Why no more replacement chassis'? 8liners/Wei Ya

ManNamedJed

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I've been reading the threads about tube swaps, and the hopes of having new crts made.

There used to be a company called 8liners (Wei Ya) that sold chassis you could put on a variety of tubes. So you'd find a decent tube, check its specs, then order a chassis to fit.

This seems much easier than trying to find a donor tube that happens to fit an old chassis you already have.

I managed to do one on a game and it worked reasonably easy.

What happened to them? If they are no longer in business, I'm surprised no one has picked that up. It seems like one of the other companies that serve the hobby with custom boards coud do this? Maybe Rottendog?
 
they seemed to have a pretty good racket doing it. they were pretty terrible though. I would have to believe with them making them to match certain yokes that there's a number of things that are way out of tolerance on them. I personally don't do anything with them as far as fixing, no patience for that second rate junk.

there's enough old monitors in circulation still that the hobby should be able to continue to utilize them. I've done tube swaps from TVs in the past that came out pretty great.
 
usually if its profitable than someone else would have picked it up.
 
Was doing research on b/w crts and ran across a group who are installing new guns into a crt. Pretty sweet but they dont make crts or do the phosphorous coating..

Not sure of the cost but the skill is being preserved..
 
Was doing research on b/w crts and ran across a group who are installing new guns into a crt. Pretty sweet but they dont make crts or do the phosphorous coating..

Not sure of the cost but the skill is being preserved..

The Early Television Foundation bought the shop of the last operating CRT rebuilder, and I believe they've had some success using the equipment. But I understand that nobody is making new gun assemblies, either, so a full rebuild is still a steep hill to climb.

The Wei-Ya chassis are garbage. They have some geometry issues, but the most annoying thing is that they've got an automatic gain setup instead of having a contrast pot. If you run them on a game that has significantly variable brightness, it's impossible to get a good looking image.
 
usually if its profitable than someone else would have picked it up.

Yup, you hit the nail right on the head. This guy can sell you all the parts you'll need to repair your older superior chassis no need for wei ya.
 
I've been reading the threads about tube swaps, and the hopes of having new crts made.

There used to be a company called 8liners (Wei Ya) that sold chassis you could put on a variety of tubes. So you'd find a decent tube, check its specs, then order a chassis to fit.

This seems much easier than trying to find a donor tube that happens to fit an old chassis you already have.

I managed to do one on a game and it worked reasonably easy.

What happened to them? If they are no longer in business, I'm surprised no one has picked that up. It seems like one of the other companies that serve the hobby with custom boards coud do this? Maybe Rottendog?

That was Victor Genao who runs Atlas Amusements Corp in Miami, Florida.

http://us.kompass.com/c/atlas-amusements-corp/us535652/

He had websites 8liners.com and genao.com but I don't think the websites are active any more.

There were also the Jen Shinn universal chassis and the Rodotron universal chassis.
 
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The Early Television Foundation bought the shop of the last operating CRT rebuilder, and I believe they've had some success using the equipment. But I understand that nobody is making new gun assemblies, either, so a full rebuild is still a steep hill to climb.

Are they working on anything we could use in Arcade games?
 
Never understood the people saying the Wei-Ya chassis were garbage. We have had really good luck with them. Here's a post I made from a couple years ago and the monitors I mention are still going strong.

Not sure what we are doing different in these parts but I've made 8-10 Wei-Ya/TV tube monitors and they have all worked great.

Two of them have been running 6-10 hours a day, 7 days a week... for over three years. Then a couple more have been running the same amount for 1 to 2 years.

The only thing I do to the chassis is Americanize the power and signal connectors(thanks to Ken Layton's suggestion) and once in a while swap out the horizontal width capacitor.

As far as isolation transformers... the cabinets have already had them so that's how these new monitors are installed. BUT I usually let the monitors run overnight before putting them into service and that is done without an isolation transformer.

Here are a few I was building back in 2012...
Monitors.jpg

(Burning them in with a borked multi-Williams board. :))

Not sure if it matters but we only buy our universal chassis through Alva Amusements out of Florida. We did buy one from another company but it seemed like it was previously used so we no longer buy from them.
 
I only did one and it worked well.

Just because others were crappy, doesn't mean if someone wanted to revisit this project they couldn't do a good job with them.

It just seemed a lot easier to get something working - pick up a few random free TVs, buy chassis that works with what you have, and have a working monitor. Rather than digging through every random old TV hoping to find a tube compatible to the chassis you happen to have.
 
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