Basic monitor information - how to ask good questions. Read this first

You mention "Beautiful color spectra" as one of the advantages. I totally disagree. LCD's/LEDs still look unnatural. ONLY a CRT can produce TRUE colors simply because it is an analogue device. If you go to TV studios today, there will STILL be CRT monitors for final color checking....

However, in all honesty that doesn't mean a lot with classic arcade games because they only produce a hand-ful of colors, esp. the earliest one's.

You also forget some of the drawbacks of LCD's: the light source inside dies pretty quickly. LCDs have a lower life expectancy. There IS high voltage being generated inside for this light source so the safety difference is oly the case around it. Once you start to try and fix a LCD you will still need to be cautious.

I totally hate to see a completely flat surface on a classic machine. It is just wrong. You will also loose the pixels look.

Oh and, why is your SW monitor nearing it's death bed ? If it's an Amplifone it is easy to fix.
 
I'm getting an "Out of Range" error on a brand new CGA/VGA Jamma Multicade. Any idea how to fix this?

What monitor are you using?

If you're using it with a 60-in-1, make sure you have dip switch #2 on the board set properly:

OFF - CGA
ON - VGA
 
Looking for info on Monitor Replacement

Greetings,

Brand new to the board with a coctail table MsPacMan machine, that the wife LOVES, that needs some refurb/upgrade. It -did- work when we got it some 18 months ago, but is dark now.

Install of a new 60-1 board gives me sound, but no video. The monitor was pretty badly "burned in", so I'm not at all opposed to replacing it as that burn in will adversely affect the other games.

The "internals" (wiring) are pretty "hacked up", so I might just want to start from scratch with a JAMMA harness rather than trying to figure it all out.

Anyway, my major question(s) tonight are:

1) is there a source for replacement monitors for this machine?

2) is there anyone in the Lexington SC area that might be able to "mentor" me through this process. I'd be willing to pay you for your time.

Thanks!
Brett
[email protected]
 
You should really start a new thread about this so that people can help you without cluttering up this info thread...
 
Ian,

Great stuff, I'm trying to absorb it.

So, can you cover something not covered so far (if you did, I missed it)...

What exactly are "drive" and "cut off" and how to properly adjust (has to be something more than "hey that looks good").

On the neck board, on a G07 for example, why do they have cut off for red, green and blue, but they only have drive for green and red? Why no blue drive?

I missed this info too. Is there a proper method for adjusting drive and cut off?
 
Just discovered this thread. Excellent information. Thank you for putting it together.
 
+1 huge thanks for this.

While I've worked in arcades for 8+ years back in the 90's, I never had to do much with monitors. (Discharge, replace. That's it.) With bug names in distributors, we just sent broken monitors back, and got new ones to drop into games.

Now a day, though, with the completely different landscape of arcades, that's no longer a feasible path.

I just got a Rush The Rock from a fellow member here, and will likely have to do a cap kit to it, and this helped a lot..

Thank you. :D
 
This should be a sticky. (Or bookmarked somehow, as I know there are a lot of stickies, and they can get ignored after a while.)

Great writeup. There is so much great info buried in the archives here, it's a shame in a way.
 
This should be a sticky. (Or bookmarked somehow, as I know there are a lot of stickies, and they can get ignored after a while.)

Great writeup. There is so much great info buried in the archives here, it's a shame in a way.

It's the top sticky in the monitor sub forum
 
I'm curious/skeptical (genuinely, not snarkily) as to how widespread this opinion really is and how it breaks down among the "must be as authentic as it was on the shipping dock in March 1982" crowd versus the "I want the best gameplay/ownership experience however it is achieved" crowd.

I'll admit readily I am in the second camp. I absolutely admire the restoration work I've seen here and for the most part if I have a CRT monitor working well in a unit, I am content to leave it there. A lesson I had beaten into me years ago is that when arcade hardware is working properly, don't screw with it! But ultimately, practical matters win the day for me. The new shipping Pac-Man Party upright with the LCD monitor looks fantastic -- if that's what I would get upgrading an old Pac to LCD, I would be fine with it. I've put LCDs into two of my machines so far that really needed it, but both were newer hardware (Neo Geo and Capcom CPS2). I have some older machines with monitors that are on their deathbeds: TRON, Star Wars, Gauntlet. I know with SW it's vector so that can never be upgraded, but wow, I'm really starting to itch for LCD upgrades for the others. Beautiful color spectra, less heat emission, MUCH lighter physically, significantly less electrical hazard, you can just hook it straight to a 12V lead instead of hot-chassis-ing it to the A/C... the list goes on. I guess the whole "sacrilege" thing just seems so subjective to me when once a game owner has accepted not meeting the threshold for ABSOLUTE OCD-level authenticity on their unit, an LCD refit seems like one of the best things you can do functionally. Sort of like that multi-Williams JAMMA board.

It would be one thing if it changed the game, a la Star Wars Special Edition. But from where I sit, it just improves things, a la Star Wars Criterion THX laserdisc box set. Interested in hearing what people think about this and whether the "sacrilege" perspective really is as prevalent as the OP suggests.

If I was buying games. I would subtract $400 from the price of any 1980's game that has been "upgraded" to LCD. I would subtract $800 to $1000 if it's a vector converted to LCD. You know why? Because as soon as I get the game I'm going to toss that LCD in the trash. Buy the proper monitor because that's how I remember the game, and that monitor and the labor will need to be offset by paying much less for the game or not buying it at all.

Games from the 80's that were designed for CRT monitors look like crap on LCD. If I wanted that look I'd stick to playing MAME on my computer. The only reason someone wants a giant box with a big glass tube in it in their house is because that's what they remembered. I don't recall any LCDs in the 1980's. ;)

So if anything you ruin the resale value to people that would actually be interested in these games from a collecting standpoint. That's ignoring the aesthetic issues. It isn't so much as being a purist it's just LCDs don't look right at all.
 
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