Wells Gardner displays short horizontal lines with black between after 5-10 mins

[patrickmaher]

I pruchased a JAMMA cabinet with a working arcade monitor. I am using the J-PAC and ArcadeVGA. I received a defective J-PAC and spent a week or so troubleshooting that problem (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=50571.0). I spent time with the monitor on for awhile, trying to change the monitor adjustments for color, brightness, etc and some of that time the monitor was turned on for a couple hours at a time. During the first week or so I did not experience the problem I am posting about now.

The monitor has a label on the front that says WGR2500-U4TS21J. I can't find mention of which chassis series it is and I found this key that tells what the number means http://www.wellsgardner.com/wellsgardner31/supportdata/RELEASE%20NO%20BREAKDOWN.pdf but this just tells me it is remanufactured and the chassis code is 00 which is not on their key. The chassis has what appears to be a WG serial number with bar code in several places. The tube has a mitsubishi sticker on it.

Shortly before I received the new working J-PAC I first experienced the problem while still using the defective J-PAC. When I turn on the computer and monitor everything starts up fine, about 5-10 minutes later the monitor display changes into a bunch of horizontal lines that start flickering and changing position on the screen, in between each line are black horizontal lines(nothing displaying?) a bit thicker than the displayed lines. I can see in the lines that are displayed that it is still slowing the windows I was looking at before it started but it is really hard to make out, mainly just recognize the colors.

The first time I saw this I unplugged the monitor and plugged it in 5-10 mins later, it then displayed normally again. 5-10 minutes later the problem comes back. I got the new J-PAC and that solved my issue with the defective J-PAC (missing red). 5-10 minutes after starting everything with the new J-PAC I got the same problem with the horizontal lines. It seems to be taking longer between power ons to make the problem go away. If I leave it off until the next day the problem is gone until it has been on for 5-10 minutes.

Hopefully my explanation of the problem isn't to confusing, it's hard to describe.

Any ideas?
Thanks

[grantspain]

Its difficult to say wether thats a monitor or signal fault,but whatever it is it must be heat related,that monitor is probably pretty old so it will probably require some of capacitors being changed and a good check for dry joints.It does sound like your horizontal hold is going out of adjustment,next time this happens adjust your horizontal hold,shift and size to see if it affects the picture.The only other thing i can think of is some sort of sinc problem with your signal in.

[ha-Y-n]

hey pat

[patrickmaher]

For a couple days last week the problem was happening starting from right when I turned everything on. I didn't have time to mess with it since last week and today I tried it and it worked when I first turned it on, but after bout 5-10 mins it had the same problem again. I can still see the computer displaying stuff when the problem is happening, if I reboot I can make out the boot screens as it starts up and gets into windows, I can use remote control software to connect to the computer and use it, shut it down, etc while the problem is occuring on the monitor.

When the problem is happening if I turn the pots for:
horizontal size: I don't see a change (as i recall from when it was working this only changed the size slightly so I may just not be noticing the diffrence)
h hold: I see the image get worse, as if the horizontal hold is already ok but when I turn it then the h hold is not ok.
h phase: changes position of the problematic display.
v size: turned to the left compresses the problematic display, to the right expands.
v hold: turned to the right compresses the display kind of like v size turned to the left, to the left it expands and far left it looks like the vertical hold is set wrong because the problematic display jumps around even more.
v pos: changes the vertical size of the problematic display slightly.

It seems like what is displayed is only made worse by changing the horizontal and vertical hold. As if the hold is already set correctly, but i really don't know.

When troubleshooting my color problem with the defective J-PAC I had, I changed around the pots alot to try to test what the problem was, could I have damaged them and would that cause this problem?

I asked the person I bought the cabinet from, he said to discharge and check for any loose connections on the chassis, then he said to try a get well kit for the monitor. I asked a friend who worked on old PC monitors and he said a cold solder joint could be the problem and when I asked him if he thought it might be a capacitor he said it could be.

I don't really know anything about this. Do you think my first step is to try a cap kit?

Can anyone help identify the cap kit I would need for my monitor. As I said it has a sticker on the front that says WGR2500-U4TS21J but the 00 part should be the Wells Gardner chassis code but 00 is not linked to any chassis that I have found. I am in the proccess of taking pictures of the chassis but I don't have a digital camera so it will be a few days before they are developed. I checked the chassis pics on bob roberts site and none of the WG ones looked the same.

Thanks for your help.
Patrick

[recklessindian]

Possibly you have a u2000 monitor.  Which has quite a bit in common with a u5000 wells gardner monitor.  Any one else have a more educated guess?

[patrickmaher]

Thanks for you input. I looked at the pics for U2000 and U5000 on Bob Roberts monitor id page (http://homearcade.org/BBBB/monitor.html) but both looked different than what I have. In the U2000 picture the pots are on a seprate board, my pots are on the main chassis board and are on the side of the board that has them visable from the front of the monitor when the chassis is installed.

I have attached a picture of the problem I am having (not quite the same as seeing with your own eyes but good enough) and a picture of the chassis taken from the back of the cabinet. The chassis is still installed so that is the best picture I could get for now.

In the picture of the display problem you can see the pots at the bottom of the monitor. There is a label under the pots stuck to black plastic, this plastic is what the chassis is mounted onto and it looks like the black plastic base slides onto the monitor frame. You can also see this on the chassis picture.

The chassis pic is from the back, you can see the row of pots near the top of the picture. On the right hand side under the serial number sticker is a focus and screen adjustment.

Also I keep forgetting to ask about something else. A small area around the top left corner of the screen is a different color then it should be. It is usually tinted purple. Does this have to do with degaussing? What are my options on fixing this?

Thanks for you help.

[grantspain]

That picture of screen looks like a graphics card fault,I have not seen that chassis before but it looks like an early sanwa

[patrickmaher]

Ok grantspain I decided to start by putting the video card into another computer because of what you have said. I have not run the monitor for almost a week. I powered on the other computer with the ArcadeVGA and I had to adjust the Vertical hold because last time it was on I was adjusting that. The display seems to be working so far, I wonder if the video card wasn't seated well/loose on the other computer?

I got the vertical hold  set correctly, it was very hard as there was a very exact spot it had to be set to. If I made a slight movement left or right then it would not hold still. When I finally got the display holding still I could see light horizontal lines all the way down the screen at about 1 inch intervals. These light lines display over the correct image and are not straight with the horizontal axis of the monitor, they are  slightly skewed. The horizontal lines travel vertically on the screen. After 30 secs of having the vertical hold set correctly, the display starts to roll vertically. I can keep setting the v hold again but it will eventually start rolling vertically. The rolling starts out slow then after a few mins it is alot faster but seems to top out at a certain speed.

So far the original problem I was having is not showing up but I am having this totally new set of problems (somehow related?) with the vertical hold not sticking and the horizontal light colored lines traveling down the screen.

I had the monitor on for about 2 hours and I kept adjusting the v hold back so I could install the arcadeVGA drivers and control panel. After the control panel installed I let it reboot and went away for 10 minutes. When I came back it was rebooted but now my original display problem was back.

I guess I will send the picture to Andy at Ultimarc and see what he thinks.

What about the vertical hold problem? Why was that happening and what would fix that? It was never that hard to get the vertical hold set when it was set up on my other computer (while the display was working).

What about the discoloration in the top left corner that I mentioned in my previous post?

Thanks for your help,
Patrick

[grantspain]

on the socond p/c those lines are your screen volts too high on the lopti,you may have a faulty pot,dry joint or cap causing your hold problem,the discolouration is a degauss problem,bet if you switch off your cab and rotate 90 degree's,switch back on the colour problem goes.if not then check there is not a speaker too close to the screen,or maybe you will need a manual degauss
BUT from what you say this seems to be some issue with the software/setup/drivers for the vga card causing all your faults apart from the degauss issue,i'm not up on this thing so your best off talking to the people you bought the card from,my reason for coming up with this opinion is that with you new pc with only the arcade card installed without drivers etc you had a good picture although you had some issue's with flyback lines and your hold pot,once you installed your drivers/software your original fault reoccured therefore it must be a setup/driver issue

[AndyWarne]

I would say that it is likely to be a slow RAM chip in the VGA card, which shows up when the chips are warm. Drop me an email and we'll sort it out.
Cheers
Andy W

[grantspain]

Just had a look on zax.com to try and identify your chassis,it looks like a nanao but can't tell for certain-if it is a nanao then it will say so on the neck card componant side,nanao have an electrolitic cap on the neck card that causes strange brightness faults-just a bit of info

[patrickmaher]

Thanks again grantspain, you got me going when I really had no idea how to proceed. Sorry I didn't come back and thank you sooner, I kinda put this on the back burner while I was waiting for the replacement ArcadeVGA card.
I could not find any monitor info at zax.com so I guess you meant a different site. I did find that you are correct about it being a Nanao. I found this site from another BYOAC thread http://www.jomac.net.au/mon.htm. It appears to be a Nanao MS8-26A / SU 15-25K http://www.jomac.net.au/MS8-26A-SU.JPG. I appreciate your help on that identification.


I did get the ArcadeVGA replacement and sadly it was not the problem. I am still getting the same issues.
I borrowed a digital cam and have made a couple videos that will hopefully show the problem more clearly. (each is about 1MB)
This one shows the vertical rolling.
I have changed the vertical hold to stabilize the rolling momentarily, you can see here how only some horizontal lines of the image are visible and they kind of alternate. Also the left side goes in and out.
Another with rolling stabilized.

Does this give anyone ideas of what is causing my problem?

I have yet to discharge the monitor and inspect the chassis. I know nothing about electronics so I am a bit unsure of myself, but I need to get off my butt and do it and try to learn something.

Thanks again.
Patrick

[Hiub1]

I recall reading somewhere that having lines like that is caused by the monitor voltage being too high?

Then again, it seems like you don't know what kind of monitor it is, and therefore  it will be hard to know where to adjust that voltage.

Good luck!

[patrickmaher]

Thanks for your help Hiub1, this is an old thread and I think you only saw my initial posts at the top. See my newest reply 2 posts above this one. The chassis is Nanao MS8-26A / SU 15-25K. There are also short movies of the problem in motion in that reply.

So if there is a problem with the voltage being to high that is usually adjusted on the chassis? Is that a pot usually? or is it something more complicated.

After reading over some of the thread I see some suggestions from grantspain that I never tried because shortly after his post Andy posted suggesting the ArcadeVGA card might be bad. I will be trying to look at his suggestions now.

If anyone has any more input, or any in site on the Nanao chassis please feel free.

[grantspain]

been away for a while,just checked out your picture and i am sure that is a setup issue to do with frequency on your card/software.the nanoa i have worked on are dual frequency BUT you have to move a plug(e.g 15k-25k) now its possible your arcade vga is set to a different freq than the chassis thus giving you that problem.when sinc is incorrect it can be very difficult to lock the screen/when freq is wrong then it is impossible to lock the screen.the plug i refer to will be about 6 pin with links on,usually the plug is white with red wires

[patrickmaher]

I am using an ArcadeVGA video card which I belive only does 15K and I have it hooked to the cabinet using a J-PAC which I belive is jumpered correctly so it would not allow anything but 15K to go to the arcade monitor.

I have not changed any settings on the monitor other than colors and hold settings. When I first got the cabinet the monitor was working with this ArcadeVGA/J-PAC setup. Then I started have 5-10 minutes of it working before it would have this problem. Now it is happening as soon as I turn everything on. If the problem was that the monitor is set to 25K and my ArcadeVGA is 15K then wouldn't it have never worked at all?

What is the difference between sync and frequency? 15K or 25K would be refering to the frequency or to sync?

Thanks again

[grantspain]

the sinc is what locks the picture usually you have a horizontal and vertical,the frequency is the type of graphics signal going into the monitor(15k older arcade,25k med res pc input,31k high res vga input)-mame stuff is not my field but in my view most of the problems on this forum stem from setup issues with arcade vga and j pac.what do you need a j pac for anyway?

[patrickmaher]

The J-PAC is an adaptor for JAMMA cabinets. It has the JAMMA edge connector that is on JAMMA PCBs, you plug your JAMMA harness onto the J-PAC. Then on the other side of the J-PAC there are computer connectors. PS/2 to hook up to your keyboard port (or USB port with proper cable) and VGA port to hook up to the computers video card. This allows the computer to be hooked up to a JAMMA cabinet without modifying anything. The video from the computer goes to the arcade monitor and the joystick/buttons go through to the keyboard port on the computer.
http://www.ultimarc.com/images/jpac.jpg

The J-PAC has jumpers that can be set to check for 15K or 25K frequency and if the wrong frequency is being sent from the computer it will not let the signal through. If you have a 31K video card in your computer and the jumper is set to 15K on the J-PAC it will not let the signal through to the arcade monitor.

I am using the ArcadeVGA video card which send 15K signal to the J-PAC.

Hope that makes sense.