XM29 or XM29 Plus?

[mojo]

I have an opportunity to buy an XM29 or an XM29 Plus for the same price. I'm wondering which is best...

On paper the Plus model supports higher resolution and has a more compact layout at the back, but otherwise seems similar the regular XM29.

I plan to use it for consoles, a Supergun and PC/VGA, if it makes any difference.

Can anyone shed any light on what the differences are?

[Fudoh]

To my knowledge the PLUS is a few years younger, which might add a bit to it's remaining life-span...

[jonny5]

i have an XM29xtra....its great

like you said, the only real difference is the plus model supports higher resolutions...aside from that i think they are identical and have all the same inputs...

i would also recommend picking up some BNC-to-RCA adapters so you can use the component input...but it will accept 15khz via the VGA as well

[mojo]

Good point, that is well worth considering!

[jonny5]

although i forgot to mention, any resolutions above 800X600 are interlaced, at least on my xtra model they are

[mojo]

Thanks guys, all useful info.

Looks like the Plus is the one to go for.

I have a VGA to BNC lead. Hopefully it will accept VGA over the BNC connector as then I can use the VGA port for other stuff. Actually it looks like the DB15HD VGA and DB15 Mac connectors are just wired together, so with a little bit of luck it may be possible to use both. Not at the same time of course, just to save unplugging stuff.

[Muzza]

Looking to pick this up....... http://cgi.ebay.com.au/NEC-MultiSync-XM ... 4a9cc83248

Have a JP360, and trying to replicate arcade looks for DOJBlex, Death Smiles and Mushi. Currently at $99AU. Bargain?

Also have Saturn and Dreamcast to play it on.

Is it worth it?

[mojo]

Looks like a fantastic bargain I think.

There was one in the UK that went for £20 on eBay which I tried to get, but was beat to buy-it-now by seconds

[jonny5]

very good deal

[Arasoi]

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[mojo]

Well mine is at the Post Office I think, will collect tomorrow.

Interesting that the speakers are good. I was planning on getting some anyway as with the monitor in TATE mode one speaker will be down against the desk and the other pointing up

[Arasoi]

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[mojo]

Well I am still waiting for it to be delivered. They are saying Thursday so fingers crossed...

It's actually come just at the right moment because my TV broke and I would have had to get another one anyway. Now I can just use the XM29 with a Freeview box.

I'll see what I think of the speakers. The monitor has amplified outputs so it would not be hard to connect a couple and sit them either side of it.

[mojo]

Well it arrived and it's huge

So big in fact I can't get it up my stairs on my own. I'm waiting for my brother to come home to help me.

In the mean time I built a sync splitter so I can connect RGB SCART directly.

[Jack_from_BYOAC]

I recently got an XM29 plus and ran into a few issues immediately.

Mine is used from a university auction and initially would only power on for five seconds then turn itself off. Reading the manual I learned that the cause of this is either a faulty power circuit or a damaged fan.

So I took the back casing off and blew a bunch of dust out of one of the fans that was failing to start up. I spun it a few times with my fingers and it works now and the monitor stays on.

Hope that is helpful to anybody who stumbles across this post.

However, now I'm in a much more frustrating pickle.

I was bumbling through the on-screen menu and came across a function called "key control". I figured I knew what this did and tried to exit back to the main menu, but instead accidentally turned it to "off". Now I can't control the onscreen menu with the buttons on the front of the menu anymore.

This sucks! And apparently there is no way to turn it back on without the remote.

I don't have the remote to this monitor so I thought I might get lucky with a universal remote. I found a code on the internet for the remote that came with my cable receiver and gave it at try. At first nothing happened, so I tried pressing various buttons and one of them made the monitor turn off and go into standby mode with a red light.

Nothing I have tried since has been able to get the monitor to turn back on. It appears I am going to have to purchase a replacement remote to even get basic functionality restored to this monitor.

I have contacted NEC about this issue and they say there is no code to reset the monitor, and no amount of time unplugged will do it either.

There is a pc external control feature on this monitor that I might could use to turn it back on and change inputs, but it does not allow access to the on-screen menu to control h-size and v-size, along with brightness and contrast.

So a word of warning to you if you purchase an XM29 plus without a remote. DO NOT TURN OFF KEY CONTROL.

[Arasoi]

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[mojo]

Well I got mine set up but am having problems too.

It turns on and the power LED goes green, but there is no output to the screen at all. Not even menus. It responds to the remote (e.g. I can hear it degauss) but there is no output what so ever.

It is also very noisy. Maybe the fans need replacing or something.

I might take a look inside but it's so damn heavy it's very difficult to do. There is a jumper in the manual which turns the OSD off so I'll have to check that too. I'm just taking a break while I recover from lifting it! It certainly isn't easy to TATE.

[Jack_from_BYOAC]

Does it at least show VIDEO 1 or RGB 1 or the like?

Does the screen gather static?

Have you tried every input?

The fans on mine made quite a racket too for the short time I had it working. I believe they are similar to the internal fans of a pc so it shouldn't be too hard to replace them if ever needed.

[mojo]

I don't get anything on the screen, not even the on-screen text/menus I tried RGB/VGA and S-Video.

The screen doesn't seem to gather any static so it sounds like the tube isn't working

[mojo]

Jack_from_BYOAC: How hard was it to get the back off?

[Jack_from_BYOAC]

Not hard at all. There are 8 big screws and about 6 little screws. They are all visible without taking anything off.

I turned mine on it's screen on a carpet floor and then pulled up gently but firmly after I had removed the screws. The back came off easily.

After that I gently lowered it back onto it's bottom but picking off the plastic part of the front and holding on tightly.

When you put it back on make sure all the screw holes are lined up before trying to put any back in.

[mojo]

Thanks, I'll give that a try tomorrow.

[mojo]

I fixed it





The connector had come loose. It's an unusual one that I have not seen before. I had to bend it a bit to make it sit back in the slot properly. Once re-seated everything worked perfectly.

Many thanks to Jack_from_BYOAC. Although I know a fair bit about electronics I had never worked on a monitor/TV before and had heard all the dire warnings about lethal voltages etc. I was contemplating take it to a repair shop but Jack's words reassured me enough to try it myself.

The next step is to replace those noisy fans. Being designed for very hot and enclosed environments they are running pretty fast. I'll put some quiet ones in with resistors to drop the speed right down.

[mojo]

Okay, everyone has probably lost interest by now, but I'll post anyway just in case someone finds this thread.

The monitor is fantastic. It rotates easily and you can degause it from the remote so no need to power it off and let it cool down. The picture is sharp and the colours deep while still retaining that CRT look that LCDs lack. With a sync splitter it works well with RGB consoles via SCART.

The only issue I have with it is that the fans are quite loud. I have been experimenting a lot with them but have not quite cracked it yet. The main issue is that the monitor checks the speed of the fans and powers off after 5 seconds if it doesn't think they have started to spin fast enough. Simply replacing them doesn't work, presumably because the RPM speed is too low. Trying to undervolt the supplies fans fails as well.

However, there is only possibility I am working on. I noticed that once the monitor was powered up I was able to drop the speed of one of the fans via a potentiometer and it didn't seem to mind. My guess is that it only checks the fan speed at power-on time and then just makes sure they are still spinning. It's not an uncommon set-up. I'm going to try a couple of things to see if I can use this to my advantage.

Another option would be to have one fan running at full speed and split it's sensor line off to cover the other two fans as well, which could then run at any speed. Again, testing is required.

[mojo]

I made it quiet

After much experimentation I discovered that the XM29 only seems to like it's original fans. Any replacement fan I tried span but the monitor turned itself off after 5 seconds as it normally does in the case of fan failure. I'm not entirely sure why that is. I found a datasheet for the original fans but they didn't seem to be anything special. Maybe they have unusual hall effect sensors on the RPM line or are not open collector.

Anyway, eventually I did discover that the XM29 is fine with it's original fans running on 5V instead of 12V. The lower RPM doesn't seem to bother it. Unfortunately the fans won't start at 5V and are not that quiet even then. I gathered up a few spare parts I had lying around and came up with the following solution.

I picked the quietest of the original fans and attached it to a little circuit using an LM317 voltage regulator and an ATtiny13 microcontroller. I could have used a 555 timer instead of the microcontroller but I didn't have one to hand. The LM317 is set up to provide 5V for the fan to run on. The 317 is controlled by the voltage to the adjust pin, which is normally connected to a potential divider which itself is connected to ground on one end. Rather than connecting to ground I connected it to a pin on the MCU. The MCU holds the pin at 5V for two seconds which causes the LM317 to supply ~10V to the fan, enough to get it started. The MCU then drops the pin down to GND and the LM317 produces 5V to keep the fan running. The MCU also monitors the fan's RPM to make sure it doesn't stall.

For the other two fans I replaced them with Panaflo silent ones running at 5V (generated by in-line zener diodes). Because the XM29 does not seem to like their RPM sensor output I simply connected their sense lines to the original fan. Having three sense lines commoned to one sensor doesn't seem to cause any problems.

Result: a virtually silent monitor. In fact the monitor buzzes a little when first turned on which is now louder than the fans. It's slightly better than my slim PS2 and much better than my Dreamcast.

[Jack_from_BYOAC]

Well, bad news. The remote I ordered didn't work.

The RD-354E remote I received does nothing to my monitor. I believe I need the actual remote, the RD-346F. I have contacted a member here who says he has two and we'll see what happens.

[Arasoi]

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[Jack_from_BYOAC]

It's cool. Not being able to get the XM29 working made me fiddle with my Mitsubishi AM3501R. It's a similar, but larger, and older monitor.

Previously it had a dark screen. So I took off the back and turned up the screen adjustment til I saw retrace lines, then backed it off til they barely disappeared and I still had deep black. Now my screen is noticeably brighter and nicer

I am using the PS3's AV-multi out option. It allows both 480i and 480p RGB connections. The 480i is RGBS, and the 480p is RGsB for some reason.

In order to connect my PS2 to this monitor in RGBS mode I was using an adapter from Ultimarc. It is console to arcade monitor adapter, but it works here too.

Compared to my S-video inputs however, the image was always dim.

So I decided I didn't like that and removed the adapter. In it's place I connected a component cable. This component cable is going to transmit RGB video, with the sync on the green line.

I used phone plug to BNC adapters to connect the component cables to the RGB ports on the back of the monitor, and the result was immediately noticeable. It was bright! Not dingy and dim anymore.

The adapter must weaken the signal considerably.

All of the above should be applicable to the XM29 or any other RGB monitor.

It sucks that I can't get good quality 480i RGB out of my PS2 though. Right now I'm turning the impedence switch from 75 ohms to High mode. This brightens the image considerably, but destroys my lower black levels.

Any suggestions for an alternative?

[mojo]

It sounds like the signal levels are too low. Unfortunately there is no real standard, so you get anywhere from VGA (0.7V) to arcade (~5V) and various stuff in between.

You could make a little amplifier to correct the levels I suppose. I don't know much about the Ultimarc but you might be able to adjust the gain on it somehow. The levels are too high for 0.7V mode but too low for 5V mode, so you need to either boost to full 5V scale or drop down to 0.7V scale.

[undamned]

I made it quiet
...
The MCU also monitors the fan's RPM to make sure it doesn't stall.

Excellent work, man! I need to do something similar on a little Dell computer I modded (complains about missing fan on boot up). Just curious: what does the MCU do if RPMs fall below desired? Kick up the LM317 voltage?
-ud