How to tell if the monitor is good?

[JesterDEV]

Wow, it has been years since I've been here. Anyway I am buying two cabinets in the morning, and I have the choice of 6 working machines. How do I tell if the monitors are good? Some I can tell there is discoloration, avoiding those.. Any other tips and or tricks, advice?

One is a NBA Showtime - NBA On NBC - Just one of these for sale, and it looks good. Monitor looks clear, but there might be a bit of discoloration, but nothing really noticeable. Bad thing?

The others are some God of war, war gods... something.. They are a multi-color green cabinet first person shooter that I can't seem to find ANY information on. It's also a multiplayer game - All players play on separate cabinets and they are networked together somehow. Only two of the monitors look good with no discoloration. I could have sworn it was called gods of war - not the fighter game. I'll make another post about it.

$200 Each.

Anyway, any advice greatly appreciated!


 

[grantspain]

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=615&gid=1144#1144

the monitors may need degaussing

always best to post photos

[Jack Burton]

If the discoloration is due to gaussing then you may want to reconsider not taking those monitors.  Degaussing is fairly easy, and I believe it is usually fully reversable. 

I would look out most for burn-in, and visible retrace lines.

Retrace lines are horizontal lines that may curve up to one side of the monitor.  If you can see those then it means the SCREEN control on the flyback has been turned up too far.  It might mean that the screen is very dark normally.

Look out for screens that have a large portion of the image bowed in.  This could be a pincushion issue, but it also could be a sign of horizontal collapse in he future.  The same goes for an image that is bowed in on the top of the screen.  However, keep in mind that most CRT's have some level of bowing to their image.

Check up close with white text to see if you can see an outline of red, green, or white around it.  This will be easiest against a black background.  If you see a very strong outline then that is a sign of misconvergence.

Also check that text is clear and easy to read.  If it isn't then the monitor may be out of focus. 

If you can play on the monitor for a while and make sure you don't hear any pops or whines.  Make sure the screen doesn't flash or go blurry intermittently. 

[bbhq]

Not exactly linked to whether they're good - but I have an NBA Showtime (and almost had a War Gods) and if my memory serves me correctly they're both medium res monitors (the Showtime certainly is). So if you're thinking of running mame or playing other jamma stuff your options may be limited.

My Showtime had a Neotec in it (nt-2501 I think...). It had all the wiring and boards gutted when I got it so I decided to mame it, but that monitor was just a pain in the ass. After spending far too long trying to get it to display a PC signal the HOT (I think) blew and I gave up and swapped it out for a standard res monitor which I had running in literally 5 minutes...

[JesterDEV]

Not exactly linked to whether they're good - but I have an NBA Showtime (and almost had a War Gods) and if my memory serves me correctly they're both medium res monitors (the Showtime certainly is). So if you're thinking of running mame or playing other jamma stuff your options may be limited.

My Showtime had a Neotec in it (nt-2501 I think...). It had all the wiring and boards gutted when I got it so I decided to mame it, but that monitor was just a pain in the ass. After spending far too long trying to get it to display a PC signal the HOT (I think) blew and I gave up and swapped it out for a standard res monitor which I had running in literally 5 minutes...

That's exactly what I was planning on doing with that Cab... Well...   

Oh well, I have a mame cab already, so I guess it will just be added to my collection. Not big on sports games, but I have a friend owns a tattoo studio, so just may set it up there and see what happens. He's been bugging me to send a few over.

Thanks everyone for the info! Very helpful, and much needed!

[bbhq]

Don't get me wrong, you can MAME them - its just a pain as most of the things you would normally do to get the monitor going have little support for 25khz monitors.

You might find this an interesting read http://www.dragonslairfans.com/smfor/index.php?topic=6.0 - I think its pretty much the same cab as a Showtime one (well mine anyway - except for the monitor size/manufacturer) - shows how to MAME it if you want to. From my experience I'd say getting a video conversion board is probably the way to go...

Guess it just depends how original you want to keep it. For me sourcing/buying a new monitor and joysticks was a lot easier/cheaper than getting the dead monitor going and rigging up the analog sticks to work. Made a great MAME cab when it was done though... Totally worth the grief