Atari star wars monitor dead: WTF????

pinnut

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never saw anything like this. owner says a repair guy replaced the monitor and it worked one month. chassis looks aftermarket, and has a yoke stuck to the cabinet and plugged into the chassis. crt has part of the neck board connected to the chassis. another part of the neck board harness is dangling. also, the crt yoke harness is not connected to anything. finally, the wire from the aquadag is not connected to anything, and i cant see any where it might have been connected. also, it has an aftermarket isolation transformer powering the chassis. i dont even know where to start with this one. any ideas what is going on with this?

i dont know much about vector monitors, but this just looks wierd.

thanks
 

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another pic of the chassis
thanks
 

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There was another thread here that had a yoke wired in series similar to that.
 
That's probably a raster chassis being used to make high voltage for your tube. It needs a yoke to complete the flyback/oscillation circuit even though the yoke is just hanging there. You also have the original deflection board on the other side of the cab driving the correct yoke that is on the tube, right? If so I would chuck the raster chassis and yoke and replace it with an original or repro HV board which will have the proper high voltage transformer, be more reliable, adhere to known specs and schematics. It is what is supposed to complement the deflection board, and should be able to plug right into its nine pin connector.

Edit: I see in one picture the lead from the yoke on the tube is not plugged in. It must be! It should plug in to the deflection board. Do you have one?
 
Last edited:
Wow
That is one hack there

At least you do have an original Tube and yoke

Are there 4 x additional wires soldered to the fixed yoke? (IE connected to the dangling 5 pin plug)
 
i'll have to take a very close look at that yoke. i didnt see any place for that dangling yoke connector to go to. the defection board is there, but i didnt see any place on it where that plug would fit. am i correct the deflection board is on the right side wall of the cabinet? also, where would that CRT cathode wire go? somewhere on that new chassis?

thanks
 
i'll have to take a very close look at that yoke. i didnt see any place for that dangling yoke connector to go to. the defection board is there, but i didnt see any place on it where that plug would fit. am i correct the deflection board is on the right side wall of the cabinet? also, where would that CRT cathode wire go? somewhere on that new chassis?

thanks

The dangling yoke connector from the yoke that's installed on the tube plugs into the deflection board close to the heat sink, near the center (which yes, is mounted on the right side of the cabinet). The connector is hidden by the pair of big caps on the deflection board in these pictures:
upright.jpg

IMG_9855.jpg

The first one shows a repro HV board (and spurious shelf from a 6100) but even that is much cleaner than the jury-rigged setup you inherited.

Here's an overview of the connectors (upper half applies to your Amplifone):
color%20vectors.pdf

It shows the wire from the aquadag plugs in line to the harness between the deflection, neck, and HV boards.
 
its starting to make sense. still, some questions. the large connector dangling from the neck doesnt go anywhere, just leave it? also, still unclear on the loose aquadag wire. it slices into an existing wire on the neck harness? same color, black?

thanks
 
It's hard to say what you have, but since it doesn't work it would be easier to return it to stock config than try to decipher and then repair whatever hack was done.

Looks like the a red and blue wire and maybe some others from the nine pin connector have been cut. They would normally be soldered onto the HV board. Also, the brown heater wires and the ground wires look to have been connected to the raster chassis (they'd also normally be soldered to the HV board). The wire from the aquadag serves as a disable when disconnected from its usual position connecting the green wire to the black wire which in your case have been connected with a wire nut. See pages 10B and 11A of the Quantum schematics (among other places) for the Amplifone wiring, or the excellent resources on Dezbaz's own site.

Let's see a picture of your deflection board.
 
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