A word of caution.......or just a sad coincidence?!

[churkus]

Hi all,

Have been happily using groovymame and other emulators on my Sony 29" CRT via SCART RGB for the past month or so soooo happily. Nice image, smooth scrolling etc.

That was until yesterday. Switched the TV on, and nothing, now just the standby red led on the front of the TV blinks twice.

I must admit that during my time using groovymame, i did mess around with Arcade_OSD quite a bit, setting the dotclock lower, raising Hz to 62hz and Khz to high 16 range, often getting a garbled or out of sync picture. I understand that arcade monitors have a wider range of sync capabilites, but does anyone think doing this to a TV can possibly damage it?

Oh yes, I was able to get the TV on once by switching it on, and then keeping the power button pressed in. It gave a garbled display of the channel number which eventually settled down. It was then working perfectly until I switched it off. Now the same 2 blinks.

It is so sad, this was a great tv and im loathe to chuck it on the landfill. Reading up apparently 2 blinks is a OCP thing, but from my understanding the problem could be on any of the boards in the TV. Dont have the electronics experience to fix this myself, but im gonna go ahead anyway and open her up see if theres any obvious dry joints or blown fuse etc.

[eboshidori]

10 to 20 years old TVs don't wait some out of range signals to break down. OCP (over current protection) can have several causes.
Usually the line output transformer (LOT). It can be some bad capacitor around it, or the horizontal output transistor (HOT). If you type the chassis model of your TV , you will find informations on this.

If you're unlucky, you could have made some damages to the yoke, if you stayed for too long out of range. Maybe the video amplifier (on the neck-board attached to the tube) didn't like it very much.

First and easy thing to do is to resolder every critical joints (LOT, components around it, HOT, everything on the neck board...).
Sony's chassis are known to have cold solders, and many defects come from this, as time goes by.

[Calamity]

I'm with Eboshidori. If the TV had broken while messing with ArcadeOSD or using GroovyMAME at some odd frequency, then this would likely be the cause. After all, when playing with these things we know there's a real risk of damage. But if the fault just happened some day upon switching it on, then it would point to a normal fault due to the age. If you don't have the skills to repair it yourself, take it to a local repair service if available, it's a valuable TV and it might be a simple fix. 

[churkus]

Thanks guys for the input.

Calamity I think you're right and it is just that the TV is getting on in age so this was going to happen sooner or later. But to play it safe, in future I will stick within TVs range limits!. Yes, it is a good TV that is worth saving!.

Eboshidoro thanks a lot for your useful suggestions on where to start to look for a repair solution. I will try, otherwise as Calamity has suggested, I will take it to a few local repair shops, just hope it isnt too expensive!.

[dogman91]

Is there a risk with using the default groovy mame resolutions and timings? (generic_15)? Is there a suggested limit to avoid going under and over for values? I also have a Sony tv (kv36fv300) and obviously want to avoid this. Hope you get it figured out churkus.