Hello,
This is my first post, although I've read quite a lot of interesting material on the forums over the last few weeks. I'm a total newbie so please bear with me.
My grandparents owned two Asteroids games (an upright and an Asteroids Deluxe cocktail) since the early 80s. I acquired them recently when they had to move out due to advancing age- I have a lot of fond memories associated with these games, as many of you can probably relate, to so I nabbed them.
The monitor on the cocktail hadn't functioned for about thirty years. I'm not sure exactly when it stopped working, or if it displayed any odd behavior when it did. The game was playing blind, no neck glow.
I was unable to find a repair shop in Kansas City (my nearest major city) and decided I was going to tackle it myself. I've been reading about XY monitors and it sounds like playing blind is a fairly common problem for Asteroids. I've also been studying up on basic electronics (before I couldn't have told you the difference between a capacitor and a transistor, or recognized them) and have a better handle on what a repair job entails.
Anyway, two days ago I pulled the monitor chassis (G05-805) and discharged it with an HV stepdown probe. I removed the flyback pcb and the deflection board. As I expected from reading the B&W vector guide and the sticky here, the header connections had very poor looking solder joints, but everything else looks pretty good. Although I ordered some cap kits I decided not to wait any more and I reflowed all the sketchy connections yesterday.
I reinstalled the monitor pcbs and the chassis and fired it up... neck glow, and THE SCREEN WAS VISIBLE. It felt pretty damn awesome
The screen was not lined up correctly (asteroids and ufos appearing off screen before becoming visible, when one went off to the side it wouldn't reappear again for a half second) so I adjusted the X Y pots on the main pcb. I put it in test mode so I could use the diamond pattern edges to get everything visible.
So, here's where I am now: I adjusted the X GAIN pot until the display was correct. At that point, though, the extreme right side of the screen started stretching off, shaking, tracing, etc... I'm not sure what the correct terminology would be to describe the effect. It also often happens when the pot is being rotated. The effect goes away, but it does come back during play, very intermittently, and sometimes the extreme left freaks out a bit too. I've gone through about 18 plays on it, with power downs in between every two or three.
I do have a cap kit on the way for the HV and deflection pcbs. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on what to expect from here, or what I may need to do to fine tune the screen. Overall I'm extremely happy to have this thing going again after 30 years, and it is playing really well 95% of the time. Lastly, apologies for the novel length post, but you all seem to like more information rather than less
This is my first post, although I've read quite a lot of interesting material on the forums over the last few weeks. I'm a total newbie so please bear with me.
My grandparents owned two Asteroids games (an upright and an Asteroids Deluxe cocktail) since the early 80s. I acquired them recently when they had to move out due to advancing age- I have a lot of fond memories associated with these games, as many of you can probably relate, to so I nabbed them.
The monitor on the cocktail hadn't functioned for about thirty years. I'm not sure exactly when it stopped working, or if it displayed any odd behavior when it did. The game was playing blind, no neck glow.
I was unable to find a repair shop in Kansas City (my nearest major city) and decided I was going to tackle it myself. I've been reading about XY monitors and it sounds like playing blind is a fairly common problem for Asteroids. I've also been studying up on basic electronics (before I couldn't have told you the difference between a capacitor and a transistor, or recognized them) and have a better handle on what a repair job entails.
Anyway, two days ago I pulled the monitor chassis (G05-805) and discharged it with an HV stepdown probe. I removed the flyback pcb and the deflection board. As I expected from reading the B&W vector guide and the sticky here, the header connections had very poor looking solder joints, but everything else looks pretty good. Although I ordered some cap kits I decided not to wait any more and I reflowed all the sketchy connections yesterday.
I reinstalled the monitor pcbs and the chassis and fired it up... neck glow, and THE SCREEN WAS VISIBLE. It felt pretty damn awesome
The screen was not lined up correctly (asteroids and ufos appearing off screen before becoming visible, when one went off to the side it wouldn't reappear again for a half second) so I adjusted the X Y pots on the main pcb. I put it in test mode so I could use the diamond pattern edges to get everything visible.
So, here's where I am now: I adjusted the X GAIN pot until the display was correct. At that point, though, the extreme right side of the screen started stretching off, shaking, tracing, etc... I'm not sure what the correct terminology would be to describe the effect. It also often happens when the pot is being rotated. The effect goes away, but it does come back during play, very intermittently, and sometimes the extreme left freaks out a bit too. I've gone through about 18 plays on it, with power downs in between every two or three.
I do have a cap kit on the way for the HV and deflection pcbs. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on what to expect from here, or what I may need to do to fine tune the screen. Overall I'm extremely happy to have this thing going again after 30 years, and it is playing really well 95% of the time. Lastly, apologies for the novel length post, but you all seem to like more information rather than less
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