Vector-gasm... Cosmic Chasm!

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bobbyb13:
For the sake of completeness, as I started working with this crazy consumer tube that I was hoping I could turn into a vector monitor, I will continue with details of that here- although this monitor will be going in a horizontal cabinet build.

Because I had never seen a bonded yoke before this thing freaked me out to begin with.
Not just that, but the pin protector/alignment socket glued to the neck was so long that I couldn't get the neckboard to seat all the way onto the pins.
I had been nervous that I was looking at something that also may not have the neck pinout that would match the Amplifone clone parts that Barry is now building.

Thankfully, we have tubular.

https://tubular.atomized.org/

If you are working with CRTs, be they legit arcade monitor tubes or neglected consumer crap you found on the side of the road, this site is awesome.

A gent over on klov built it and it is stunning how many tubes he has cross referenced on this thing.
You literally just type in the identifier from the sticker on your tube and if that one has been cataloged it will return a page with pretty much anything you need to know about what you have- including the original data sheet submitted to E.I.A.
Remarkable.

Even more remarkable is that this particular random tube was actually in there!
After digging though the numerous pages in there I found the pinout for the tube and found that it was correct for my needs.
Whew.

I carefully pried the plastic pin alignment piece off the neck (be careful so you don't crack the thing and let the atmosphere into your tube!) and cut 1/4" off the tip so that I could try to get my neckboard to seat properly- and, success.

I was ready to get the supplies wired up and connect everything and try this out.
Since I am working with a bonded yoke and had only removed the outer ferrites to erwind them here, I figured it prudent to give this setup a trial run before I started gluing/epoxying things back together, so I left the magnet wire as it was sitting and just connected the two clips to hold the ferrites together and keep them loosely in place on the yoke.

This deflection board I have here doesn't have a vga connector like the one in the Cosmic cabinet here does, so I needed to make a harness to go from the vga out on the DVG board to the .156 Molex kk connector on the deflection board.
In case you are doing this and wondered what the pinout was for building a harness, here you go:

Really straightforward, but it is so tight that I need glasses to actually get the thing soldered up.
Satisfying when you get it done though. I'm nervous about things shorting so I pretty much always use heatshrink.

And then with everything connected and my seperate 24VDC supplies wired up to feed the board + and - power I fired it up and got...

More success.

It is important to note that as long as you have your deflection coil wires paired properly it doesn't matter if you guess properly on which is X and which is Y, because the menu on the DVG allows you to swap axes and flip the image to get what you want to see on the screen.

Of course that was yesterday.
When I tried to fire it up again, I got nothing- or only a little red dot in the middle of the screen and the spotkiller LED on the deflection board on- lit solid.

I saw lights on both HV unit and deflection boards so I wondered what happened- and then it occurred to me that I was missing an LED on the deflection board at the moment and then it hit me.
There isn't any power going to the negative side of the deflection board.
I had a light for the + side but the - side one was out.
And so I checked the fuse.

Whew- again.
Damn cheap ass fuses!

Gave it another whirl and was relieved to see this.

So it looks like this tube is going to work as a vector monitor.

One other fun thing I discovered in the wealth of info in that crazy datasheet from tubular.atomized

This is actually a 110 degree angle tube!

I'm stoked it works. This is awesome.

Maybe I'll work on finding the correct coin door for a Cosmic Chasm cabinet now.

pbj:
It’s really cool to see all this vector action around here lately. I’m not sure what it says about me that I have that VGA pin out previously memorized. I may still have the old radio shack hand tool you used to plug individual pins into those connectors.

So you’re doing Star Wars next…?

bobbyb13:

--- Quote from: pbj on April 08, 2023, 06:12:42 pm ---It’s really cool to see all this vector action around here lately. I’m not sure what it says about me that I have that VGA pin out previously memorized. I may still have the old radio shack hand tool you used to plug individual pins into those connectors.

So you’re doing Star Wars next…?

--- End quote ---

Vector stuff is proving to be fun to learn too.
I wasn't aware that there was so much going on with reproducing vector happy hardware.
I can see that the guys doing it don't enjoy the environment on that OTHER sometimes less congenial arcade enthusiast site, but I've been surprised that they aren't promoting their stuff here.

This is the real venue for that sort of stuff, isn't it?!

I'm beginning to understand enough of this silly esoteric crap to actually know a few meaningful things here and there so it is gettingless scary and more fun.
And so what if I blow ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- up here and there occassionally?
>:D

So you saw this coming pbj?
I was actually working on getting the yoke functional last night.

In the grand scheme of arcade history it's not like it is an amazing game with a ton of depth to it comparatively these days, but Star Wars is a maximum arcade nostalgia one for me so it gets a panel for the horizontal machine to come for sure.

I think that will have two swappable panels to get all the games I want to play going and still not be a hideous mess of controls or something that I never change out.
Those panels will be the same size as the ones for the Missile Command MAME box too so that they can be shared between the two cabinets and therefore better utilized.

Even if I only swap them around once a year I'll feel good about it and it is another fun design challenge to get it to all work.

That cabinet is going to be a less iconic shape than the others I've built so far though, but still appropriate in that it suits a number of the games I want to play on it.

A design concession based on the desire to have the Star Wars yoke panel still work with another that is mostly buttons on the same machine.

Down the rabbit hole-

Mike A:
Keep this ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- coming.

bobbyb13:
Open the sewer grate!
:lol

I should probably start a different thread for the Gravitar/Black Widow/Space Duel/all-the-other-games Atari stuffed into that shape cabinet build for this big now vector hijacked tube.

And clear your schedules and save the $$ for some ZapCon 9 next March y'all.

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