Commodore 1702

One of my latest finds is a Commodore 1702 Monitor. Found this piece of history at a no-name thrift shop a town away from home. In my opinion, no-name thrift stores, and even antique malls, are where the gems are to be found. This addition to my collection was a steal at $20. If I had found this at Value Village it probably would have been jacked up to $200 or something (Thank you local Value Village hipster employees.)

The Commodore 1702 is the matching monitor to the Commodore 64, an 8-bit computer that was immensely popular in the 80's. Due to it's RCA Composite and RCA Luma Chroma inputs, it's not uncommon to find someone using the 1702 for DVD Playback, Gaming, or even Professional/Amateur video editing. This is where the 1702 truly shines - it's versatility.

Personally, I love the way NES plays on this thing. The 1702 only has one speaker and mono sound so it's perfect on it's own for the NES. The design of the Monitor, with it's grey color and abundant vents, looks like it was designed to match the NES.

Inputs:

The 1702 offers RCA Composite A/V in the front and RCA Luma Chroma in the back. Also on the back input is a switch that toggles in between front input and back input. There is only one audio channel on the monitor regardless of whether it is set to Front of Real signal. Plugging your audio into the front and video in the back will result in audio playing regardless of whether it's set for Front or Rear. In order to use the Luma Chroma inputs with a console, a converter is needed to convert the console's male s-video mini-DIN to male Luma/Chroma RCA. Soon to follow will be a post on how to make one of these...

Front Inputs

 

Back Inputs and Switch

Settings:

There is no service mode or OSD settings for the 1702. Everything is done using the convenient potentiometers located behind the flip down cover below the screen. Volume is also controlled here. There are apparently pots inside the monitor that I have not yet fiddled with.

Monitor in action:

As said before, I love the way NES looks on this CRT. This is Ninja Gaiden 2 on an original NES via RCA composite and EVO on SNES via standard first party RCA cables.