is the middle one which is the default this is my favorite this default panel and the prices are all on the kickstarter um but we're gonna have a budget version so it'll be obviously less expensive but then we're doing the Unicorn one and the idea of that is to make one for gamers so really low latency really nice high res I should say I haven't been paid for this this is I'm just here because I even bought the coffee yeah I did yeah but yeah I lost money in this Venture because I'm just looking forward to seeing this come out so what's the sort of um lead time what you expect how long are you expecting so the kickstarter's on at the moment we're about a week into it it uh finishes on the 18th of December once that's done um everything's explained on the kickstarter but the timeline for delivery at the moment is between September to December now what that means is I start shipping in September so like with my case is because I actually assembled them all and I build them all and test them um and then they ship them out and I can only do so many so fast so the cases took about two months in total to ship the whole lot because it was quite a lot and it'll be about the same amount of time so the shipping starts in September and then it's probably early December for next year it's done by invoice so as soon as you pay your shipping costs you get an invoice number that's your place perfect thanks for coming down yeah thanks so thanks so much it's really nice and I I think I will say and I said to him earlier was uh somebody hopefully remember a couple of videos on the Amiga and uh which yes did sucker I really liked it and I really liked it for a very good reason was that my original product in the late a very late 80s the Checkmate 1500 he mentioned in there yeah because of the Commodore 1500 most people don't know the story and it was really I really appreciate I did get a bit emotional I tell people now I'm 60. I kind of get a bit emotion too emotional but I did actually get to me because someone actually my you know that was before Davey bought his book out with my chapter yeah I think you know he watched it to be fair okay I'm glad it made me look very good yeah but thanks for coming in yeah and um I guess I will show you guys some more stuff about monitor now um just look at it running those dos resolutions without any issue that's what I'm talking about whilst I had it in my proximity I managed to test the screen with a few systems and they all worked very well but Steve has compiled a list of his own tested machines which should fill you with some confidence and his YouTube channel is filled with the monitor running with various machines also he informs me about the pricing with their recommended IPS screen will be 369 pounds plus v80 and shipping you might note that I'm a Kickstarter you pay for the chassis to start with and then can select the screen later and this kind of spreads out the price a bit and allows you to really customize what screen you want it's a lovely I like that I really like CGA there's something about it yeah this is a weird choice of colors as well the alternative palette is actually okay other things to note Steve informs me about the latency is about 1 60th of a second and I know that's important to a lot of people but he's found what he calls the Unicorn panel from our Cuda which has a latency of one millisecond and can handle 15 kilohertz natively so if that's your thing that might float your boat this stand you see on the bottom that's actually a stretch goal although it looks pretty neat without it anyway and Suits some older systems better that way you also get a pretty mean pair of speakers built in which is quite nice and something that's missing on a lot of professional monitors foreign T it's never going to be a CRT it looks good it looks good from multiple angles and it works well but if your expectations are at CRT level then you should probably manage them a little bit doesn't put me off because aesthetically it looks amazing and I just love the pure convenience of it that's what a lot of people want I think and he has informed me that an HDMI output which I really want you know I can record stuff as I'm using it then that would be amazing it may be available in the future but in lieu of that you could always use one of the mister's outputs to record footage the main takeaway with this Beast flexibility the bottom board the main driver also contains headers for various inputs internally So in theory you could 3D print yourself a bracket stick a retro Tink in it a Raspberry Pi or anything else and then reap that through to the screen remember though this is a prototype build you're seeing the second monitor Steve brought showed a new Edge connector system for the pods which I really dig I guess mainly because it reminds me of Isa slots but also because a lot of thought is going into this and that's very apparent oh also Steve never reimbursed me for that coffee what an absolute Fiend I can't believe I'm trusting him enough to put this video out so to make up for that coffee this video is sponsored by private internet access a world leading VPN provider with 30 million downloads 10 years of VPN experience and 100 open source software you all know how a VPN can benefit you by now private internet access works with all major streaming services allowing you unrestricted access to your favorite content around the world plus it's one of the few to fully support peer-to-peer sharing and torrenting their token based dedicated IPS give you 100 anonymity along with their no logs policy whilst helping Safeguard your privacy by blocking ads trackers and even malicious websites available for Windows Mac OS Android Linux iOS and many more private inset access allows you to protect up to 10 devices at the same time and by using my link below you can get an 82 discount equating to just 2.11 per month with three months completely free now I know I should have put this video out sooner circumstance meant that unfortunately I was unable to and so I have no idea if this project will even get funded by the time you watch this video it probably has already passed to be honest but Steve told me that if it doesn't then that's it the monitor won't be made which would be a crying shame but in either case I just wanted to share it because frankly it's cool as heck and I'm surprised it hasn't been done sooner I'm going to leave you with some more footage and until next time I've been Nostalgia nerd toodaloo [Music] it was funny there we go and now I've actually created a fantastic piece of art whoa is that your that version of the world is it no it's just I I don't know I was just I was messing around with it's a wonderful world that is not a wonderful it was not meant to be on camera because I I when I installed it the the um the edge of the sample pictures didn't didn't come off but yes nice okay yeah it's got a puddle I mean it it shows yeah probably uh is there any games on there yeah [Music] um that's awesome Stellar EGA graphics oh yeah [Music] it's pretty good yes it doesn't use sound blocks [Music] it's actually it's actually quite good I remember playing this on the Omega and just being blown away because it was just like the arcade this isn't quite but it is to be fair it is actually it's pretty good at the time oh do you want Hyundai do you want to see something actually we rang Mac OS in Omega yep [Music] so this is basically going to be a 50 megahertz o30 Macintosh I like teddy bears my little bottle we got bought a Big Ten from Germany legendary [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Nostalgia Nerd

Views: 980,035

Keywords: checkmate monitor, retro monitor

Id: iUKQhCGUHWc

Length: 20min 16sec (1216 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2022