B&W Multivector Project

Tithis

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Been working on this the last month or so and finally have something to show for it.

PNMJ66w.jpg

Last year I bought a pretty gutted 19V2000 locally (frame, tube, yoke, internal wiring harness) and started collecting the parts to get it running about 6 weeks ago when a rebuilt 19V2000 deflection board showed up on eBay. Ordered the PCBs for and built a VSTCM (minimum order for PCBs was 5, so if anyone wants one...)

yMaXwJQ.jpg

Got an Atari powerbrick off Ebay and a G05-802 high voltage cage from here.

Things I did before firing it up
1. Replaced fuse quick disconnects on powerbrick, they were really corroded
2. Swapped the output connector on the powerbrick. It wasn't the one I mostly saw online and I could not find the matching male connector anywhere.
3. Replaced the anode cup on the HV cage with a silicone one from the chassis of a tube donor I had in a box.
4. Redid the deflection board connector on the internal wiring harness. Yellow wire (focus? screen? I forget) was broken. Afterwards I checked continuity between every wire on the internal harness.
5. Bent a pin on the CRT neck back into place, some gorilla just shoved the socket on and bent it pretty bad
6. Straightened a bend in the frame.

So it's a bit of a Frankenstein monitor with the mismatched deflection and HV cage, but I had read posts from several people saying it worked fine for them.

I also did find a NOS tube that seems like it is a pretty good match. Electrically it all looks identical, diagonal deflection angle is a match as is the curve of the neck when it meets the rest of the tube. Yoke seems to fit perfectly. The original tube has a broken ear tab, and another that looks very close to breaking. I'm gonna try to use some JB weld to put a new ear on and save the remaining one. I'll probably give the new tube a test in the coming weeks and if it works I'll probably keep the original as a backup.
SHzjoEQ.jpg


Ultimately I want to make an Atari style cabaret for it. I know they never made one with a horizontal 19" monitor, so I'll modify the plans for a tempest cabaret. Also grabbed a beat up owl eye door for it eventually.
 
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Nice project! I would recommend that you use the old tube until everything is finished then install the new one. It only takes a few moments of game malfunction to damage the tube.
 
I like the way you installed the bigger resistors there. Imagine it gave you a lot more room to work with during construction.
 
Those resistors were one of the few things that bugged me about assembling it. I'm not sure why the bill of materials had resistors too big to lay flat, you can certainly get them in the right size, I just didn't think to check.

Got AdvanceMAME running on my laptop and fired it up.
hSSFkPf.jpg


I am a little annoyed by some instability in lines drawn, you can see it in the large asteroids in the video, bumps they aren't supposed to be there. A guy in the facebook vector group says he has them too and in the thread here they say on sharper vector monitors the DACs have 'power glitches' that can be visible. Other guy one here was playing Aztarac on his B&W vector and it looked fine, so iunno.

Bought a Raspberry Pi 5 hoping I could use the image the USB-DVG people use, but I can't even get that image to boot, kernal panic. Loaded up the default image and compiled AdvancedMAME for it. Also bought a good switching 5V power supply to power the Pi and the VSTCM. Maybe my laptops USB power is noisy and thats contributing to it?
 
Those glitches are definitely noticeable but it still looks pretty sweet for MAME. I wonder if you can un-nice that MAME process and get more realtime timing out of it? I would be surprised if that was from USB power noise.
 
Those resistors were one of the few things that bugged me about assembling it. I'm not sure why the bill of materials had resistors too big to lay flat, you can certainly get them in the right size, I just didn't think to check.

Got AdvanceMAME running on my laptop and fired it up.
View attachment 826148


I am a little annoyed by some instability in lines drawn, you can see it in the large asteroids in the video, bumps they aren't supposed to be there. A guy in the facebook vector group says he has them too and in the thread here they say on sharper vector monitors the DACs have 'power glitches' that can be visible. Other guy one here was playing Aztarac on his B&W vector and it looked fine, so iunno.

Bought a Raspberry Pi 5 hoping I could use the image the USB-DVG people use, but I can't even get that image to boot, kernal panic. Loaded up the default image and compiled AdvancedMAME for it. Also bought a good switching 5V power supply to power the Pi and the VSTCM. Maybe my laptops USB power is noisy and thats contributing to it?

I would play that every day happy as a clam. Looks way nicer than some of my projects. :ROFLMAO:
 
there is no such thing as perfect vectors drawn with mame since the draw algorithm cannot predict the future.
mame does not know how to draw vectors . the original draw routine is lost and a new different routine is created on the fly based on mames tile system.
my 2 cents is be happy with what you have and accept it can never be perfect.
 
there is no such thing as perfect vectors drawn with mame since the draw algorithm cannot predict the future.
mame does not know how to draw vectors . the original draw routine is lost and a new different routine is created on the fly based on mames tile system.
my 2 cents is be happy with what you have and accept it can never be perfect.
I was aware of that limitation, but I don't think its a MAME issue as the bumps are present even in VSTCMs menu.

k3NGj0z.jpg
 
Ultimately I want to make an Atari style cabaret for it. I know they never made one with a horizontal 19" monitor, so I'll modify the plans for a tempest cabaret. Also grabbed a beat up owl eye door for it eventually.

You're talking about a 19" horizontal vector cabaret, right?
Klax and Tetris cabaret cabs are 19" horizontal ;) And a 2p control panel which may be handy...
 
Those resistors were one of the few things that bugged me about assembling it. I'm not sure why the bill of materials had resistors too big to lay flat, you can certainly get them in the right size, I just didn't think to check.

Got AdvanceMAME running on my laptop and fired it up.
View attachment 826148


I am a little annoyed by some instability in lines drawn, you can see it in the large asteroids in the video, bumps they aren't supposed to be there. A guy in the facebook vector group says he has them too and in the thread here they say on sharper vector monitors the DACs have 'power glitches' that can be visible. Other guy one here was playing Aztarac on his B&W vector and it looked fine, so iunno.

Bought a Raspberry Pi 5 hoping I could use the image the USB-DVG people use, but I can't even get that image to boot, kernal panic. Loaded up the default image and compiled AdvancedMAME for it. Also bought a good switching 5V power supply to power the Pi and the VSTCM. Maybe my laptops USB power is noisy and thats contributing to it?
That's odd. The base image has some issues with advmame, but I've never had any trouble getting it to boot.
 
Tempest looks awful with these glitches, I think something is clearly wrong with the VSTCM I built.

The glitches in the play-field lines are unmoving so long as the line stays in the same spot. When you complete a stage and it begins zooming in the glitch will remain in the exact same spot on the screen on those diagonals


Glitch.jpg
 
It really looks like noise being coupled into the deflection signal and not coming from the DACs. It looks like audio being added to the deflection.

How does it look on a scope?
 
Where did you get the discrete IC's that you used on the board?

That's looking like a bad chip to me. What types of chips are all of the discrete ones? If there are any op-amps, I'd suspect those.
 
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