Question from Will: I acquired a Stratovox cocktail back around about 1995 from my uncle. I have not played with it much since then. I am having some problems now with the machine. The game play is great. I plugged it in about a year ago and started playing it again. The monitor looks like it needs to be degaussed, however that seems simple enough. There seem to be two degaussing coils wrapped around the monitor. The side that is showing a bit purple discolor has its coil a bit lower than all the other sides. About an inch. I am thinking the machine is due for a cap kit on the monitor. I am starting to get the image on the monitor to wiggle a bit in the lower left corner. When the machine warms up the picture drifts a bit lower than where it started.

I was wondering what you think about this issue.

Also the machine displays a bit too many stars in the sky sometimes. The machine has always done this. The stars are all one color and will display horizontally across the screen close together in a line. They get reset and clear themselves off the screen when the screen resets at the end of the demo or when you end a level and the screen gets completely drawn again. Maybe one of the roms is a bad copy.

The power supply in the cocktail is the same power supply that’s in space invaders part 2. Do you think it would be worth while to check for bad capacitors and replace them? I am getting a ESR meter.

Depending on what must be done what do you think is the easiest way to work on these Taito Cocktail monitors. The particular monitor is a Toei CM-R14 monitor. To my inexperienced eye it looks like the main PCBs and their mounts removed to gain access to the monitor board and yoke board. There is not a lot of room to work inside and would take any hints.

Thanks
Will