WG 19v2000 Problems - Traces and Dots

ihavethatpma

Member
Joined
Sep 18, 2012
Messages
107
Reaction score
1
Location
Washington
So I'm having this problem with my Asteroids machine. There are faint traces lines connected to everything, and there is a spot in the middle of every asteroid, as well as one in the very middle of the screen. After about 30 seconds of being on, the screen gets pretty dim. Here is what it looks like right after being switched on:

asteroidstraces.jpg


What the test screen looks like:

asteroidstestscreen.jpg


A few months back, I rebuilt the power supply, the A/R board and the monitor with a cap kit with resistors, and it was working fine for about a week until the screen went blank one day.

I have since tried reflowing a lot of the deflection board, although it's pretty difficult trying to resolder this stuff:

asteroidsdeflectionsolder.jpg


It's pretty hard to melt, hard to get off the board, and when I finally do get it off, it's difficult to get the new solder to stay down on the board.

I know that the rest of the machine works, as I hooked up my Battlezone monitor to the Asteroids machine and it played fine. I tried swapping out the deflection boards to see if that was the problem, but it actually made the screen worse? It could be that the Battlezone monitor is a G05 though...

Does this look familiar to anyone? I tried searching for similar problems, but couldn't find anything other than one thread saying to fix cold solders, and the problem was never resolved.
 
Suck all that shitty solder off the board and flow some new solder. If you get the same image turn the brightness down.
 
Probably half of the solder I've managed to suck out, when I put new solder down it has a hard time sticking to the board, it's weird.

Also one thing that I forgot to mention, the brightness is turned all the way up in those pictures. When I turn it down, the traces and dots stay with the other images too.

I'll try and reflow the whole thing, might take a while!
 
try putting some soldering flux paste on the old solder and then heating it up. Note that vacuum desoldering stations can be had for not too much money and will can help save your boards from damage / lifted traces / etc.
 
Last edited:
Alright, so I just got done reflowing/replacing the solder on every single part of the board, it took quite a while because the old solder was so stubborn. I put it back on the monitor and turned the game on, and the dots/traces were still there, but everything was a lot brighter. I turned down the brightness.... screen was PERFECT! No traces, no dots. About 30 seconds later though, the screen starts to flicker and turn dim each time it does. I started a game, shot a few asteroids, and then the screen just went blank... After turning it off and then back on, nothing came back up, so I turned the brightness back up and I found the images again, back to where I was in the first place.

I'm not really sure where to go from here. Could it be that the tube is bad?
 
Okay, so I turned it back on just a few minutes after that last post, and it came up fine. About thirty seconds in, everything but the ship got really dim for a few seconds, then went back to normal, and it's been normal for the last several minutes? I know that as soon as I put it back into the cabinet, it's not going to want to work.
 
Doubtful (but certainly possible) that it's the tube. I'd replace the three or four transistors in the Z / spot killer section of the deflection board or the LED itself. For a more thorough explanation and other troubleshooting, see the B&W vector monitor FAQ.
 
Back
Top Bottom