Ast Deluxe Monitor Issues - HELP !

ParrotHead

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So I picked up a very nice Asteroids Deluxe that was working of course when I picked it up. Brought it home and plugged it in and right upon start up the screen was only half there, and the images were smashed up along the top half of the screen. Then I guess after warming up it looked great and filled the screen as it should. Played it quite a bit and most of the time it worked after it warmed up.

Then today playing it fine and then the screen decided to squish in half. And then it would expand to normal again. Then it was working for an hour or so and then I was playing it and then one Asteroid came out and it was like all the other asteroids were piled on top of it. I would chip away at all of them while they overlapped each other. But the Space Ship and Killer Satellite things were seperate images and working normal.

What is up with my monitor? It also seems to be tied to my marquee light. It will take a while to come on and sometimes when it start trying to light that is when the screen gets all wonky.

Thoughts?
 
So I picked up a very nice Asteroids Deluxe that was working of course when I picked it up. Brought it home and plugged it in and right upon start up the screen was only half there, and the images were smashed up along the top half of the screen. Then I guess after warming up it looked great and filled the screen as it should. Played it quite a bit and most of the time it worked after it warmed up.

Then today playing it fine and then the screen decided to squish in half. And then it would expand to normal again. Then it was working for an hour or so and then I was playing it and then one Asteroid came out and it was like all the other asteroids were piled on top of it. I would chip away at all of them while they overlapped each other. But the Space Ship and Killer Satellite things were seperate images and working normal.

What is up with my monitor? It also seems to be tied to my marquee light. It will take a while to come on and sometimes when it start trying to light that is when the screen gets all wonky.

Thoughts?
You have multiple problems, so it's hard to give you a solid lead on where to start looking.

The easiest thing is the marquee light, which is probably a bad starter. It's powered by line voltage, so unless you have an AC wiring issue (which would likely manifest in the game resetting), it's going to be the starter. But slap a multimeter on its input and make sure it's not changing when you see the light change.

It's not clear quite what you're seeing video-wise — a photo would be helpful. If you see the top half sized normally, and the bottom half is missing, and there are straight horizontal lines drawn in the middle of the monitor, that is deflection collapse, which is a monitor problem. If you see the entire image 50% height squished into the upper half of the monitor, that's a different issue. Combined with the asteroids all appearing on top of each other, that makes me suspect the PCB. If you have another PCB you can swap in, or another B&W vector game you can connect the monitor to, that will narrow down the defective component.
 
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