Adjusting An Arcade Monitor
When you start troubleshooting your arcade monitor, remember to always start off with the simple fixes before moving on to the more complex ones. Many of us want to install a cap kit before giving the adjustments a tweak or two. In this post, we discuss how to adjust an arcade monitor to achieve the best possible picture.
Adjusting An Arcade Monitor
Before you get started, you want to identify what’s wrong with your arcade monitor. The most common problems that can be solved with the monitor adjustments are out of focus, dim or dark picture, scrolling screen and bleeding colors. Obviously if your monitor is not getting power then no amount of adjusting will help you. We recommend checking the power and video wires before making adjustments to make sure that there are no problems in these areas. Also, we would recommend either getting a friend or a mirror to help you with the adjustments. This makes it much easier to know what’s going on with the monitor when you turn an adjustment knob.
First, we’ll start off by locating the focus and brightness controls on the flyback. Locate the flyback on your monitor chassis. It is usually a big black cylinder attached to the anode (located underneath the suction cup) by a red wire. On the flyback there should be two knobs. The top one is usually the focus and the bottom one the brightness. Please see the diagram below.
Some monitors have three knobs on the flyback. If this is the case with your monitor, try turning the knobs just slightly to identify which knob does what.
While there is a brightness on the flyback, there is typically a brightness adjustment on the control board as well. The control board usually contains adjustments for horizontal and vertical hold, brightness and contrast among other things. Control boards can come in a variety of ways. Sometimes they are a separate board attached directly to the chassis or by a group of wires. Other times there are just pots, or potentiometers, soldered directly to the chassis. Please see the diagram below.
If you are having scrolling screen or sync issues, you might try to adjust the horizontal and vertical hold. Everything else on the control board is pretty self explanatory. The contrast is very important if this monitor is located in a light gun game. Light guns depend on a bright monitor to work so make sure that this is adjusted correctly.
Next, let’s take a look at the color adjustments. Color adjustments are usually located on the neck board. The neck board is a small board attached to the back of the tube. Look for some adjustments located either on the top or the edges of this board. These are the color adjustments. Please see the diagram below.
There are typically two adjustments for each color: a drive and a cutoff. The drive affects objects on your screen that are the color of the knob you are adjusting. For instance, if the life bars on your Street Fighter II arcade game are not red enough for your liking, you would want to adjust the red drive. You can think of the cutoff more like the “tint” on your monitor. If there are no red objects on your screen but you see sort of a reddish tint on your monitor then you need to adjust your red cutoff.
One thing to keep in mind is that many games have monitor test screens in their test mode that allow you to easily see adjustments that need to be made. Check your arcade game manual for more information. We also recommend marking your pot and your board with a magic or permanent marker once you have found the adjustments to be to your liking. Some people like to put super glue or silicon on these knobs at this point. We discourage this practice because monitor tubes can change over time and, as such, these adjustments can change. Adding super glue or silicon to your knobs will make an adjustment that should take just a second or two take ten minutes or more.
Taking time to adjust your arcade monitor before doing a cap kit can save you time and money. Make sure you adjust your monitor on a regular basis so you can continue to enjoy your arcade game in the future. If you have any other comments, questions or suggestions about adjusting arcade monitors feel free to leave a message below in our comments section.
We recently purchased a classic arkanoid 2 game and had it shipped from NJ to WI and are having troubles getting the monitor to display correctly. We have adjusted the controls that you describe above, but what we are seeing are 4 images repeated rather than just the one. Any ideas?
Anne Weiland,
This problem does not really sound like a monitor issue. We would suggest starting at the PCB or Board and checking the connector that attaches to it as this could have come loose in transit. You can also try removing the connector all together and taking a pencil eraser to the board in this spot. This is a well known solution for cleaning an edge connector on a PCB. Please let us know if you try these things and you continue to have problems.
We have also featured your question on episode 1 of our Q&A podcast. Look for it to be posted on our website soon. Thank you for your question and keep us posted on your issue.
We have an old original Ms. Pac Man. The monitor is discolored down the middle. We have adjusted the colors as suggested in your video. Someone told us we need to find a hand held defussing coil to run over the top of the screen. Does this sound familiar / right? If so, where can we get one.
Kari,
While it would be good for you to get a degaussing coil, it doesn’t sound like it would solve this particular problem. This problem sounds more like a bad cap somewhere on the monitor chassis. Please check out our post on Installing A Cap Kit for more information. If you need some help identifying your monitor, please send some pictures to us at questions@arcaderepairtips.com and we’ll help you out.
We have also featured your question on episode 4 of our Q&A podcast. Please listen to it for more of our thoughts on your issue. Thank you for your question and good luck with your repair.
We bought big buck hunter that was shipped and the only issue with the monitor is that it’s not displaying the “red” color at all. During the tests, all the other major colors displayed okay, but when the red test came up, it wasn’t red. Is this a major or minor fix?
Thanks!
hi
i have problem because i see arcade monitor ghost image,i mean
is not clear.How i can resolve this?
Thanks a lot
Nick,
This issue is probably being caused by a short in the wiring between your board and your monitor chassis. Overall we would consider this a minor repair. Check the red video output wire going from the board to the monitor. You can located it by using a JAMMA pinout diagram such as the one located here. You might try wiggling this wire it to see if the red comes in or goes out or you can check the continuity using a multimeter. If you do not find a short in this wiring then your problem will be located in your monitor at which point it will be better to send off for repair.
We have also featured your question on episode 6 of our Q&A podcast. Please listen to it for more of our thoughts on your question. Thank you for your question and let us know if this solves your issue.
Miguel,
This problem could be caused by setting your colors or your contrast too high. We would recommend turning down the contrast and your colors to see if this makes a difference in your picture. Please see our post on Adjusting An Arcade Monitor for more information. Also, we would really like to see some pictures of the ghosting problem that you are describing. Please send some to questions@arcaderepairtips.com so we can help your further with your repair.
We have also featured your question on episode 6 of our Q&A podcast. Please listen to it for more of our thoughts on your question. Thank you for your question and stay tuned for more videos and podcasts.
My monitor is taking about 5 minutes to warm up. You can not see anything for about 2 minutes and then after 5-10 minutes the monitor looks great. It progressively gets better. Any ideas?
Jeff C,
While your issue could be related to the tube, this sounds more like the capacitors on your chassis are taking a while to warm up. We would recommend installing a cap kit on your monitor chassis. Please see our post on Installing A Cap Kit for more information. If you continue to have problems after then you might want to look into rejuvenating your tube or a new tube all together.
We have also featured your question on episode 7 of our Q&A podcast. Please listen to it for more of our thoughts on your question. Thank you for your question and please keep us updated on your status with this issue.
I have a street fighter 2 machine monitor that’s giving me problems. It was fine before I hooked up a different board to it for SF2-Turbo, and now both boards have a messed up monitor.
It jumps between being very washed out and high contrasty to looking almost like a photo negative. All the colors reverse practically and you can’t see fireballs.
Usually a twack on the machine or machine movement will get it to just back and forth. Neither is really acceptable, since it was working fine before.
Any suggestions?
Hi there, I have a Neo Geo 1 slot arcade cabinet that’s working just fine except for the fact I can’t seem to find the potentiometer to adjust horizontal size. There’s actually a portable “extension” unit that’s wired up to the board at the back so you can stand in front of the machine and tweak the monitor’s settings. The row of knobs on the back from left to right are as follows:
HPOS / HHOLD / VPOS / VSIZE / VHOLD / BRIGHT / CONT
So everything there (except for HHOLD which is only adjustable from the back) is wired to the extension board. There’s also a small different looking turn-able knob off to the upper-left of this row that says 50-60hz. Turning that just makes the image squash into itself from the bottom.
I’ve searched every inch of hardware at the back of the monitor for something to adjust the HSIZE but I can’t find anything. As it stands right now I’m missing a significant chunk of space on either side of the screen. I can scroll the image back and forth with HPOS to see what I’m missing but there’s no way to adjust it so the whole image fits in the viewable area.
Have any ideas? Thanks!
Robin,
Switching the boards in your cabinet should not have caused this issue. Sounds like you might have some wiring issues. You could try hooking another JAMMA board into the game to see if the monitor gets the same results. We would also recommend checking out our post on Adjusting An Arcade Monitor to see if you can adjust out the problems you are having. Also, check out our post on Checking And Replacing A Power Supply to see if you are getting the correct voltage.
If what we talked about above doesn’t work, then you really need to start looking at your monitor chassis. Inspect your chassis and check for cold solder joints and bad capacitors. We would particularly recommend checking the wires coming from your board to the monitor chassis.
We have also featured your question on episode 9 of our Q&A podcast. Please listen to it for more of our thoughts on your question. Thank you for your question and keep us posted on your progress.
Hi guys,
I just picked up a Mortal Kombat cabinet with a 25″ Hantarex MTC9000 monitor. The monitor works, but the sides of the image sort of bow in like an hourglass. It’s most noticeable on screens with straight lines on either side.
I’ve played around with some of the knobs to no avail – Horizontal Amp and Horizontal Phase don’t seem to quite do what I need.
Any ideas? If you’ve already covered this in a podcast please point me in the right direction.
-Dan
Devin,
We have just recently put up a post and video on this topic. Please see our post on Adjusting The Horizontal Width Coil for more information. We also talk about other methods for adjusting your horizontal size in case you do not have luck adjusting the coil.
We have also featured your question on episode 10 of our Q&A podcast. Please listen to it for more of our thoughts on your question. Thank you for your question and keep us updated on your repair.
Dan,
The hourglass shape that you are getting on your tube is probably related to some bad capacitors in your horizontal or vertical area. We often refer to this screen shape as the hula effect. We recommend taking your chassis out and visually inspecting it to see if you can identify any bad capacitors. Of course, you can also test these capacitors with an ESR meter if you want to be sure. If you feel confident that the caps are good then you might want to take a look at the potentiometers on your chassis as well as the horizontal width coil to make sure they are working properly.
We have also featured your question on episode 11 of our Q&A podcast. Please listen to it for more of our thoughts on your question. Thank you for your question and good luck with your repair.
I recently picked up a “Double Dragon” arcade machine. The game plays fine, but the entire screen is bathed in red. Any suggestions?
Hi, i have a Ikari Warriors SNK non jamma machine. When I turn it on, it slowly goes bright white, and there are some poping sounds from the monitor, flashes of blue and purple happen around the edges, also sometimes there is a green line all the way on the left.
This monitor did show the ikari warriors startup screen before i moved it.
Hey,
I recently got a mini ‘bartop’ cab from an arcade rental store in South Korea. I know pretty much nothing about repairing/maintaing an arcade and so your site was such a help with my monitor issue. I assumed it was just an old crummy monitor but after watching your video and making some adjustments it’s looking great. Brilliant video guys. You’ve made a new fan of your site with one video. Keep up the good work.
Jerry,
The “bathed in red” you are describing could be a couple of things. The first one we would check is to make sure our red drive is adjusted properly. If it doesn’t look like the problem gets any better when adjusting the red drive it could be that your potentiometer is either damaged or bad. I would only assume the potentiometer is bad if I had already checked the wiring going from the board to the monitor. It could be that the green and blue are not making a good connection causing you to see just the red. Make sure these wires are making a good connection and that the pins do not have cold solder joints to the board before replacing a potentiometer.
Should you try both of these and you still do not get the desired result then we would recommend installing a cap kit on the chassis. Please see our post on Installing A Cap Kit for more information.
We have also featured your question on episode 12 of our Q&A podcast. Please listen to it for more of our thoughts on your question. Thank you for your question and good luck with your repair.
I have a BloodStorm arcade cab. I have the problem with the color, and the colors are off. For example, the black background will be red, black objects are red-black, etc. I’ve taken out the monitor chasis, and I have cleaned everything. For a while, the colors were correct. But, after a hour, the bad colors returned.
Can you help?
I would like to add, adjusting the colors on the monitor have no effect.
Reno,
Definitely sounds like you are having some problems with your monitor. Obviously you need to take safety precautions when working with this one as the popping is usually a sign of some high voltage issues. The popping symptom usually leads us to a flyback or HOT issue on your chassis. You need to test these parts on your chassis and replace them (if necessary) to see if it clears up the issue. Check out our videos on Troubleshooting Monitors With Michael and More Troubleshooting Monitors With Michael for some good tips on working with monitors.
We have also featured your question on episode 13 of our Q&A podcast. Please listen to it for more of our thoughts on your question. Thank you for your question and good luck with your future repairs.
Brandon,
Anytime you’re getting some color issues you probably need to think about installing a cap kit. Please see our post on Installing A Cap Kit for more information. It could be that your red cutoff and drive pots or the transistors driving the pots are bad. This could be especially true if adjusting these pots has no effect on your picture. You might try to make these adjustments again to see if they make even a little difference. If not, then you probably need to try refreshing the solder around them. If refreshing the solder does not help then it’s probably time to replace them.
We have also featured your question on episode 13 of our Q&A podcast. Please listen to it for more of our thoughts on your question. Thank you for your question and good luck with your future repairs.