10/08/2001

Big Screen Solutions to Legacy Problems...

Engineers in charge of aging computer systems in Process Control, Factory Automation and other industrial areas, frequently curse the “legacy” left to them by departed colleagues.

Among the problems can be the support or replacement of old CRT monitors that are worked for 24 hours per day continually and may have only a 5-8 year life. A solution must be found but the computer system cannot work with a modern PC monitor because they are Slow Scan monitors (15kHz – 25kHz horizontal scanning range) and these can be hard to source.

KME, for 25 years a U.K. manufacturer of display solutions, has created a range of 19" CRT and TFT monitors which are Form, Fit and Function replacements for monitors originally manufactured by ABB, Allen Bradley, Aydin, Foxboro, Honeywell, Rockwell, Siemens and many others – the Legacy Range.

The key characteristic of Legacy CRT Monitors is that they accept analogue or TTL video signals in the scan range 15 - 40kHz, displaying crisp, stable images on a modern high resolution CRT. They are available in Open-Frame Chassis formats, as Console Mount versions and as Rugged Metal-Cased Desktop units. Export business has been won from U.S. companies as the population of large screen CRT monitors in the Electricity, Oil & Gas and Material Processing sectors is many times larger than in Europe and many of the original monitor manufacturers have ceased to support their old products.

Where replacement of CRT by CRT is no longer feasible because of space reorganisation, KME can also provide Slow Scan LCD TFT Monitors with 15.1", 18.1" and 20" screen sizes.