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TV monitor for TV Ping Pong Arcade
Question from Greg: I saw your great site and thought maybe you could help me. I have an old TV Ping Pong arcade. http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=18638. The “monitor” is nothing more than an old vacuum tube black and white TV. The game plays perfectly but the image on the screen is shrunken vertically. None of the image adjustment screws fix it. I am guessing it is a problem with the TV, maybe a bad vacuum tube or capacitor. Rather than repair it, I thought it would be easier to swap out a solid state TV.
The first picture show how the original TV is connected to the arcade.
The next picture show the connections on an old color TV I have that is the right size for the cabinet.
I tried connecting the UHF wires to the UHF terminals on the new TV, and touching the VHF wire to the outside and inside parts of the coax VHF terminal, but no luck. I also tried a 75 to 300 ohm matching transformer on the VHF coax and still no luck. Any idea if this TV will work with the arcade or any other ideas for getting the arcade working again? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I would love to get this old classic back in working condition. Thanks, Greg
2 answers
Response from Jonathan: Greg,
Sounds like you did exactly the same thing that we would have recommended. We think that using the solid state TV with a 75/300 ohm matching transformer should have gotten the job done. Unfortunately your best bet at this point will probably be either to repair your current monitor or go scavenging for a replacement. If you would like to go the repair route, there is a guy on YouTube that specializes in classic TVs that might be able to help you out. Here’s a link to his channel if you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/user/shango066/. I believe he takes in items for repair as well so you might contact him to see what he would charge to repair it. Other than that, you might just need to start keeping an eye out at your local junk/thrift stores to see if anything comes in that’s close to what’s in your cabinet now.
Hope that helps. I wish we had better suggestions for you but hopefully that will at least give you some options. Thank you for your question and keep us updated on your progress.
Update from Greg: So I finally solved this problem. I thought you might like to update the original post.
As it turns out, the Pong PCB outputs composite video. Although the original game has a “television”, it has been modified to bypass the demodulation circuits and serve as a monitor, not a TV. So the screws that look like UHF/VHF inputs are just used as terminals.
The single wire on VHF is the audio signal. The wires on UHF are composite video (signal and ground).
To get it to work with a modern television, the video wires from the game need to go to the composite video input (yellow RCA jack) on the television. The audio signal wire from the game goes to audio input RCA jack on the television. You will need to add a ground wire for the audio.
This game should now enjoy several more years of use.
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