Re: Vectorbeam Question

On Tue, 27 Jan 1998 23:00:15 EST, Danger wil <Dangerwil@aol.com> wrote:

>Well,
>
> I am fixing to get rid of my Rip Off cocktail and so pulled it out to
>monkey around with a bit. It didn't have any boards, so I pulled out an
>untested set of Solar Quest bds and plugged them in.
>
> After praying to all the smoke gods, I plugged it in and wow it actually
>came up, well kinda. The sound board makes a game sound on power up and the
>monitor comes on. I can hear it making vectors but with the brightness turned
>all the way up all I see is groupings of dots. These dots seem to be moving
>and I can see what looks like a high score table in attract mode, but just in
>formless clumps of dots.
>
> It doesn't coin up or make any other noises, but I tend to think that is
>probably because of differences in the games pinouts??????????/
>
>Well any ideas would be a help. I might want to play around with it some
>more, before I send it off.
>
>BTW This is the weirdest setup I have ever seen. The whole thing looks
>homemade. The monitor tube is actually hinged and pulls up to expose the
>chassis and sound board. The power supply and chassis are both marked
>vectorbeam, but the game is manufactured by Centuri??

(I've been told the Vectorbeam licensed Ripoff to Centuri for the cocktail
version)

It sounds like problems in the brightness circuitry.

Solar Quest should come up with all its vectors at max intensity. Though it is
made for a monitor with 64 levels of intensities and that could be part of the
problem.

Check the obvious things like loose connectors, loose wires leading to the CRT.
Pay special attention to small cracks in the solder joints around socket pins,
and jumper wires on the PCB -- including the lead that go to the CRT.

Then check if the +90 volt supply is present.

If that's there, check to see that the unfiltered +25 volts is present. This is
used as a spot killer when power is turned off. Since only a small diode is
used to create this voltage an accidental short anytime in the past will fry
this diode.

If that's ok, then (using vectorbeam nomenclature at this point, Cinematronics
had different names for all the same parts) check U6 (the 7406).

Check the ~4 volt regulator Q19, CR37, and C22 (A tantalum capacitor! These
things always die!).

Check C18 (used to indicate the presence of vectors). If you can't measure the
value of this capacitor, try placing another .1uf across it to see if it helps.

Check if Q24 is open, or if Q21 is shorted.

Check to be sure the brightness control is not cracked (check for 10k across the
outside terminals, and that the wiper is making contact).

If there happens to be two neon lamps in series, connected from the wiper of the
intensity control to gnd, make sure that 1) these lamps are not lit in normal
use, and 2) they are not blackened. If these lamps are not there, you should
install them. Any 2 NE-2 or similar neon lamps connected in series should work
fine. This dissipates static charges during on/off transitions.

That's about it for single point failures I can think of, pretty much in order
of likelihood.

Definitely rule out the CPU card by plugging something in that works (any game
should come up, though the controls and sound won't work).

-Z
Received on Tue Jan 27 23:46:56 1998