Space Invaders Monitor Question

A couple years ago, a friend of mine brought over a Space Invaders to see if I could get it working before he sold it on ebay.

His Cabinet was in pretty bad shape, but one thing I did notice is his picture was alot shaper than mine. Meaning, I have to keep the brightness down kinda low otherwise it loses focus, not by very much, but enough to slightly bother me. On his, it looked like a brand new monitor. Very bright and all the edges on the characters were very crisp like legos. Just how I remembered the game way back when.

So he said I could swap the monitor if I wanted. I swapped the monitor and had the same problem. He then said I could swap anything I wanted. So I pretty much swapped everything except the cabinet, the wiring harness and transformer. Still nothing changed. With everything from my game now in his cabinet, it still looked great - picture tube and all.

So, this has become sort of an obsession. Swapping the transformer and wiring harness was a little too much work for me and it doesn't really answer the question as to how to actually fix the problem in the future.

Keep in mind, this is me being *very* picky. It's not a *real* problem, more of a curiosity.

So, here is what I've done so far:

1) Verified that the monitor has good ground.
2) Measured the AC voltage going to the monitor, my reading is 115v (I didn't check with an Oscope though, hmm)
3) Checked to make sure the Video signals going in are good.
4) With reference to the schematics, I have made sure all of the voltages are correct on the monitor and the CPU board.
5) and of course, the good ol' cap kit.
My game is missing the ground plug, I might try that, but I don't think that would help.

Still, when I turn up the brightness on Space Invaders to a certain level they begin to blurr a little.
When I say a "certain level" I'm not talking about an excessive level, The missile base, for example is still pretty faint when the screen begins to blurr.

I think this would make a good FAQ if I can find the solution. Again, everything I'm working on now, was perfect when it was hooked up in the other cabinet.

Any suggestions?

Matt

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Received on Tue May 2 22:09:31 2006