Response from Jonathan: Solon,

From your description, we’re leaning more towards a monitor issue than an issue with your Asteroids board. We recommend starting off this repair by trying to turn the brightness and contrast adjustments up on the monitor chassis to see if anything comes up on the screen. If there is no change in your picture when you try these adjustments, check all of the connections between your board and your monitor to make sure everything is working properly. Specifically look for any damaged wires or corroded pins as these issues can cause problems like this. There are also several fuses on the deflection board that we recommend checking as well. Check out our post on Checking Fuses With A Multimeter for more information on how to properly check these fuses.

If the problem continues after trying these steps then you may need to pull the deflection board out of the game and touch up the solder on all of the header pins. It’s very common for the solder on these pins to crack over time so reflowing the solder should help fix any connection issues. Sometimes this problem can occur if either C100 or C101 are shorted. Make sure that both of these capacitors are working properly. If all else fails, try recapping the deflection and HV boards (including C100 and C101). We also recommend replacing the pots and all four of the chassis transistors while you have the chassis out of the game. Hopefully this will get your monitor working again.

On cleaning out the inside of games, we usually just vacuum it. You can blow it out with air but it’s a good idea to vacuum it after that so that the dust doesn’t settle inside the game again. You can also use a rag or Swiffer cloth to wipe down areas that don’t vacuum as easily.

Hope that helps. Thank you for your question and good luck with you repair.