The Microvitec AKF50 is a 14” CRT monitor from Microvitec’s range of Acorn-badged displays. I had one for years without realising quite what it was.
The discovery
It turns out the AKF50 is a switching / multisync display: it locks to both 15kHz (PAL/NTSC-rate RGB, as used by consoles and home computers) and standard 31.5kHz VGA. Feed it a 15kHz RGB signal and it syncs; feed it VGA and it syncs to that too.
That makes it far more useful than a fixed-frequency monitor, and the picture quality is genuinely excellent — sharp, with clean scanlines on 15kHz material and no processing in the chain.
Why it matters
PVMs and BVMs get all the attention in retro circles, and prices have climbed to match. A good multisync CRT like the AKF50 gets you most of the way there for a fraction of the cost:
- native 15kHz RGB, so no line doubling or deinterlacing
- VGA support as well, so it doubles as a period PC monitor
- strong scanline presentation straight out of the tube
A typical console chain is RGB SCART into a sync strike (or similar) to clean up and break out the signal, then straight into the monitor.
Related on this site
- Microvitec AKF50 – a 15kHz/VGA switching multisync CRT
- Acorn Archimedes — the machine this monitor was made for