8liners chassis review

Deadly

New member
Joined
Feb 10, 2006
Messages
6,162
Reaction score
31
Location
Gresham, Oregon
After much deliberation and PM's with people whom had purchased full monitor setups from Victor at 8liners.com I decided it was the perfect time since I had a restoration almost completed. It'd be a shame to put on old burned to hell monitor in a new restoration right??!!

I saw no point in purchasing a complete monitor from 8liners. I already had 3 shelf mount chassis frames sitting here and for cryin out loud there are 19" TV's for $10-$20 and every once in a awhile I'd see one for free. I found a TV on Craigslist and paid $20 for a TV made back in 1995. Ripping the old crispy tube out of the shelf mount monitor frame, I then opened up the TV, discharged, ripped everything out and transplanted the TV tube into the old tubes frame. Beautiful! A dark tube with no burn gives a guy wood I tell ya.

I send Victor at 8liners an email stating that I needed a chassis for a 19" monitor with 8 pins that had an impedance of 14.1 (low impedance). A day later I check my email and there's an email from Victor stating, "I need your address so I can ship this." Friggin Paypal - hate the fact that it should give him an address and it didn't. Victor was right on top of it though.
One week later I get a chassis in the mail. Take a gander at the pictures. Packaged very nicely.

I had to cut the yoke harness and solder on a new one that came with the new chassis. Heat shrink tubing is your best friend.
The degaussing connector was wrong. Chop - soldered on the one from the old burned up tube. Once again heat shrinked tubing prevails.
The power was some odd connector I've never seen before. This particular chassis doesn't need the ISO. Hoever I removed the power connector from the old G07 chassis and soldered it onto this chassis.

Powered it on to find a picture that was in desperate need of adjustment.
After about 10 minutes (including adjusting the TV's yoke because it was 1/8" off) - I now have an absolutely stunning picture.

So for $105.00 I have a STELLAR looking monitor that IMHO is every bit as delicious looking as the 4900 sitting in a game next to this machine.

I have to say this is my permanent route from here on out. I plan on ordering a few more chassis here shortly to have a few spares on hand.

This whole transaction was flawless - very little effort was needed to make all this work together. This is every bit as good looking as my Vision Pro that I have also been 100% satisfied with.
 

Attachments

  • DSCF9671.jpg
    DSCF9671.jpg
    94.6 KB · Views: 387
  • DSCF9672.jpg
    DSCF9672.jpg
    93.3 KB · Views: 419
  • DSCF9674.jpg
    DSCF9674.jpg
    96.7 KB · Views: 450
  • DSCF9675.jpg
    DSCF9675.jpg
    95.5 KB · Views: 468
  • DSCF9676.jpg
    DSCF9676.jpg
    85 KB · Views: 501
Last edited:
To-date, I've installed 3 chassis from Victor and have always been very pleased with the end result.

It took some time to get the very first chassis I ordered from him a few years ago, but every purchase past that one has gone smooth.
 
Looks awesome man. That is a great way to go.

Looks like you were able to use the yoke and purity rings from the tube. That makes it so smooth.

Do you think he has chassis to match various impedances? Or is that tube/yoke just the one to look for?

Loving that multiwilliams screenshot. Just saw a guy hit 800K on Robotron last night too. Made it look easy.
 
Looks awesome man. That is a great way to go.

Do you think he has chassis to match various impedances? Or is that tube/yoke just the one to look for?


There is a low impedence version that can use a 9-15ohm yoke and a high version that is for 30-55ohm yokes I think. Then they come in 8 and 10 pin versions also.
 
Thanks for the review. I've yet to go this route, but I hope that he keeps at it, as the old monitors are no longer manufactured.
 
Looks awesome man. That is a great way to go.

Looks like you were able to use the yoke and purity rings from the tube. That makes it so smooth.

Do you think he has chassis to match various impedances? Or is that tube/yoke just the one to look for?

Loving that multiwilliams screenshot. Just saw a guy hit 800K on Robotron last night too. Made it look easy.

Ya know - not to take business away from anyone but for the cost of a brand no burn tube and new chassis verses getting an old one chassis repaired and havinga burned tube ....... yes I'm completely sold on buying a new chassis. I've got a couple g07 chassis' that are rotten. Literally old shit that just crumbles.

@ Brick Top
Anyway 8 or 10 pin - then measure the impedance of the green and yellow wires. Send those two figures to victor and he'll send you the correct chassis.

I'm not a fan boy - but I tell ya I'm pretty damn happy with this monitor and would recommend this to anyone.
 
I believe he only has Wei-Ya now. He used to sell Jen-Shinn and you had to go to Alva Amusements (also in Florida) to get the WY. Note: Alva charges less for them then 8 liners.

I found the JS to be much more compatible with random TV tube yokes, resulting in more usable tubes per chassis (like 90% geometric acceptable yoke match rate vs. 30%). Where the WY often had pincushion or other geometric issues. (Their 19" models don't have pincushion controls, only the 25"+)

Other issues I found with WY were excessive blooming/focus controls wouldn't adjust to super-sharp in focus dots, and a weak power supply where brightness changes on the screen would cause the image to dim down/shrink/expand/bend depending on the level, along with more blooming on brighter images.

I wonder if he can still get JS ones?
 
Yes that picture you showed is a Wei-ya chassis. I guess 8liners no longer stocks the Jen Shinn chassis.

Alva Amusement definitely has cheaper prices on the Wei-ya chassis vs. the prices from 8liners.
 
Great thread guys. Thanks for all the info. This stuff will only become more and more important as time goes by...
 
Does anyone know of a vendor that sells the Jen Shinn chassis? I have read varying opinions on the Wei-Ya and the most concerning is the underpowered PS resulting in image bloom/picture dimming

Chris

I hadn't heard anything about the supposive power issue. Could also be a strange per game basis issue like people trying to use Happ Vision Pro's in Spy Hunter and having issues.

Or Issues with 60-1's and certain monitors having fold over.

Food for thought.
 
I tested out 2 different 14-19" models (one 8 pin, one 10 pin both low impedence) of JS (and a 25") and 2 14-19" models (both 10 pin, one low, one high impdence) of WY (also with a 25") and can verify this is not a per board issue.

I tested boards like Arkanoid, Pac-Man, Galaga, Centipede, Bubble Bobble on all 6 chassis, and found that the focus was not as sharp on the identical tubes when connected to the WY as the JS, and that the screen brightness/blooming and lower half of the screen bent slightly depending on images on the screen on the WY significantly more than the JS in all models.

Worst was the boot screen of Galaga where the screen goes through a negative then positive image and it would just dim greatly and have tint changes when the inverse characters appeared then return to normal later when there was fewer pixels being drawn on the screen when the test pattern changed. I think on another site someone said they saw similar things with a MK board too.

I tested these on brand new consumer TV set tubes (Panasonic made ones) as well as old TV sets from the 80's (Maganvox (Philips tubes), Emerson(Orion tubes), Toshiba) plus original RCA tubes from K4600's, K4900, G07's, and Toshiba tubes from Hantarex MTC900's. Overall no chassis worked well with K4600 yokes (too low impedence--8 ohms vs. 14 or so vertical) but the rest of the tubes, all but one or two looked significantly better in the JS than the WY. The couple looked the same in both for geometry and focus but still had some brightness issues.

That said, if you find good enough tubes, and pay Alva's ~$45-$50 price per chassis for a WY, it can still be a good deal. But if you're paying 8liners higher price then you should ask for a JS chassis instead.

I know Ken has posted before here and other sites that he prefers WY for durability/longevity but looking at some core parts between the chassis the JS seems to use the same deflection transistors and flyback, it's just the rest of the chassis that seems different, but similar. In any case I doubt either of these will hold up as well as a classic chassis, but if a better picture with random tubes without tons of swapping and adjusting is appealing, I'd at least try a JS once before making judgement.


Basically as a final comparison, a lot of people say they're impressed with how sharp the dots are on a Sanyo made Nintendo 20EZ monitor as compared with say a G07 or K4900 (especially those on old burned tubes). That's the comparsion I can best desribe about how much more sharp the JS is over the WY and that sharpness helps prevent the blooming I think as the focus grid is being powered at the correct level.

In the pictures at the top of this thread you'll see what I mean. Notice that anything that is white hides the scanlines. DEFENDER looks a bit blurry. However Stargate (drawn in a darker color) still shows the scanlines, keeping the detail and reducing the blooming. If this same tube was connected to a JS, I'd suspect you'd be able to pick out the scanlines in the white Defender menu item even from a picture of it.
 
Sounds like you've done a ton of research. I've never run a JS before so I can't comment on which if either is better or worse. However I can say you referencing the picture - not a good example. All you're seeing is a difference of how my camera handles white verses a darker color. The white is every bit as clear as the shaded looking menu items.
 
To the best of my knowledge, 8liners no longer distributes the Jen Shinn and I believe no one else is distributing it in the USA or Canada.

Perhaps someone on the west coast should start distributing the Jen Shinn chassis. Whoever does this should ask for manuals and schematics to it. Naturally, I'm sure that a person who decides to distribute it would have to commit to buying an ocean cargo container full of these chassis and/or complete monitors.
 
Perhaps we can get AvidCollector or Nixs to check into it given their seemingly direct sources from that region or the world.
 
This seems like a great way to go. I haven't read the details on the website or anything, but are there any issues with the neck board socket pinout being incorrect? I know that all of the old RCA TV's I've cracked open have a funky connector that's incompatible with the standard CR-23 socket. If you do find a tube that physically fits, do you still have to worry about the individual pinout being incorrect?
 
Back
Top Bottom