Compensating CRT Deflection Coils

Projects 16 Comments

Things look really weird when you use an uncompensated deflection coil with a vector graphics display. This is because the coil looks like an inductive load to the driver amplifier, and the parasitic capacitance makes it ring. Ringing and overshoot create the strange-looking display, basically extending every line past its destination.

One way to compensate for that is to add a series RC snubber in parallel with each deflection coil. You can perform some calculations to figure out the values of the resistor and capacitor but they won’t get you very close to the answer. There are just too many parasitics to model. It’s much faster just to build a RC substitution box and tweak the values until you get the result you want.