monitor worked fine but now...

[nelsonej]

I have a Vision Pro MTG-XX01 19" CGA monitor that I bought new from Happ.  I have it hooked up with an ArcadeVGA and was pleased for a while with it's performance.

Just today I was playing and after 5 minutes of having the monitor on, it basically squished itself into a thin, bright, horizontal line across the entire screen.

I adjusted the Vsize and Vhold pots.  Vsize when twisted all the way to the left makes about an 1/8th of the image drop down from the line.  All the way to the right does nothing (i.e. there's still a line).

Is this a monitor problem?  An ArcadeVGA problem?  Any help will be appreciated very much.

[Ken Layton]

I'm not familiar with that model, but if it uses an i.c. for the vertical circuit, then I'd say the vertical i.c. has failed. That's a common problem on some monitors.

[nelsonej]

there's an ic that does the vertical osc, vert ramp generator, x-ray protector, pahse shifter, saw tooth generator, afc, and horiz osc all in one.  Would that be it?

[Ken Layton]

The type I'm talking about is mounted on a stand up finned heatsink. This is a vertical OUTPUT i.c. and they fail alot cause they get hot. Look for a chip with something like TDA1675A on it. If your monitor does not have this setup then it likely would have a couple of vertical output transistors on heatsinks. One or both could have failed. There's an outside chance your yoke might have gone bad but I don't think so in this case.

[nelsonej]

correction:

Yeah, I made a mistake.  When the vertical POSITION is turned all the way to the left, I can see some of the screen.  All the way to the right doesn't do anything.  When vert pos is all the way to the left, vert size does change the screen somewhat

Sorry about that and thanks for all of your help, Ken.

[Ken Layton]

Can you connect the monitor to a different video source known to be working to confirm that the monitor is indeed the problem? I have a feeling your monitor is at fault. How old is it? Has it been used alot? Is there plenty of ventilation for it?

[nelsonej]

I'm at work right now and can't connect my monitor to another source, but...

My monitor is probably 40 days old (used off and on during that time).  I bought it new from Happs.  I sent them an email last night (to orders@happcontrols.com, I looked and couldn't find another email address for customer support) to ask about my problem and what options I can take.

It isn't in my cab yet either.  I was actually just using it out of the cab and today I was planning to put it in the cab.  I guess it's good luck I didn't get it in, but I'm still disappointed.

[Ken Layton]

Your monitor should be in warranty then so I would definitely contact them and mention that. It may mean you will get either a *free* repair or a free replacement monitor.

[nelsonej]

I got a response this morning (quick response time!) saying:

On this particular monitor there is a 1 year warranty. I can give you an RMA number, and issue you a replacement order. We do have stock of this item in our South Carolina branch. Once we receive the bad monitor back we will issue you a credit. Please let me know if this is what you would like to do. Also have you talked to our technical department to see if this is repairable?

I sent the email to technical department, they'll probably say turn it in for the warranty.  I'll let everyone know how things turn out.  So far, service with Happ Controls has been very good for me.  

[nelsonej]

Just a quick update so everyone knows what's going on:

I got a reply from technical support saying that I could send them the board instead of the monitor, or just send the whole monitor and they'll replace it since it's under warranty.  I went that route and they're sending me another monitor right now.

Hopefully I won't encounter any problems.

Just for future reference, when I have the ArcadeVGA running in my PC and I go into WinXP and look at monitor configuartions, sometimes it says that it thinks the monitor is running at 200Hz.  I know it's supposed to be 60Hz, so I lower it and hit ok, but when I reboot, it comes up as 200Hz again.  Could this be a problem?  Is there a way to make sure it always says 60Hz?  I don't know if the ArcadeVGA only spits out frequencies which aren't harmful or not.