Advice

icekicker

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ok I'm not sure if this section is where I should ask but I would like feedback on this, I rarely ask for advise but anyway I not only restore old machines I also build repos for commercial and personal sales, a friend of mine asked me to get or make him a ct of tempest but he doesn't like the style of the original tempest ct, I told him sure and he wants it in one of the dk style cts i build so I said no problem and that I can do it for under a grand (sense hes a friend) but what I want advice on is weather to use a med res crt with a vectorvga adapter that wouldn't be as nice as looking at a vector crt but is decent or spend twice as much for a well known vector that breaks alot? (i had a tempest upright 10 years ago and the reason i sold it was because the monitor kept dying) I just don't wan't himt to call me every 6 months and say come fix my vector monitor.
 
Properly rebuilt, a WG6100 can be very reliable. New, good quality replacement caps, transistors properly mounted/connected, reflowed headers and some kind of low voltage upgrade and it should be fine.

One weak point of these monitors is the low voltage section, which creates the +/- 26v. There exists a premade little drop-in module that replaces all the unreliable little parts in the LV section with some nice, solid modern ones. It's called the LV6100, and it's available from a guy here called HudsonArcade. Best bet is to email him, I don't have his address handy, but I'm sure someone else does.

If your friend cares enough about Tempest to pay that much for a dedicated cocktail, then he probably is going to want the "real thing". I've not been too impressed with the VectorVGA stuff. Other people might feel differently, but then again, I'm kind of a purist when it comes to this kind of thing. I mean, if you're going to jam a computer monitor into an arcade game, might as well just use MAME or something.

-Ian
 
I'm not completely familiar with DK cocktails but I think they have 13" or 15" monitors? If you go with anything less than an original 19" color vector, I think you are looking at mame. A VectorVGA will not be as bright as a version of mame where you can adjust the vector width and intesity. However, building a Tempest cocktail mame will not be as simple as running the original boards. I know from experience.
You will need an advanced version of mame that supports multiple mice and a Tempest rom that supports both sets of controls and cocktail flipping(this may not be a simple as it seems for a Tempest cocktail).
AAE has no cocktail flipping or multiple mice and macmame will just be a big PITA. Good luck! byoac.com has all the info you will ever need about running mame.
 
Right the dk ct's are 13's so for me to get a 19 in there there's enough room I'd just have to make a new mount and cut the top to fit, I doubt he would want mame if I go with a vector monitor it will be a bit more though, to bad they don't have a multi vector board like they do with icades etc lol
 
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