More Troubleshooting Monitors With Michael
Repairing arcade monitors relies heavily on your ability to identify where the problem resides. Being able to tell where on a chassis the problem originates from will greatly increase your chances for a successful repair. In this post, we once again visit with our resident monitor repair guy Michael to talk about how to identify and repair some common monitor issues.
More Troubleshooting Monitors With Michael (Part One)
More Troubleshooting Monitors With Michael (Part Two)
Most of the questions we received through the website are related to problems with arcade monitors. Since the topic of monitors is so prevalent, we thought we would once again get together with Michael to discuss some more monitor troubleshooting techniques.
In the picture above we have a horizontally mounted monitor that has what appears to be horizontal lines located in the top half of the screen. It is important to note what direction the lines are running as this will help us determine what section of the chassis we need to focus on. Even though you might think that this problem is located in the horizontal section of the chassis, it is actually related to the vertical section.
Side Note: There is a common misconception that horizontally mounted and vertically mounted monitors are different, however, they are actually the same monitor. The location of the mounting rails and the way the picture is displayed are the only differences between them. The anode (located underneath the suction cup) will always indicated the top of the monitor.
When you have these type of lines running along your screen, these are typically caused by a bad capacitor in the respective section of your chassis. There are many reasons why capacitors go bad. For instance, many electronics manufacturers use cheap capacitors to cut production costs. Also, dust can act like a big blanket on top of your board heating up components and causing them to fail. This is one reason why making sure your game is sufficiently cooled is so important. Please see our post on Installing A Fan In An Arcade Cabinet for more information on cooling.
Lets say we didn’t know that this problem was related to a capacitor, we could always start by identifying what is working with our monitor. Since we are getting a picture, we know that our flyback, anode and tube are probably good and that we are getting power to the monitor. Our colors look pretty accurate so the connections from the PCB and the neck board to the chassis are probably good as well as the neck board itself. This pretty much leaves us with just the chassis. This process-of-elimination technique works very well for troubleshooting the majority of parts in an arcade cabinet.
Now that we’ve identified the problem, we can now begin to track it down on our chassis. As we said before, this problem is more than likely caused by a bad capacitor in the vertical section of our monitor. Some monitors might have this section labeled on the chassis while others will not. A good way to determine the location of the vertical section is to trace down the yoke wires coming off of the tube to the chassis. A green or yellow yoke wire from the tube usually leads to the vertical section of the chassis. Conversely, a blue or red yoke wire usually leads to the horizontal section. These sections have a location number that corresponds with the parts in that section (i.e. the vertical section might be IC600 with the capacitors in the section being number C610). This will help you in determining which parts go with which section.
When we’ve located the vertical section, we can now begin to look at the parts associated with that section. On this particular monitor there were two capacitors located in this section. Using an ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) meter we were able to determine that the 100μf (microfarad) capacitor was bad while it was in circuit. You can also use a multimeter with a capacitance tester to check your capacitors but you must take them out of circuit (i.e. out of the board) to get an accurate reading.
Something we covered in our post on Installing A Cap Kit is the importance of replacing a cap with another cap of the exact same microfarad and in the exact same polarity position. Also remember that the voltage of the new cap does not have to match the voltage of the old cap. As long as the voltage is greater than or equal to the original cap you should be fine. Another reading you should consider when replacing a capacitor is the degrees. The degrees of a capacitor indicates what frequencies the capacitor is rated for. We recommend using 105 degree capacitors as they can handle most of the frequencies used in arcade monitors and power supplies.
Once we replaced the cap on this particular monitor, our picture was as good as new…
Remember you can always install an entire cap kit, however, these kits usually do not contain a replacement cap for every cap on the monitor chassis. Cap kits are usually comprised of capacitors that have a high failure risk. As such, your cap kit might not contain the capacitor you need to solve your particular problem. If you install a cap kit and continue to have the same problem, make sure you check some of the caps that you didn’t replace.
We talked a little bit about the thin horizontal line monitor problem in our original Troubleshooting Monitors With Michael post but thought we would revisit this topic for a moment. Should you have a monitor with this problem, check the vertical IC (Integrated Circuit) chip to see if it is good and if it is getting power. You can check it with a standard multimeter. You can try refreshing the solder around the chip but if that doesn’t work we recommend just replacing the chip altogether.
Learning how to identify problems with arcade monitors and being able to locate the source can save you a lot of time and trouble. With these techniques you should be able to narrow down the scope of your repair to just the trouble spots that are causing your particular issue. Good luck in the future with all of your arcade monitor repairs and if you have any questions please feel free to post them in the comments section below.
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I just bought your DVD, and I am rather impatient and have a question about my Centipede monitor. The screen is not the full width of the monitor, sort of scrunched in the vertical direction. I can not find any knobs to adjust. Any ideas? Thanks, Justin
Justin,
First off, we would like to thank you for buying our DVD. It should be on it’s way to you by the time we post this response. Getting to your problem, we would highly recommend checking out our video on Adjusting An Arcade Monitor. If you cannot find the knobs that we show in that video then check out the video we will be posting with episode 2 of our Q&A podcast that will show you how to adjust some monitors that don’t have knob style potentiometers. Look for it to be posted on our website soon.
If you try both these videos but still have the issue, you might need to replace some of the disc type capacitors on your monitor chassis. You can usually buy kits of these from Bob Roberts fairly cheap. Thank you for your question and keep us posted on your repair progress.
i bought a tekken 2 game and when i plug it in,I can hear it run(like a humming sound)but no picture or sound …no light or anything
Hello,
Thanks a lot for posting these videos! They are great! You mention that we can e-mail you with questions, is this form I am filling you what you are referring to me e-mailing you, or do you have an e-mail address?
Either way, I have a Sega/Gremlin Frogger cocktail game that I am putting a 60-in-1 board in. The game is having monitor issues. Somehow the colors are not showing up correctly and the graphics are not sharp/pixels missing in the “menu” screen of the multi-game. Also, ONLY in the menu screen, I get weird vertical white lines where it should be black. I can’t seem to dial in the correct colors (i.e. – Pinky always stays white in Ms. Pac-man and I can’t get the logs in Frogger to turn a brown color). The 60-in-1 board works fine if I hook it up to a computer monitor via the VGA port.
You can see a video link of what I am describing here:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v379/fzr600/?action=view¤t=MVI_6766.flv
Thanks!
Brad
Jack,
Sounds like you might be having some power supply issues. We recommend checking out our post on Checking And Replacing A Power Supply for more information. If you’re power supply is working properly then you might have a board issue. If you suspect the board, you can either get a new one or send it to us for testing. We offer a free JAMMA board testing service but you do have to pay shipping both ways.
If you are just starting out fixing arcade games then you might see our posts on Basic Troubleshooting Of An Arcade Game and Your First Arcade Toolbox to get you familiar with the processes and tools that go along with repairing an arcade game.
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.
Brad,
Sounds like you might be having some problems with the red portion of your arcade monitor. You could try adjusting the red cutoff and red drive potentiometers to see if that helps your problem. Also, we have had strange problems working with cocktail cabinets on concrete floors. In our shop, we typically get really crazy colors unless we rotate the cocktail cabinet in just the right direction. While this might be a long shot it’s still something you might want to try.
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 troubleshooting this issue.
I just got a Golden Tee Fore updated to Golden Tee Complete. Once i put the board and drive back in I had to adjust the monitor. I cant seem to get it adjusted to stop showing a double picture. Is it the monitor or am i looking in the wrong area? What do you think i should do?
Hello, i bought a new nba jam tournament edition arcade in 1995 or so and it was workin fine but 1 day the monitor went out like black screen, well i called my friend to see if he could fixed it and he did. well b4 that tha screen was center correctly and i could see all the names on the characters and time but after my friend fixed tha black screen now i don’t see the names or the power bar on top
on the screen and it looks different like it’s not centered correctly and i have tryed everything to get it right and i fooled with the controls behide the monitor as well. do you know what the problem is and is it fixable?
i also went into the menu where you can check the pattern settings
to ajust the screen but that doesn’t help any and this is the original monitor from the original cabinet.
i hope to hear from u and thanks!
Mike
Hello it’s Mike again, i checked my other arcade game and it’s another midway game and i went in to the pattern settings in the option menu and i saw that it was center correctly and all four
corners had a red and green lines on each side from top to bottom
and my nba jam isn’t set like that and that’s what i was talkin about on my last message.
do u know how to set it back to those settings? i have tryed everything and messed with the controls on the back but if i’m
missing something then please let me know.
thanks again!
Mike
Kyle,
Apparently Golden Tee Fore requires a standard resolution arcade monitor while Golden Tee Complete requires a medium resolution arcade monitor. This is why you see the double image. It could be that your monitor is switchable meaning that it supports both standard and medium resolutions. If it is not, however, you will need to get a medium resolution monitor for the game to play correctly.
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 you decide to switch out your monitor.
Mike,
This screen positioning issue that you are describing really sounds more like an adjustment on the monitor chassis. We would definitely recommend taking a look at our post on Adjusting An Arcade Monitor to make sure you have everything set correctly. If the problem is not in these adjustments then the problem is probably related to your monitor chassis and most likely your vertical IC. Check the components in this section to make sure that everything looks good.
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 please keep us updated on your status with this issue.
Hi guys… great website.
I just bought a broken machine last night that had a known inoperative Wells Gardner 25K7971. The previous owner description was that “the light bulb had blown after he had it moved from down stairs to upstairs”. At that point I determined I wasn’t going to be getting much more information out of him than that.
I got the machine home plugged it in and turned it on… and CRACK! FLASH! SMOKE!… I then uplugged it promptly.
After pulling the chassis, I found that the flyback had a big hole melted through it.
My biggest fear is to replace the flyback and have the same results. Do you guys have any idea what would cause this? I am concerned that there is another problem. The ride home was a little rough, could I have damaged something in the tube or elsewhere? Are there any checks I can do to verify the tube is good? (Note: I was in my garage with the temperature being about 18 degrees F and there is no physical evidence of any other failures)
Any help or direction would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Dave
Sorry… Messed up the model number, it should be a 25K7191.
Dave,
We can tell you that a hole in the flyback is never a good thing. You will definitely need a new flyback in order to fix your monitor so you might go ahead and order one. You might try testing the HOT before installing the new flyback as this could cause it to go bad. Since you have a Wells Gardner, you might try calling them as they are usually very helpful with these types of issues. You can find their contact information on their website at http://www.wellsgardner.com/.
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 good luck with your repair.
Hi guys
I have just brought myself an old arcade machine. After it has been on and playing for around 20 minutes the screen starts to flicker and what sound like an electrical crackle can be heard. This continues and gets worse until it seems best to turn if off before some damage is done to the screen. When the back is off electrical arcing can be seen on the back board of the screen. The monitor is a Hantarex model MTC 9000.
Any help or advice would be appreciated
Many thanks
Tom
Tom,
Sounds like you need to do a complete rebuild on your chassis. We when talk about doing a rebuild, we are basically saying you need to replace the flyback and the HOT (or Horizontal Output Transistor) and install a cap kit. You should be able to get all of these things from Bob Roberts (http://www.therealbobroberts.net). Please see our post on Installing A Cap Kit for more information. Also, check out our online store where we have our Volume 2 DVD on sale which has some videos on replacing the HOT and flyback.
We have also featured your question on episode 14 of our podcast. Please listen to it for more of our thoughts on your issue. Thank you for your question and keep us updated on your progress.