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monitor problem
Question from James: Hello. Frst, thanks for all of the repair videos you all have available! A great resource for sure! I am a complete electronics newb. I have a Crossbow cab with a monitor issue. The boards and power supply were sent off and fully tested and repaired so I am pretty sure the problem is with the monitor itself. I am more than a little nervous about poking around, mostly because I don’t want to make anything worse, but I really would like to learn how to fix this stuff myself. I have a short video of the issue I am having. Sometimes the monitor is fine for a short while, but then I starts to shake until it is completely distorted. The monitor is a newer Samsung. Any idea what to check based on the vid?
Link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0Ojo5907P3vbzRYQm5sY3M2cjA
Thanks, James
1 answer
Response from Jonathan: James,
First off, thank you for the kind words. We’re glad that you’ve found our content helpful. Now, let’s get to your questions…
It looks like you are having some sort of sync and/or hold issue with your Crossbow arcade cabinet. We recommend starting off this repair by trying to adjust the horizontal and vertical hold potentiometers (or pots) on your monitor chassis. You might also try adjusting the B+ voltage as well to make sure it is within range. Check out our post on Adjusting An Arcade Monitor for more information on making adjustments similar to the ones I’ve mentioned.
If you make these adjustments and you are still having this issue, you might double check the wires running from your arcade board to your monitor chassis to make sure they are making a good connection. You need to check your monitor sync wire in particular as that is probably the one that’s giving you trouble. Another thing to keep in mind is that the input pins on the monitor chassis might be a little loose due to cracked/cold solder joints that have developed over time. You might try touching up the solder on these joints to make sure they are connected properly to the monitor chassis. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to touch up the solder joints on the entire monitor chassis while you have it out of your cabinet just to make sure that there are no other areas that could be causing this problem.
Now, you could have an issue with the monitor chassis itself but that would seem rare in this case since it will work for a bit and then stop working. Of course, it’s always a possibility. So if you try all these steps and the problem still occurs, please contact us again and we’ll try to help you out further.
Hope that helps. Thank you for your question and good luck with your repair.
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