January 24th: it was a dark winter morning in 2024 when I woke up to my clock radio blasting KZUM as they played back a tape of some long-ago Grateful Dead concert. Once I've regained lucidity I look at my iPhone and see not one, not two, but NINE E-Mails notifying me of hits on my eBay saved searches. Two subject lines in particular wake me up faster than if I had my morning coffee injected into my veins:
ibm 5151: 1 NEW!
monochrome monitor: 1 NEW!
I had saved searches for many CRTs of archaic video standards, and because I know the odds are against anyone who has CRTs shipped I had these searches limited to being located within driving distance of me. Because I live in a quasi-urban oasis in the Ass of Nowhere, results rarely ever appear. So of course I immediately open the E-Mails, and I'm hit with a second wave of adrenaline: that second notification for "monochrome monitor" was not a duplicate of the IBM 5151, oh no.
There were two of them.
I bought the IBM 5151 the following day because 1. Green has always been my favorite color, 2. Unlike the other, this one had been tested, 3. COMET TRAILS! 4. it was relatively speaking more affordable than the other one, and 5. the other one was some no-name generic thing with no recognition.
Fastforward to New Year's Eve 2024 and that other monitor still hadn't sold. So I shot the eBay seller an offer, and they declined, but gave me a hint as to what they would take. Fast further to Feburary 2025 and it still hadn't sold, so I shot the seller a new offer, and one day short of March 2025 I FINALLY had the spiritual twin to my IBM 5151 in hand.
Searching for this monitor by it's supposed name only got me results for the very eBay listing that had been up all this time, plus one single image uploaded to Imgur on July 3rd, 2014 that I have no recollection of how I found. With a name like "HR 4575" I couldn't even be sure that was the name of the monitor or some pre-Amazon sludge company. It was printed on the bezel at the top left and all over the box, but besides that the only other information I had was that the box indicated it was "MADE IN KOREA".
So now that I have the monitor for myself, I'm being responsible and and documenting the monitor for the benefit of tech historians present and future. Because they state valid information but are more raw and organic (and it's cooler this way) I'll actually quote the Level 29 BBS messages I wrote using my new monitor.
Select: [NA#PSMGEO] #
Go to message number: 18503
=====================================
Message #18503 (1 unread)
Subject: New old stock MDA monitor
From: Argot
Date: 2025-03-01 18:08:47
Connection: ASCII dialup at 2400 bps
Back in January 2024 an obscure MDA monitor came up for sale on eBay in my
general area, but literally the exact same day an IBM 5151 came up for sale
even closer, and for much less money. After all this time the monitor remained
unsold, so I shot the seller an offer that brought it more within my budget,
and they accepted! So one day short of March 2025 I got the monitor I passed up
on all that time ago.
The monitor is an HR 4575, which is a 14" monitor with no apparent anti-glare.
I could only find one other example of this monitor which is a picture of one
running on a PC/XT from 2013 or something. So now having what seems to be the
only other one in existence, I now have some of my questions answered. First of
all, what's the date of manufacture? June 1990. What company produced this? JC
Information Systems Co. from California ZIP code 94539. What's the serial
number on mine? V00600815. Place of manufacture? Made in Suwon, South Korea.
Does the booklet have any useful info? No. What color is the phosphor? Mine is
amber, like the other one. Does this one work after sitting unused in a box for
-- Press a key --
35 years? Despite the smell of mildew, yes! And it looks a LOT sharper than the
5151, like it's hard to explain but the 0 hrs on the tube are clear.
Oddly, there was a message written on the flap of the box in red Sharpie that
indicated it was paid for on a date in 1995. So I guess I'm at least the third
person to pay for this? Interesting.
The amber phosphor has no persistance to it, so the 50Hz refresh rate is
visible to the naked eye. Nevertheless, it's a very visually appealing display
and I'm glad I was finally able to buy this. Though I still love the IBM 5151
with it's comet trails, hyper intense shade of green (My favorite color since
birth!) and funky case design, I think there's some things this generic no-name
monitor does better, such as the black colored phosphor providing better
contrast, and the fact that when you turn it off from the sensibly included
power switch around the right bezel it doesn't make you feel like the tube is
going to suffer permanent burn-in, and that it's a fair bit larger than the
5151. Plus, as much as I love the color green, amber is frankly a lot easier on
the eyes and makes writing excessively long bulliten board posts so easy you
don't even notice you're doing it. :)
Select: [nep>rutiq] >
==========================================
Message #18507
Subject: Re: New old stock MDA monitor
From: Argot
Date: 2025-03-02 11:10:36
Connection: ASCII dialup at 2400 bps
Replying to: Argot, message #18503
One more bit of information I learned after examining the monitor a bit more:
the CRT itself is an M32ECB2LA, mine being serial number 031490. A brief Google
search only turned up a service manual for one Samsung MZ467, which lists it as
a part along with the M32ECB2WD and M32ECB2GR, which I assume are paper white
and green, respectively. Now you`d think from this the CRT was made by Samsung,
and that's what I assumed before I even bought it. But it turns out it was
actually made by Philips!
Select: [p<rmtiq] Q
So yeah, that pretty much says all there is to verbalize. And fun fact for the record: I wrote those messages on my IBM 5155 without logging the terminal, so I needed to download them to my real computer to paste into this webpage. I'm sure much to the delight of tech nerds with similar affinities to me, I used a dial-up modem with my modern-ish Windows 10 machine using PuTTY, at a blazing 26400 bps over a traditional POTS line!
I'll admit that the manual isn't actually useless, it does tell you everything you need to know. Obviously for us that isn't much. But for completion's sake, here's a scan of the pamphlet!
And of course, more comprehensive pictures of the monitor than what has been available before. To view any picture in its full resolution, Right Click > Open in new tab.
Argot
Page created: Sunday, March 3rd, 2025
Last modified: Sunday, March 3rd, 2025