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A little Star Wars Upright advice
horseboy:
I am going to check out a Star Wars upright here in a few hours, so I was going to try to get a little advice. This would be my first vector machine, so I am totally inexperienced in that regard. Is there anything I should be on the lookout for here? Is there anything monitor-wise that I should keep in mind? Anything that will let me know if the monitor will last for more that a week? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks
ChadTower:
It's not that different from a raster monitor physically. The chassis will be bigger and probably more enclosed, but other than that, you're looking for the same types of things. Screen burn, inconsistent display, etc etc.
I guess as for how good the monitor is NOW, check to see if the vectors are stable (not wiggling), make sure all of the graphics are to proper scale, and make sure the center of the screen doesn't have the dot of death burn that happens so easily on vectors. Pretty much everything is repairable except screen burn, just like a raster.
Oh, and check to make sure the drawn lines line up as they should. The convergence on a vector can be a ---smurfette--- to get right sometimes if it is off.
ArtMAME:
Power up the machine and leave it on for at least 10 - 15 minutes to see if the vectors start doing funny stuff like wiggling, fading out, acting funky, etc.
I bought an Asteroids Deluxe cocktail that worked fine when we powered it up at the sellers house... got it home, don't work no more... :'( ... Blew out the dust and moved it back into the house... worked for a minute, then the screen faded out... :-\ :'( :-\ sinking feeling too, considering how much I paid for the thing...
I have been able to revive it a few times by doing various things... but it still fades out eventually... :badmood:
Right now it is in the corner of my shop with a blanket over it... I do not want to mess with it right now, got lots of other projects to play with...
Still, with machines that old, you are pretty much gambling... as soon as you move it, strange things may begin to happen like it did with my Asteroids Deluxe cocktail... It is up to you if you think you will want to mess with it if something does go wrong...
But heck, if the price is right... go for it, even if you may have to invest some time and money to get it 100%...
Like a famous auctioneer once said:
"Ain't nothing in the world wrong with it that money can't fix..." ;D
ChadTower:
Basically, Vectors aren't as different from rasters as you may think. Most issues are the same with a few that are applied a little differently but only in what component on the monitor chassis you look at to correct what type of display issue.
paigeoliver:
And also, sometimes you just have to be willing to spend the cash to send vector parts out for repairs. When my Vectorbeam monitor developed problems I sent the chassis out to a vectorbeam expert for repair rather than trying to tackle repair on a rare monitor myself. The expert repaired my chassis for $100 and sent it back to me. That was well worth the money.
In general everything related to vector games seems to be less reliable than raster games. Not just the monitors, since most vector boardsets themselves tend to be rather flaky. You hardly ever hear about a "Kangaroo" with PCB problems, but Star Wars machines with PCB problems are all over the place.