Can a bad tube ruin a chassis?

Teknotoyz

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 15, 2009
Messages
2,428
Reaction score
34
Location
BUFFALO, West Virginia
I bought a pair of Sega Super GT twins from Tilt. Long and short of it, one of the 4 tubes was VERY dark, changed a known good chassis into it and it remained dark.

Well, a few weeks later I turned it back on, was planning on confirming the bad tube and sorting the 4 chassis out. Magic smoke smell was immediate! Crapola...

WG U5000 chassis.

So the question, the machine was on daily at the mall up till the time I bought. Is it possible for that tube to have damaged the chassis after having set off for a few weeks?

I did notice the little adjustment board was hanging down near the pedals, might have been touching. No fuse blew on the chassis, but no signs of life when turned on. Any ideas on where to even start troubleshooting this??
 
Magic smoke smell was immediate! Crapola...

WG U5000 chassis.

So the question, the machine was on daily at the mall up till the time I bought. Is it possible for that tube to have damaged the chassis after having set off for a few weeks?

No, that chassis just sucks. The single WORST arcade monitor to work on, as far as I'm concerned. It was always just on the ragged edge of burning up. Wells Gardner had a bunch of update kits for these things (horizontal output transistor upgrade, vertical sweep upgrade, power supply upgrade, etc) to try to address the failing points of this terrible mess of a monitor.

So, yeah, the words "smoke" and "U5000" are very commonly used in conjunction with each other. So are "U5000" and "very large hammer".

-Ian
 
No, that chassis just sucks. The single WORST arcade monitor to work on, as far as I'm concerned. It was always just on the ragged edge of burning up. Wells Gardner had a bunch of update kits for these things (horizontal output transistor upgrade, vertical sweep upgrade, power supply upgrade, etc) to try to address the failing points of this terrible mess of a monitor.

So, yeah, the words "smoke" and "U5000" are very commonly used in conjunction with each other. So are "U5000" and "very large hammer".

-Ian

I've got a busted U5000, Ian. Will you fix it for me?

:D
 
U5000's aren't that bad. I fix lots of them, and they're a bit easier to troubleshoot than some of their cousins (K7400, U2000).

If you have a yoke issue, or a cracked tube, it could damage a chassis. Switching the resolution of the U5000 with it turned on, or running it for an extended period of time at the wrong resolution, can kill the chassis.

Of course, throwing on a non-rebuilt chassis and expecting it to work perfectly forever is also unrealistic, but people do it all the time and are surprised when it dies suddenly...
 
Back
Top Bottom