Night Driver....Picture is faint?

badgamer

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I picked up a spare board for my Night Driver...but it displays a very faint picture of the guide posts scrolling by.

Might the board need a component replaced?? or would something else cause this problem?

Any advice for a noob would be appreciated.



john

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The backlight on mine washes things out a bit, so it could be that.

Or the monitor might need some adjustment.

Or the monitor chassis needs to be rebuilt.

Can you post a pic so we can see what it looks like?

- JM
 
I can have pic's up this time tomorrow,but for now.....

Neither of the 2 boards I have displays a backlight under the car decal (it's just a small rectangle to the right of the car....coincidence?? (you will see when I post pic's)

Monitor works perfectly with the other Night Driver board that I have, It's clear, sharp and bright

So must be a board problem??...In other words, if it displays correctly with one board, it wouldn't be the monitor, would it??


Thanks for any suggestions




john

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john


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Here are the pic's,

The first is a pic of the screen with the working board plugged in...not a good pic...but as you can see, it's good.



DSC00146.jpg



This next pic is from the spare board I just got, you can't see, but the guide posts are very faint in the background...also top and sides of game are cut off.



DSC00149.jpg



Interestingly, the backlight is not being drawn under the car(to light the car decal up) ...that's it to the right (arrowed) and it's a lot smaller than it should be.....this is the same on both boards ??

I did also just notice that one of the 3 LEDs isn't lighting up on the bad board.

It does coin up, and have sound.


Anyone got any idea how I should start to diagnose these problems.

I'm a noob at this, but do have a good DMM and logic probe on the way.



john

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As a bit of preventative maintenance, I gave my PCB a full cap kit. Bob Robert's doesn't sell one, you need to make one up from scratch at Digikey or Mouser.

Oddly, I put my rebuilt PCB in my friend's Night Driver and found it was very faint as well, but looks just fine on my monitor. Odd!
 
As a bit of preventative maintenance, I gave my PCB a full cap kit. Bob Robert's doesn't sell one, you need to make one up from scratch at Digikey or Mouser.

Oddly, I put my rebuilt PCB in my friend's Night Driver and found it was very faint as well, but looks just fine on my monitor. Odd!



Thanks for the info........and odd indeed that both of my boards has the same backlight problem.....ifkz, have you ever seen a problem with the backlights?




john

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The sit-down doesn't have a b(l)acklight, so, I couldn't say. We are talking about the light for the monitor, right?
 
The sit-down doesn't have a b(l)acklight, so, I couldn't say. We are talking about the light for the monitor, right?


I'm talking about the box of light that is behind the car decal, that illuminates the car(the monitor provides the illumination) ...does the sitdown have a car decal stuck to the monitor??

Maybe both of my boards are from a sitdown, since they dont have a backlight(for want of a better description).....do you have that white box on your screen that I arrowed to in the above pic's ??



john

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Oh, the images on the monitor, I see. My game does not have anything that displays behind the car decal. I do have a rectangular box on the lower right of the screen. It's there to illuminate a clear piece of tape that says 1976 Atari and is useful for adjusting the screen to the right height and width.

There are some pots on the PCB as I recall besides the volume pot. No one could tell me what they do, and there isn't a manual for a sitdown. The UR manual doesn't provide any information as I recall.
 
ifkz said:
I do have a rectangular box on the lower right of the screen. It's there to illuminate a clear piece of tape that says 1976 Atari and is useful for adjusting the screen to the right height and width.


That's handy to know...now I'm getting somewhere, I'll do as you did, and do a cap kit on the board and see what happens.

Thanks very much for your help


john

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There should be three pots on the game pcb, the first is volume and the other two are to change the engine sound. One is for pitch and the other is for modulation (effect).

John, two of the leds flash on and off when you turn the steering wheel, you can ignore those if your steering works.

With a faint picture like that I'd have guessed something on the video line is sad, but the edges chopped off, I dont know..

Someone said the uv light washed out their screen? It's supposed to, you adjust the cardboard flap so that the washed out section starts where the track disappears.. Its supposed to be a night time horizon.

Thats interesting that the white box is used to illuminate the atari branding..
The manual says it's meant to light up the car decal.

I'm also keen for information on the white box (aka backlight in the manual) as johns machine used to be mine and that was one of the final two details left to do in my restoration of it which never got finished.
My friend and I managed to resize the box and move it around, even create multiple boxes.. But we never got it to fit nicely behind the car decal.
 
Thanks, I never knew what the other pots did! Here is my restoration thread, on the third picture you can barely see a bit of white and black on the lower right of the monitor. That's where my clear tape sits. I can get a better shot if anyone asks...

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=155721

I have an extra speaker that I'll be adding next season...I'll see if that helps my faint volume. I doubt it, but I have the speaker anyways...
 
I would agree with "ifkz" about the white bar in the lower right of the screen. My sitdown Night Driver still has that clear tape decal that says "Atari 1976" on it and the box lines up behind it.
 
I guess the pcb wasnt broken at all:/
thats very strange that they decided to illuminate the branding rather than the car.. especially since their documentation says the car should be illuminated by the box.
when I restored the pcb to the original traces (having the box in the bottom right is a factory modification using a heap of wire and lifted pins) the box was behind the car but too skinny and way too long. My guess is that the factory schematic was wrong and this is what they decided to use it for.
moving the box to fit behind the car decal looks like it will need extra logic gates, the size you need is kindof between two increments. I'd say this way was cheaper without wasting the whole backlight section of the pcb.
 
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