R52p QXGA starts with a pink hue

[Arthur Swart]

I put my R52p with QXGA screen in storage years ago, when the screen started showing a pink hue upon startup. The colours came back after a couple of minutes, like it needed to warm up. I put it away, to not damage it further.
I rediscovered this forum after a 25 year absence, I hope it's still as good as I remember.

I want to use the R52p for retro gaming, mostly DOS titles.

* Is the screen salvageable and does it make sense to try that? Or should I just replace it?
* Is the hue a screen issue or is there another culprit?
* Does using the screen as is cause additional damage?
* Is an R52p any good for retro gaming (I have a T40, T43p and a T60 on another shelf)?

Thanks,

Arthur

[TPFanatic]

Red screen is i believe a dying ccfl. The old ibm flexviews are infamous for this. You should be able to do a surgery on the lcd and replace the ccfl (please recycle the old hazardous mercury tube responsibly).

QXGA means you can downscale to XGA with minimal blurring. Worst thing about gaming on the Flexviews is their low response time and low brightness. R50p has the FireGL T2 which is a competent Radeon 9600 with 128mb VRAM. The newest title i could play on R50p was Need For Speed World before it’s closure, but be aware that the massive heat output of 3D gaming will accelerate the BGA detachment failure of the GPU or Southbridge. Throughout the early 2010s I killed a number of T42p in this way (poor child me’s parents wouldn’t buy me any better or more reliable PC). I’d stick to cabinet emulation or really low resource games, might help to force the CPU and GPU into power savings mode so they can’t get so hot. Otherwise they WILL get dangerously hot. R50p interestingly uses a passive cooler for the GPU through some old thermal pad.

[axur-delmeria]

Dying CCFL backlight, as TPFanatic has already said.

LED backlight upgrade is possible, but I don't know if kits are even available. Might need soldering too.

[600X]

Somewhat off topic but I used my A31p for retro gaming as well in the past. The screen and peripherals combo really elevated the experience, but given that finding spare parts at this point is next to impossible, I would advise against your plans, assuming you want the R52p to keep working in the future.

These days there are some good alternatives though. I've got a 28" 2560p 3:2 monitor that works amazingly well with 4:3 content. There are good 3dfx emulators now and many retro games work on modern Windows. I play them on a modern system with modern studio monitors, mechanical keyboard and with 4k maximum graphics on that beautiful large screen (DCI-P3 colors), the experience is quite mind blowing. Many older games actually support 3:2 with the widescreen patches that are available and those that don't barely stand out because the black bars are so small when displaying 4:3 content on a 3:2 screen.

So just something to consider. BTW I have a QXGA R61 and the panel has only been holding up OK. A lot of light bleeding around the edges, even though it has only been in storage pretty much since I got it.