Quoting Fanakapan

Greetings All,

This link seems to have all (or most) of the DAS software along with wincats and windas.
Sony DAs Sony Windas Sony wincats etc.

http://www.ablserv.com/files/

This is a good link to the windas and wincats programs, the only problem is you need to bypass the copyright protection. Fourtunately this is an easy task given you know how to use a debuger. Maybe someone would post a binary patch to the forum to disable the security.Though the program uses sophisticated hardware copy protection ( a dongle you attach to LPT1), the guts of the program are not encrypted and can be run without the dongle. Just find the branch before it pushes the string "config error" onto the stack, take the other path and enjoy

Once the program works you get to make TONS of adjustments, all are explained by the program.

Whatever you do, DO NOT set default settings (File->MPU), the defaults will appear to have killed your monitor. If you do happen to reset your whole EEPROM (as I did, lol, oops!) all you have to do is go to (Adjustment->Procedure) and do all the steps in order, takes a few hours and almost everything can be eyeballed except for white balancne.You can adjust your centering, Auto-centering, and geometry for low and high frequencies much better than the factory defaults.

White balance takes many passes to get right so this is the main reason to avoid MPUing the monitor, unless you have a color calibrator/ colorimeter/ spectrophotometer etc. (~60$ on ebay for the cheap ones like colorvision's spyder). In that case, It's probably a good idea to redo the white balance in hardware, rather than with .icc color profiles for software.G2 adjustment is part of the white balance, so it's best you (File->save) your .dat first, then (help->expert) to find out which part of the .dat is G2 then lower it a bit and load it back into your monitor to avoid having to eyeball the white balance. I think though, that if your whitebalance is correct, and all you touch is the G2 you may not have to adjust it through the .dat file and your whitebalance settings will remain, but save your .dat before you make any changes just to be safe.

I don't know if .dats are the same for every monitor, maybe they are the same for every batch, or, at the worst, they are all hand adjusted by QC guys at the factory, but how much can change between one monitor and the next? I do known that different models are incompatible with eachother, even ones that are very simmiliar in spec (like P991 and P992). Maybe if the monitors share the same chasis files could be swapped, such as between the compaq and dell versions of the same monitor from sony.

Another plus of using this software is that it allows you to make your convergence ABSOLUTELY PERFECT! Even in the CORNERS! NO TRADE OFFS! Seriously, I couldn't believe it, I had always thought flat CRTs were doomed to crumby convergence, not true at all. The dead on convergence doesn't just help with edges of color but also improves the clarity/focus of sigle pixels at high resolutions ( If you ever see the b&w xroot window mesh in X11 you will know what I mean by convergence affecting the resolution of single pixels). The downside is it takes a little bit of time to adjust it perfect, but the program has you go through a series of steps so you could get reasonable results in a casual 20 minutes or less .

So yeah, once you download the software and disable the protection, build the link interface mentioned earlier in the thread by EPS300i and atomist, or just download the dos DAS software posted earlier, it has the schematic atomist posted. Regarding the max232 chip, it just functions as a voltage converter between TTL levels and RS232 levels, there are many different cheaper brands that do the same function just search max232 on ebay, some guys even give you the capacitors while some chips don't need external capacitors. ALL you need is the chip, and wires, breadboard/proto typing board can make connecting it easier.

I think some people have found a way to load in the *.dat files saved from yoru monitors eeprom with some other software mentioned in the thread. If you take a look inside the .dat s they are very simple. and better yet, the windas program explains each parameter in the .dat files (Help->expert)

Ok, I think I am having too much fun raving about this great approach to reviving these excellent monitors, I just had to let people know that the resistor fix is FLAWED. Everybody who's bothered to check the resistors value (simple to do yourtself with a multimeter and the color code on the resistor) has noticed that it is not defective(read the rest of the thread).The other rumour of EEPROM failure is also a bit flawed, because, if bits were to drop out of your settings things would go wild all at once, not gradually. My current theory is that as your monitor ages, G2 is increased to compensate for the monitor becoming more and more dim. This fits with reports of the problem becoming worse with time. No, I haven't found proof of this by way of a time value in the EEPROM or an analysis of the code in the EEPROM.(btw, the data you download into the .dats is given to you by the MPU which reads it off the EEPROM , you are not actually dumping the eeprom (atleast not all of it), or, perhaps you are, and the MPU's code is stored on another EEPROM, but that would be stupid design.)

About the screen changing size depending on how many bright pixels are on the screen: this is normal, all monitors do it, atleast to some extent. They have a test with a blinking white box on a black screen to illustrate the effect "clamp test" . There is a circuit in the monitor called ABL or Automatic brightness limiter, there is also an ACL Automatic Contrast Limiter. The ABL does something to clamp the max voltage from the FBT (Fly back transformer, which makes me thing there must be another transformer as 'flyback' is when the beam is quickly horizontaly swept back after drawing a line of the picture) and to raise the black level voltage in order to keep the same average voltage across one field (frame, as in 60hz for 60 frames a second, or fields a second).I don't really understand it all, but it has something to do with the screen changing size with respect to brightness on the screen.

I'd apreciate it if some one could shed some light about these things. Yes yes, ok, I'll read the service manual, sorry. You can find the service manuals online, either at the site where that DOS Das was, or on P2P.

Yeah, and did I mention it works on almost all sony monitors with an MPU?
Ok, enough, thanks to all for this thread, sure helped me, hope that it's more helpfull to the next generation of you now.


[BIG]
You DO NOT need a signal generator or two computers to adjust your monitor! My howto and posts below explain how you can use a single computer to adjust and re-upload your monitors saved settings.[/BIG]

You can use a signal generator or my setup below to make realtime adjustments to your monitor while displaying diagnostic patterns. This is BY NO MEANS NECESSARY and only makes convergence, geometry and delicate white balance adjustments easier. These adjustments are normally not necessary unless you replace the CRT or erase all your settings ( like I did before I knew to make a backup). Someday a bootable CD should be available to display diagnostic patterns and adjustment procedures on one computer regardless of OS, even though most people would have little use for it, as G2 can be lowered easy with the method mentioned in a later post.

========Optional to use two computers, One computer suffices for nearly all Procedures!!===========

Comp A
One computer runs the Windas program and is connected via the max232 chip to the monitor thourgh the RS232 serial port. It's video card is connected to it's own monitor, so hopefully you have a laptop to serve as this computer.

Comp B or signal generator
Another computer or a signal generator (unlikely you have a video signal generator, for some reason I can't find any deals on them, so it's easier to just use a computer, it does exactly the same thing if you have a normal video card that does true-color (almost all since 1998?), guys on ebay sell software for your computer to act as a signal generator, costs too much, lol.)

Set the widas program to "manual SG" , when it has a command for the SG, you do it manualy on your computer. You put the modelines into whatever you use to set a graphics mode, in my case, I use linux/Xorg, so I put in my modelines for the DAS modes, and used xrandr to set the resolution as required. To make a crosshatch etc., I just wrote my self simple programs using a graphics library. I can post my program and the modelines if anyone is interested.

The tricky part is figuring out how to make a so many IRE white. IRE is some unit of the percentage of max NTSC broadcast voltage. 7.5 is broadcast black. I've read on sites that a white of 255 is 109 IRE, I white of 235 is 100 IRE, I white (or should I say black/gray? lol) of 7.5 is 16. Best to measure this yourself, or look it up somewhere for yourself... the scale seems have gamma correction to keep the computer 0-255 setting linear with observed brightness. If any one has better info on this, let me know.

Thanks again, and please contribute ANYTHING you know, correct me, etc. I'm all ears about this stutff.