I did break a beautiful compaq 21" CRT by setting an unconventional modeline to play gradius in mame in its original resolution. It was glorious. But it dropped a big brown screen from time to time. Until I understood why/when it turned brown. But it was too late.
A modeline is not like reprogramming a firmware or anything, it’s just settings on how to move the electron beam. I don’t know what I did, but it probably moved too far or something, It wouldn’t show anything else but brown
Yes; trying to drive a refresh rate higher than what’s rated can do it-I think it had something to do with the flyback transformer? Some (later) crts had guards against this, and ddc more ore less prevented it.
