Vector-gasm... Cosmic Chasm!

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Mike A:
That USB DVG is quirky.

I know of at least one case where it nuked a G08.

And it never worked right with my G08.

Xiaou2:

--- Quote from: javeryh on February 28, 2023, 10:34:09 am ---Great work! I love the marquee shape. Looks so much nicer than the flat ones. I am so jealous how quickly you work. It snowed last night so I'm not getting into the shop any time soon (although I'm kicking around some ideas).

So that's a vector monitor in there? I know less than nothing about them. Are you converting a regular CRT somehow or are they completely different animals? How do you source them? Seems like there would be next to none in the wild...

:cheers:

--- End quote ---

The main differences between a standard CRT and a Vector monitor:

A standard TV draws the picture, like how you read a book: From the top left to the top right...and then it moves down one line, and repeats this process, until it completely fills the screen (Zig-Zag).

A Vector monitor is different, in that it can start drawing ANYWHERE on the screen.. and it will draw TO any point on the screen. This means that it you want to draw a Triangle on the screen... you dont have to wait for the beam to draw the entire screen. You only have to tell the beam to draw a line from one point to the next.

How does this effect the Picture?

Because you have 100% control over the Electron beam... you can achieve things that a standard CRT cant do. For example... you can get Dots and Lines, at a brightness that NO typically driven CRT can Achieve. That brightness level, is only really Matched / Rivaled by actual Lasers. This is because... if the beam is left for too long in one spot (or is being told to re-draw that same area so often).. the amount of Energy that can excite the tubes Phosphors, will be FAR higher than what is possible when the CRT is limited to a specific timing... when drawing the entire screen.

In fact, you have to be careful about Burning the Tube itself. Some Vector games whos electronics have gone bad... have caused the beam to stay perfectly in the center of the tube (not moving) ...and if you allow that beam to stay there for too long... it will cause permanent "burn-in" damage to that particular spot.

The other feature about the Vectors... is that since you can control the brightness of the beams by how often you re-draw them... and or the voltage levels of the beam itself... you can create many different Intensity levels for your graphics. For example.. in Asteroids Deluxe.. the players bullets are Extremely Bright, compared to anything else on the screen. Also... when your ship breaks apart... you will notice that the pieces slowly fade from being mid-brightness... slowly fading in intensity, until the are invisble.

I have theorized, that if you used something like an older Lamp based LCD.. but rather than using its standard backlight... you used 5 times the amount of lighting power... then with some Customized programming.. you could probably simulate a Vectors intensity, and effects.

That said... Laser Projectors are still one of the best ways to match a vectors brightness and dynamic brilliance. (The type that they use for Laser-Light-Shows... not the modern version that are used to project images/films).

There is a company that had made a relatively cheap Laser projector, and people have made a custom set of vector games for it, based on vector arcade games. The main problem with that particular projector... is that its not fast enough to be able to Draw all of the Vectors in our Emulated Arcade games. As such, they have to make their own versions, which have reduced numbers of vector lines, and reduced complexity.

Professional Laser light show projectors... that might be capable of keeping up with an Arcade vector games drawing times / number of vectors... cost several thousands of dollars.

bobbyb13:
Now that I am actually learning about these things, it's remarkable how much less complicated the design of a vector monitor chassis system is compared to a raster one.

And I can see how a DVG board could roast a monitor Mike.
The relationship of supply voltage, flyback health and case transistor cooling have everything to do with how long any of this ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- can survive actual use and the DVG is built to run stuff hard if it is set to.
Apparently the more you crank the input voltage to the deflection board the more the beam can deflect- within the abilities of the flyback at least, so not sending more voltage than the transistors can deal with is critical to longevity.
Larger screen can be filled with higher voltage of course then, but the transistors can only handle so much thermal stress.

I wonder if your setup (I figure you're talking about the Star Trek?) would benefit from a decent cooling fan or two.
Not sure how those deflection transistors are set up on a G-08 but I can tell you that the way they are on an original WG 6100 is just plain stupid in regard to keeping them cool.
A minor rearrangement of those case transistors and a single fan in the right spot could've altered the history of vector games.

And yes, javeryh, that is a consumer tube properly hijacked to think it is a vector monitor.
And the image it displays is beautiful !
Now if I can get the damn picture rotated properly for vertical games and get the RPi and iPAC to cooperate it will be fully functional.

It has taken me a few years to collect the parts and figure out how to set them up- through a lot of frustrating trial and error in some cases.
Probably spent $30 just on fuses out of paranoia.
:lol
It has made me crazy that you can't find this info in any one spot and I want others to benefit from my pain!
After all the drama I've endured it turns out it is a simple thing to pull off.

Once I actually get it to work properly for a few days at least I will document the whole vector monitor build here.

It REALLY is not that hard to do but knowing some details I have sorted out makes all the difference.

Mike A:
That is from a G08.
I only used the USB DVG, borrowed from Arroyo, to narrow down where my problems were.
Then I heard it fried someone's G08.

It turns out that my problem was bad -5v from the power supply.

Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk

bobbyb13:
Man, if having a fan on there is stock it is a hell of a lot better design than the 6100 where the oh so crtitical transistors are just randomly scattered around on the monitor case itself- without a fan in sight.

Too much voltage will overwhelm any transistors no matter what the cooling scenario is I think, so who knows what paricular thing roasted that other G-08.

The Alan-1 guys built a fan cooled box like that G-08 one as an upgrade piece for the 6100 and it looks like it works perfectly.
I've got a last generation 6100 deflection and neck board, new repro HV board, and one of those Alan-1 transistor blocks too.

I think the magic is finding a tube that has a really low resistance/impedence inner yoke winding so that you don't need to mess around with purity and convergence later by using mismatched tube components.

By the time I am building the horizontal vector machine I should have that 6100 assembly running.

Still battling with my damn advmame settings on this thing.

Can't get vertical game image rotation.
Can't get into 'in game' adjustment because the Tab key doesn't do squat.
Can't get any controls at all to work in game- even though the spinner and buttons work in the menus.

Totally stupid since I can do this on a PC likety split.
Maybe I need to ditch the RPi for this build.

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