Star Castle (Cinematronics) dot in center of screen

DogP

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Star Castle (Cinematronics) dot in center of screen

Hey,

One last issue that's been kinda bothering me w/ my Star Castle is that there's a dot in the center of the screen. Adjusting the brightness doesn't help, and obviously it's been there for a long time since there's a really dark black dot burn-in spot in the center. I checked the FAQ and didn't see anything about this symptom... everything on the screen looks great, except there's just also a dot in the middle.

I can't decide whether it comes and goes, or if it's always there... I think it's always there, except that it hides behind the existing burn-in, but there's definitely some times when it's visible just outside the burn-in.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,
DogP
 
I had this problem on one of my boards.It was a bad prom chip,don't remember the location,but there are several of them in the same area.The board would be fine until it warmed up,then I would get the dot in the center like you are describing.I found it by using component cooler on it.
 
Thanks for the idea... was it a bipolar PROM (smaller TTL logic size chip) or (E)PROM (wider EPROM size chip)? I'm not too familiar with this board, and I haven't gone down and looked at it again, but I remember seeing a line of wider EPROM-like chips on the board... I just want to verify that I'm looking at what you're describing.

Of course the hard part for me is seeing whether the dot is there, since there's such a dark burn-in spot :p . I guess I could shift the image to move the dot where it's visible, or I could shift it so it's always hidden and just forget about it ;).

Thanks,
DogP
 
Just had same thing

Same thing happened to my star castle. Of course, I had just put a new CRT in there, so now I have a nice nail scratch in the middle of the otherwise perfect CRT.

I think this problem may be related to failure of the spot kill transistor, since after I turned off power, the beam continued to burn and drift up and to the right before fading out. I am hoping a display board rebuild will fix it.
 
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