Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Main => Monitor/Video Forum => Topic started by: Fusion Disaster on October 04, 2005, 04:09:16 pm

Title: Is it possible to test a monitor w/o a game board?
Post by: Fusion Disaster on October 04, 2005, 04:09:16 pm: I recently purchased an old xenophobe cabinet. It's missing the gameboard, but looks pretty complete otherwise (monitor, powersupply, wiring harness, controls, coin door, and some small 6"x4" pcb which I'm not sure what is for).

Is there anyway for me to test the monitor in the cabinet without a gameboard? I thinking of restoring the cabinet, but don't want to spend money buying a game board if the monitor is broken. I would just convert it over to a MAME cab in that case.

Thanks for you advice in advance!

Brian.
Title: Re: Is it possible to test a monitor w/o a game board?
Post by: stratjakt on October 05, 2005, 04:58:23 pm: You can turn it and listen to hear if it powers up, but ultimately you have to send it a signal to see if it displays anything.

I think if you have something sending it a sync signal, and the gnd input hooked up, you can then send 5V to each of the R,G,B lines and shoud see a solid red, green, and blue screen respectively.

But even then, it could be all out of convergence or screwed up.

There are plenty of cheapo jamma boards you could use, I use my contra board pretty much exclusively as a monitor tester, since it has decent crosshatch and color bar displays.
Title: Re: Is it possible to test a monitor w/o a game board?
Post by: Jess-- on October 06, 2005, 04:37:14 am: you could go down the route of hooking it up to something with a scart socket (something you DONT care if it FRIES) a lot of the cheapo dvd players have RGB output on the scart socket along with the syncs.

using this method should let you know whether the monitor works but will (in most cases) produce a dark image on the screen as the monitor may require 5v signals and the scart output will probably only be 1v signals.

I am lucky this end in that I have an old crosshatch generator that I hook up.
Title: Re: Is it possible to test a monitor w/o a game board?
Post by: stratjakt on October 06, 2005, 05:03:17 pm: A sega genesis outputs R/G/B/S on its output connector. The newer Genesis III (hockey puck style) does not, but you should be able to find an older one for cheep cheep cheep.

Look at gamesx dot com for info on hooking other consoles up to an arcade monitor with RGB, or the console forum here.

I can't think of any carts that would display nice test patterns, crosshatches and color adjustment screens, and such, but you could at least see if it's functional.
Title: Re: Is it possible to test a monitor w/o a game board?
Post by: Ken Layton on October 06, 2005, 05:53:48 pm: The best and easiest way to test the monitor is to bring along a battery operated video pattern generator to plug into the monitor.