The Liberated Sony VPH1270-Q
This is one of the coolest things that I have yet pulled from a dumpster.
This came from the University of Illinois' physics dock. We liberated this
piece of equipment during a rainstorm and rolled it back to Hendrick House
in 2001. It came with the manuals, including the service manual that includes
all the schematics and what naught. This projector was used through one dormitory
and three different apartments. When leaving Champaign, I felt it was time to retire
it via Craigslist. I think if I get a new projector I'll get something slightly more
new and modern than the Sony VPH 1270Q.
This needed some work when I got it. I had to move lenses, fix some connectors,
and do the whole take it all to pieces so it can dry out before power was applied.
Somewhere there are photos of some of my friends playing DDR and other modern games on
this. I have to hand it to the guys at Sony. This thing could sync from 640x480 up to
1280 x 1076 and everyplace in between. It also had composite video in via BNC,
which necessitated making an adapter so it could talk to RCA jacks. First
thing we do when we get a big-ass projector? Fire up the 2600 and play
Combat. The screen size in this picture is nearly 12 feet diagonal.
For something that was used daily in a lecture hall for over a decade,
the picture is pretty good.
Here is another of my favorite games- Kaboom, playing on Evan's 2600 with the
paddle controllers. We also used this to projector for movies as well, which
were never quite as successful as I had hoped them to be.