It was free, how could I say no? Sure, the hard drive was dead and once I got it to boot from a replacement HDD the only stick of RAM in it gave errors, so I had to steal 256MB from my secret stash to get it running. And the CRT has some scratches that glow weird colors when it's on. This one has seen more than its share of danger, I feel, but the original owner had left it alongside the road by the trash cans. Into my car it went and while I can see why it was trashed, I'm glad I saved it. It's going to hang out in my living room for the time being.

Anybody know how to smooth out the CRT scratches? I was thinking of some of that fluid like you can get if your eyeglasses have bad scratches that fills in the crack and makes it more-or-less invisible, but I wasn't sure how the light of the CRT would work with it.

Toothpaste!

Good quality CRTs have an antireflective coating over the glass. That's why you aren't supposed to use amonia based cleaners like Windex™.

On the other hand, once your display is all scratched to hello, there's not much point in trying to preserve the antireflective coating.

Peace,
Drew

OK, thanks guys. I got similar replies in other forums. They seem to think that the windshield glas repair stuff will work, so I might try that out. On the other hand, it's still usable so maybe I'll just let it be.

I used Kleer, a cleaner for LCD screens and stripped all the anti-reflective coating off my Studio monitor for my G4 cube. So be careful.
_________________
The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers -- http://www.blackcube.org
I no longer have a clue how many residents there are - I think they are waking up while I'm asleep and multiplying