A Father's Day freebie - my first vector!

smalltownguy2

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You KNOW you've been fanatical about collecting games when all of the sudden your phone starts ringing for no reason.

I'm at a friend's son's 4th birthday party yesterday (dlbagna) and my phone rings. It's a buddy of ours, and he's driving home from Duluth after running Grandma's Marathon...he's spotted a cab on the side of the road with a 'free' sign on it. In Dresser, WI?? Really? The town's got like 100 people, tops. "Send me a pic," I say. He does. I see Asteroids! He asks if I want it, b/c there's another guy about to take it if I don't. I tell him why not - you never know, right?

I get home, and find this in my garage:

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Pretty bad water damage on the bottom, no back door, T-molding pulled off one side, and some damage on the right side waist high. I'm not very excited. But there ARE boards in it, and the monitor's there. Well, at least it wouldn't be hard to get rid of it anyway. I decide to sleep on it.

Get up this morning, and pull the board out to examine it over my wonderful father's day breakfast. There's really bad edge connector burn that's been worked on in the past. I appears that everything's been fixed, but the connector is terrible looking. I figure, "what the heck, let's see what happens" and drop it back in the cab and flick the switch.

*POP* *CRACKLE* *SPARK* *SPARK!*

Shut it off....crap. I look more closely. No fuses are blown. Turn it on again, fireworks ensue again. Hm....

I start tracing wires. Aha, found it....there are 2 AC line cords pinched underneath the power block. The wire insulation's been worn off, and the wires are grounding to each other, and against the side of the AC block. I cut the wires, spliced them back together properly, and flick the switch again.

Marquee lights up, P1 and P2 lights blinking! That's encouraging. I hit the P1 start and smile as I hear the familiar 'bum BUM bum BUM' music. I fire a few shots -- 'pew pew pewpew!' Nice! It plays.

But the monitor's not working.

I've never even SEEN a vector monitor, let alone worked on one. Looks like I've got some reading to do. I snapped a few pics the best I could of the monitor chassis and tube neck with the point and shoot camera. Perhaps that'll be enough to get a monitor ID?

I did notice a red LED lit on the monitor chassis too, not sure what that means.

So not too bad? Free water damaged Asteroids Deluxe that plays blind. Nice little project for me.
 

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Asteroids Deluxe is a GREAT one.. Fix it up, learn a lot in the process, keep it as-is, and watch for someone getting rid of a stripped cabinet. Good luck..
 
That IS a great idea...I'll keep my eyes open for an empty Asteroids cab.

Can anyone point me in the right direction on what to do with the monitor? Should I just do a complete rebuild? Do I buy a kit? is Bob Roberts my best option?

I'm still not sure what type of XY monitor I have - I think it's a 19v2000, but I can't be sure. It could be a G05.
 
First thing to do is to measure the voltage coming off the board to see if it's correct. Talon2000 wrote about that in another thread somewhere.

If the voltage is too high, fix the board and check the monitor.

If the voltage is not there, fix the board and test again.

If it is there and good then check the monitor.
 
I can't be of much help but I do know an LED on the monitor lit means the spot killer is on. Possibly no video signal or your x and y section isnt functional on the monitor. Check the harness and make sure video wires are good.
 
That IS a great idea...I'll keep my eyes open for an empty Asteroids cab.

Can anyone point me in the right direction on what to do with the monitor? Should I just do a complete rebuild? Do I buy a kit? is Bob Roberts my best option?

I'm still not sure what type of XY monitor I have - I think it's a 19v2000, but I can't be sure. It could be a G05.

If you're confident soldering, with cap kits, etc.. I highly recommend you go ahead and do the Bob kit, replacing caps. Another sore point are the connectors. First one of these I fixed was mostly cold solder joints. Plan on removing the solder and reflowing new solder to all of the header pins on the deflection and HV board. If the pins look tarnished or odd, go ahead and replace them with new Molex headers. Check carefully for cracked solder joints elsewhere.
 
Pulled the monitor on this last night, and looked over the connector pins closely. I found lots of cracked solder joints. I set it aside for resoldering later.

By the time I got back to it, the clock said nearly midnight last night. I quick soldered the pins and shoved the monitor back into the machine.

I now have neck glow, but just a dot in the middle of the screen :(

I shut it off quick.

Spot killer is still on. I think I need to double check my deflection board for more cracked joints, and probably test X and Y voltage coming from the game PCB.

When I get time, I'll continue checking. Unfortunately, the past 2 days brought 5 more boards, 1 more pinball, and one more Nintendo mini to my garage. There's also 8 more cabs coming tomorrow. The projects are piling up....
 
I now have neck glow, but just a dot in the middle of the screen :(

I shut it off quick.

Spot killer is still on.

If the spot killer is on, but you have a dot in the middle of the screen... that's not good/normal. The spot killer circuit is there to kill that spot; i.e. turn off the beam if there is no deflection. So... either you have the brightness/contrast cranked high enough to over-ride the spot killer, or there's a fault in the spot killer circuit. The good news is that the monitor power supply, HV, and CRT must be good :)

PS--I'm pretty sure it's a V2000. The G05 has a fuse between the 5-pin and 7-pin connectors on the edge of the board.

The game is doing what's known as "playing blind." As mentioned earlier, the lack of video could be a monitor fault or a PCB fault. Easiest way to tell is to try a known-good monitor with the PCB, or a hook up a known-good PCB to the monitor. I'm guessing that neither would be feasibile for you. Next best thing is an o-scope; it can serve as a vector monitor for testing. Lacking that, I'd check for AC on the X-OUT & Y-OUT test points (relative to a GND test point). This can be done with a DMM in AC-volts mode. Look for a couple of volts AC (and varying, in game mode) on both X and Y axes. If these are present, you have a monitor problem. My guess is that they will be absent, and you will have a PCB problem.

EDIT: Also, check the connectors, check the connectors, and check the connectors. Check for cracked solder at any headers, corroded/worn-out terminals in Molex plugs/sockets, and corroded/worn/burned edge connectors/traces at the PCB.
 
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Thanks for chiming in, I appreciate it.

The whole PCB is riddled with repairs at the edge connector. It's pretty scary looking, actually. I was surprised it turned on.

I do have some friends nearby with vectors, so I should be able to get either a known working board or a known working monitor to test it with.

But I'm not ready to rule out the monitor yet as an issue. I have not touched the contrast or brightness pots, so I will make sure they are adjusted down before I fire the game again.

I'll also do what I can to make sure the edge connector is seated well and making good contact.

I hit the test points with a DMM too.
 
Just an update to this - I picked up an Omega Race cocktail cabinet last week and it had the donor deflection board I needed to get my 19V2000 up and running again.

That, at least, gets the game up and running properly :)

The cabinet bottom though, is in pretty rough shape. I'd really like to find an empty Asteroids Deluxe cabinet to use as a donor to swap out all of my parts.

Other things I still need to do:


  1. Repair the deflection board I swapped out to keep my Omega Race monitor running
  2. Replace the black light bulb
  3. Look for a high score save kit.
 
My Bob Roberts cap kit arrived today. Replaced all the caps I could on the deflection board (which is where I've narrowed the problem down to) and the problem persisted.

Reflowed all solder on the header pins, checked for continuity.

Resoldered the XY transistors. Checked for shorts.

Spot killer is still on.

What next?
 
Hold on, I think I may have found something here.

I metered the resistors at R100 and R101 on my good board:

R100: 4.0 ohms
R101: 4.1 ohms

Then I metered them on my problem board:

R100: 485 ohms (!!!)
R101: 4.0 ohms

Okay, obviously one of these things is NOT like the other. Several FAQ threads on these monitors suggest removing these resistors altogether, so I will try removing both resistors, installing jumper wire, and see if that gets me going.

Safe to try this?
 
Fixed!!

Okay, so went back and re-read the vector monitor FAQ, and double checked the section where it mentions the sand resistors at R100 and R101. I went ahead and pulled the resistors and jumpered them with heavy gauge wire.

Once I turned on the game, the spot killer came on for just a moment, but then immediately went out. "OK, that's progress, I said."

I looked up at the screen and saw no image. Hm....

I turned up the brightness pot a bit, and WAM! There's Asteroids Deluxe, in all its glory. Yay!!

I fixed my own vector monitor! Woot!

Another dead game, saved from the scrap heap.

Tomorrow I'll get some photos shot, and put them up.

:22:
 
That's great that you brought it back. Did the black light bulb inside work? I just ordered a couple for my AD since it was burned out when I got it.
 
That's great that you brought it back. Did the black light bulb inside work? I just ordered a couple for my AD since it was burned out when I got it.

The black light inside was burned out, and ordered a replacement from my local Ace Hardware store. It cost me $22!

Unfortunately, I may need to return it, since they mistakenly ordered me a BLACK black light, instead of a WHITE black light, if that makes any sense....apparently the white black lights are brighter and illuminate the artwork more. On mine, the artwork glows, but not very brightly. The screen glow is noticeable too. Anyone know how I can turn down the screen glow on a vector monitor?
 
The black light inside was burned out, and ordered a replacement from my local Ace Hardware store. It cost me $22!

Unfortunately, I may need to return it, since they mistakenly ordered me a BLACK black light, instead of a WHITE black light, if that makes any sense....apparently the white black lights are brighter and illuminate the artwork more. On mine, the artwork glows, but not very brightly. The screen glow is noticeable too. Anyone know how I can turn down the screen glow on a vector monitor?

Weird. I had the exact opposite result. Mine runs a BLB (Purple) bulb.

P8040581.jpg
 
Yeah, I'm definitely not getting THAT much glow.

But you know, I never double checked the bulb after plugging it in to see that the starter was firing it all the way. I'll pull it out tonight when I get home to make sure the bulb is lighting all the way. Perhaps I have a bad starter, or transformer.

I do know that I should probably take a camp cloth to my artwork as well. There's lots of dust on it. That should help even more.

Will report back with results. Thanks for the photo, Shawn.
 
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