New Project: Tetris Cabaret

The harness connects to the header pins, right? From what you described, it sounded plausible that an intermittent green connection was still at play, because I would move the monitor or connector if I were reflowing pins, but maybe you did it some other way. Also you haven't proven any of the parts are reliable by themselves, out of the whole system.

Ok, I'll just sit back and watch this play out.
Well, you fucker got me there. Finally figured it out. We were both right. The green wire was one of the cheap ones from China. The tin wire inside the insulation was so thin that it was barely making contact with the pin that went into the connector for the adapter. I decided to follow the advice of several of you fine fellows and messed with that green wire a bit. I gave it a gentle tug and it pulled right out of the molex connector. I then went to the edge connector, and after a little tugging, was able to pull it right out of that pin as well. So I replaced the green wire with an old used Atari wire I had sitting in my wire tote. Hooked everything up, and the colors are back! They're back!! They're really back this time!! Son of a bitch.

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Well, you fucker got me there. Finally figured it out. We were both right. The green wire was one of the cheap ones from China. The tin wire inside the insulation was so thin that it was barely making contact with the pin that went into the connector for the adapter. I decided to follow the advice of several of you fine fellows and messed with that green wire a bit. I gave it a gentle tug and it pulled right out of the molex connector. I then went to the edge connector, and after a little tugging, was able to pull it right out of that pin as well. So I replaced the green wire with an old used Atari wire I had sitting in my wire tote. Hooked everything up, and the colors are back! They're back!! They're really back this time!! Son of a bitch.

View attachment 858821
Holy shit. Looks like a proper RGB monitor!!! 🙌
 
And it was the harness… Like we all said
he's going to call you a fucker and say he's already tried that

View attachment 858131

Well, you fucker got me there. Finally figured it out. We were both right. The green wire was one of the cheap ones from China. The tin wire inside the insulation was so thin that it was barely making contact with the pin that went into the connector for the adapter. I decided to follow the advice of several of you fine fellows and messed with that green wire a bit. I gave it a gentle tug and it pulled right out of the molex connector. I then went to the edge connector, and after a little tugging, was able to pull it right out of that pin as well. So I replaced the green wire with an old used Atari wire I had sitting in my wire tote. Hooked everything up, and the colors are back! They're back!! They're really back this time!! Son of a bitch.

View attachment 858821
 
Mattspad said:
Preamp transistor I think. On main chassis. I'm not sure what chassis you got in there but they all should have them. You'll lose the color but still be able to turn up the neck pots and see green.

Mattspad said:
Wherever the color inputs come in rgb on the main chassis they all have one little transistor for each color called the preamp transistor:

Mattspad said:
Never worked on a kortek myself but it's got preamp transistors like most monitors do.

Mattspad said:
Bro I already told you it's a preamp transistor.



 
Ok but don't quote where I said the harness, it wasn't meant as insult just to say I predicted what you'd say. Anyways chill out fucker 🤣
 
Holy crap... I'm legitimately glad it didn't turn into one of these

Great build, BTW. Love It!
 
I'm curious if any of the stuff you did to the monitor itself had anything to do with the problem at all, or if it was just that intermittent green wire all along. But there's no way we'll ever know.

I hate buying tools, but man… a TPG would have saved you so many headaches. It's a great way to easily narrow down a problem between pcb, harness, and monitor.
 
I'm curious if any of the stuff you did to the monitor itself had anything to do with the problem at all, or if it was just that intermittent green wire all along. But there's no way we'll ever know.

I hate buying tools, but man… a TPG would have saved you so many headaches. It's a great way to easily narrow down a problem between pcb, harness, and monitor.
If you're creative you can get by without one. Like take a known working machine and put it next to the broken one almost back to back and plug in the video cable from that one into the broken one. Will help determine if the if the monitor or the game pcb/harness has issues. I've done it before on Nintendo games, saved me a lot of time on diagnosis.
 
If you're creative you can get by without one. Like take a known working machine and put it next to the broken one almost back to back and plug in the video cable from that one into the broken one. Will help determine if the if the monitor or the game pcb/harness has issues. I've done it before on Nintendo games, saved me a lot of time on diagnosis.

Oh yeah, I know this, I got by 20 years without one, but moving games and stretching cables sucks pretty bad. Especially when you're probably already dealing with a failure or something else frustrating.

It's also great to be able to test and adjust a monitor on the work table or anywhere else. I'm not that active, and I've still probably used mine a half dozen times in the last couple of years. For someone in this hobby who believes in making things easier rather than harder, a TPG is a great tool to have around. They make several things faster and easier, and in this hobby, shit is always breaking. I cursed myself for not buying one sooner.
 
Oh yeah, I know this, I got by 20 years without one, but moving games and stretching cables sucks pretty bad. Especially when you're probably already dealing with a failure or something else frustrating.

It's also great to be able to test and adjust a monitor on the work table or anywhere else. I'm not that active, and I've still probably used mine a half dozen times in the last couple of years. For someone in this hobby who believes in making things easier rather than harder, they're a great tool to have around. They definitely make several things faster and easier. I cursed myself for not buying one sooner.
I've never had any luck adjusting a monitor outside the machine. Usually when the tinted bezel goes on like on a dk it just throws everything off. Always end up tweaking them for 10-15 minutes until I'm satisfied. Depends on the game and your setup if moving a game over for testing is an easy option. For Nintendo cabs I just keep a spare video cable and it's super long so it's easy to test with without messing up the harness or anything. I had a tpg but sold it because I just don't use it, if I have to use something similar I have ways of hooking up an rgb modded famicom with 240p test suite on an everdrive up. Need to figure out how to use a mister FPGA as a 240p test suite because it natively does cga 15khz, really just a matter of me making some cables.
 
I've never had any luck adjusting a monitor outside the machine. Usually when the tinted bezel goes on like on a dk it just throws everything off. Always end up tweaking them for 10-15 minutes until I'm satisfied. Depends on the game and your setup if moving a game over for testing is an easy option. For Nintendo cabs I just keep a spare video cable and it's super long so it's easy to test with without messing up the harness or anything. I had a tpg but sold it because I just don't use it, if I have to use something similar I have ways of hooking up an rgb modded famicom with 240p test suite on an everdrive up. Need to figure out how to use a mister FPGA as a 240p test suite because it natively does cga 15khz, really just a matter of me making some cables.

Yeah. There's plenty of other ways to test parts, but for me, moving stuff around is dreadful. Probably my least favorite part of gaming. So much so that I put wheels on all of them. I also have different resolution games, and a 25" monitor at a height above my head. Agree about final adjustments. I meant for things like convergence, testing after a cap kit, adjusting yoke position - far easier on a table. And a TPG is far better for testing a monitor in a different room, floor, or building.

Once in the cabinet, like you say, there might be some more adjustments for brightness or position. Heck… I sometimes adjust them out of the blue just to try to get all of them to have the same color balance and brightness. Just trying to get everything as perfect as possible.

Anyway, I highly recommend a TPG, lots of very handy uses IMO. Including Phet's problem here which probably would have been resolved weeks ago if he had one. I used to have a game mounted to a board, but even that wasn't as good without all the various colors, patterns, and resolutions.

My only regret is not spending little more $ and getting the craftymech version. Mine is the pcbjunkie version which is a small, loose board, and has a couple of bugs that can throw you a curveball.
 
That donkey kong cabaret q bert is epic
Yeah. There's plenty of other ways to test parts, but for me, moving stuff around is dreadful. Probably my least favorite part of gaming. So much so that I put wheels on all of them. I also have different resolution games, and a 25" monitor at a height above my head. Agree about final adjustments. I meant for things like convergence, testing after a cap kit, adjusting yoke position - far easier on a table. And a TPG is far better for testing a monitor in a different room, floor, or building.

Once in the cabinet, like you say, there might be some more adjustments for brightness or position. Heck… I sometimes adjust them out of the blue just to try to get all of them to have the same color balance and brightness. Just trying to get everything as perfect as possible.

Anyway, I highly recommend a TPG, lots of very handy uses IMO. Including Phet's problem here which probably would have been resolved weeks ago if he had one. I used to have a game mounted to a board, but even that wasn't as good without all the various colors, patterns, and resolutions.

My only regret is not spending little more $ and getting the craftymech version. Mine is the pcbjunkie version which is a small, loose board, and has a couple of bugs that can throw you a curveball.
Yeah I had a hokey tpg as well :50: Are you on carpet or hard floor? I keep my games on sliders but it's a hard floor so they move easy. Agreed though having some sort of tpg would've helped phet a lot.
 
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