LCD TV chipsets and diag ports?

[Alex Eisenhut]

Not really a specific repair question about a particular monitor.
But I've been trying to find a way to identify LCD TV/monitor combos from the NTSC->HD transition era that would support 15KHz RGB directly.
I figure people into repair would have deep knowledge about this.
I know there's a list of 15KHz monitors, but there are so many brands out there at Goodwill stores that are not on the list.

So here are my musings
1) Is there a list of LCD TV chipsets and what brands used what? So I can figure out which one allowed 15KHz RGB.

2) Some TVs seem to have a serial diagnostic service port (I guess?), is there a common standard to expect? Like can I use a FT232 and a terminal and try to talk to the TV before buying it?

3) I bought a simple and cheap VGA test signal generator, I am too lazy to make my own (although I imagine it's not hard to bit-bang a RGB test pattern on a bottom-of-the-line PIC). But it doesn't do 15KHz CGA/RGB whatever. Anyone got a nice cheap CGA test generator? Like:

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/264542032558

4) Is there a way to distinguish CCFL from LED backlight quickly? Sometimes there's a "warning: mercury" sticker on the monitor, but not always.

5) What is RGB/DTV? Nothing useful from googling...

For example, I saw this Daytek DK-191, the connections really spoke to me. A C64 on the s-video, and a 128 on the RGB, you see?
I want to avoid buying all this crap on a whim only to find out at home it doesn't do 15KHz RGB.
And no, none of this makes any sense, I know... Vintage computing!

[fzabkar]

Dump the EDID info from the VGA and HDMI ports and decode it. The monitor doesn't even need to be powered up to do this.

You could hook up a laptop to the monitor and allow it to detect and store the EDID in the registry. You could then examine the Windows registry, export the EDID and analyse it with an appropriate tool.

The EDID for my monitor is here:

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\DISPLAY\AOCA781\1&8713bca&0&UID0\Device Parameters

This is the data:

Code: [Select]

"EDID"=hex:00,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,ff,00,05,e3,81,a7,b8,8a,00,00,16,0e,01,03,68,22,\
  1b,78,2a,a6,9c,a1,5a,4b,98,24,16,4c,57,bf,ef,00,81,80,01,01,01,01,01,01,01,\
  01,01,01,01,01,01,01,30,2a,00,98,51,00,2a,40,30,70,13,00,78,2d,11,00,00,1e,\
  00,00,00,ff,00,30,38,30,34,35,4a,41,30,33,35,35,31,32,00,00,00,fd,00,37,4b,\
  1e,53,0e,00,0a,20,20,20,20,20,20,00,00,00,fc,00,4c,4d,37,32,30,2f,4c,4d,37,\
  32,30,41,0a,00,fa

[Alex Eisenhut]

Indeed! I'll read up on EDID.