A while back, I was perusing the local dump and found a small CRT display. I’ve also needed an oscilloscope for diagnostics purposes for a long time, so I decided to take it home and convert it into an oscilloscope. The whole process was surprisingly painless. I essentially just took the cover off (very carefully, don’t go messing around with CRTs kids!), snipped the wires that controlled the Y axis deflection, then spliced them with an amplifier, which then connected to what I’m trying to monitor.
While not especially useful for diagnostics, it’s still an interesting project, and a cool desk piece.
I think if I were to do it again, I would somehow increase the frequency of the flyback. The CRT appears to even out the edges of square waves, which I believe means that it’s not scanning fast enough.
Old cathode ray tube monitors have a lot of cool stuff inside. A lot of fun high voltage experiements can be done with just broken TVs and microwaves.
