What is burned into this monitor? (Better test maybe)

Posted by Lectraplayer@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 14 comments

Update of my previous thread now maybe with a better test screen. I was hoping to add the new test screen to the old thread but I can't add photos after the fact for farther discussion.

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LocalH@reddit

Whatever device is burned in, it used the Motorola 6847 VDU, that's the exact same font used on the Color Computer 1 and 2, including reverse-video instead of lowercase.

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BritOverThere@reddit

Also used on the British Acorn Atom and Dragon 32 / 64 and the Japanese NEC PC-6001 (although that used an Hitachi clone).

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m-in@reddit

Let's be character cell-accurate folks, come on :)
```
CHA X100 CHB X100 CHC X100
HV OK HV OK HV OFF
DC+0.000 DC+0.000 DC-0.002
-------DYNAMIC COMPONENTS-------

RF:OFF

FREQ 1 MHZ
--------------------------------
EX 380.00 200-600 AT 1.00 STEP
EN 380.00 200-600 AT 1.00 STEP
AXIS-WAVELENGTH NAVG. 10
DATA- A/B A B
SENDING A/B
```

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profoundlybrokenCRT@reddit

Seconding someone else's "spectroscopy" suggestion.

Could "EN 380.0..." be "EM 380.0..."? If so, these could be the excitation and emission wavelength ranges being measured in the experiment, measured at intervals of one wavelength unit.

"AXIS-WAVELENGTH" suggests to me that there was an option to toggle between energy and wavelength units on the z-axis.

"DATA- A/B A B" also sounds like an option to background-normalize the resulting spectrum of the sample (Channel A) by the background signal (Channel B).

If the wavelength units were in nanometers, then this would correspond to optical spectroscopy. The high voltage seems a bit weird, but maybe the system was old enough to be using vacuum tube photon detectors?

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ellindsey@reddit

Vacuum tube photomultupliers isn't an old thing, those are still used in machines made today.

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ConstructionSafe2814@reddit

It's not me, this is what AI thinks of the text I supplied it (see above)

Final, high‑confidence identification

In very plain language:

Yes — this was almost certainly used in a medical or hospital‑affiliated environment, but by physicists or engineers, not clinicians

This screen belonged to a high‑voltage, RF‑controlled, wavelength‑dependent measurement system, most likely used in medical or biomedical research, such as radiation detection, optical diagnostics, or imaging subsystem calibration.

In very plain language:
Yes — this was almost certainly used in a medical or hospital‑affiliated environment, but by physicists or engineers, not clinicians.

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fluteofski-@reddit

There’s a lot of speculation around it being medical. It could also be semiconductor manufacturing. We use a lot of high voltage and RF generators. In the chip making process. Some of the machines have been in service for decades. So it wouldn’t be outa the question to be finally retiring some CRT’s from service. I recently designed an upgrade for a process module that has been in service since 03 and the transfer module even older.

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crookdmouth@reddit

The font looks a lot like Commodore 64. They did have a bunch of software for controlling different things like HAM radio interfaces and other dedicated systems.

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ellindsey@reddit

Possibly used to control some kind of spectrometer. The HV could be to supply the voltage needed by three photomultiplier tubes. 200-600 at 1.0 step looks like a wavelength sweep, presumably there would be a prism or diffraction grating used to sweep across that range of wavelengths and sample the light intensity at each step. I work for a company that builds somewhat similar equipment, although I've never seen a screen quite like this.

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TerminalJunk@reddit

Can make out...

CHA, CHB and CHC in the top boxes
What could be "HV" on the row below with "OFF"
The last row is "DC+"

I'd guess that HV is high voltage and the row below is DC voltage

There is a header of "DYNAMIC COMPONENTS" and possibly RF OFF.
The next line is "FREQ" and what looks likes the unit, so could be KHZ, MHZ, or GHZ
Below that are likely to be frequency ranges with the letters "AT" after them and then another number, decimal point, two more numbers and the word "STEP"
The third row from the bottom could be "AXIS WAVELENGTH", cant make out the rest of the line.
Row below is "DATA A/B"
Last row could be "SENDING A/B"

Just a long shot but I wonder if it's anything to do with the 3.5GHZ radio band, possibly some sort of status readout for a computer controlled digital transmitter / receiver?

Probably nowhere even close but makes sense to me lol.

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Hustletron@reddit

Reminds me of a load cycler with three channels

High voltage

May have been a quality control tester?

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RaccoonEnthuiast@reddit

Definitely something industrial, this was most likely used as a display for a CNC machine or similar

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LadyZoe1@reddit

Looks like a CNC machine operator panel.