Viable replacement of a Wells Gardner D9200 27"

[evh347]

I know this subject has been covered before, but the thread was old and I didn't really want to resurrect a 2 or 3-year-old thread.

I have an old Slik Stik cabinet and I believe my 10+ year-old Wells Gardner D9200's flyback is on the way out. I've been thinking about replacing it for awhile now, but I'm in need of recommendations on what to go with.

In the 3 years since I read anyone comment on replacing a WG D9200, I'm sure there have been some better (newer) stuff to come along.  LED? LCD?

I'm looking for something that fits the cab, maintains 4:3 ratio, makes vertical games look unaltered, and can support higher resolutions (the D9200 supports up to 800x600).

The WG D9200 has been a great monitor, but it may be time to replace it with something a little more modern.  I've been surfing Suzo-Happ.  I'm expecting to pay between $500-600.  Any suggestions?

[evh347]

FYI for anyone else interested...I got a reply from a Suzo-Happ representative today:

The monitor you are looking for is the Wells Gardner 27" L E D  monitor for $464 available  mid  May.


Bob Lovatt
SUZO-HAPP GROUP
Office: 847-593-6161, ext. 7820| Fax: 800-593-4277
bob.lovatt@suzohapp.com | www.suzohapp.com

I believe this is it:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0192/2714/files/wells-27-led.pdf?5047

[_Iz-]

The monitor you linked to is a widescreen one. Your original requirements state you wanted one with 4:3 aspect. Is this right?

[evh347]

Sorry, that was my attempt at trying to emphasize that I was looking for a monitor that will display vertical games without distorting their display properties. I'm thinking that as long as the video card can support Mame's resolution requirements, then they should display properly. Am I right?

The Suzo rep was convinced that this is the monitor I want after I told him what I was using it for. The documentation seems to support that this is the best replacement option.

[_Iz-]

Ahhh, I was hoping someone had found a nice big 4:3 LCD/LED monitor... 

I too have a 25" widescreen LED monitor in my cabinet. It works good, the aspect can be controlled so things appear correct.

[evh347]

FYI for anyone else interested...I got a reply from a Suzo-Happ representative today:

The monitor you are looking for is the Wells Gardner 27" L E D  monitor for $464 available  mid  May.


Bob Lovatt
SUZO-HAPP GROUP
Office: 847-593-6161, ext. 7820| Fax: 800-593-4277
bob.lovatt@suzohapp.com | www.suzohapp.com

I believe this is it:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0192/2714/files/wells-27-led.pdf?5047

Just wanted to drop by with an update. My WG D9200 officially died today. I'm sure the flyback or Caps (maybe both) are probably the issue, but I'm generally clueless when it comes to fixing these things. It's an old monitor and I pretty much had sold myself on modernizing my setup so I can play some of the more recent games with additional resolution support.

I went ahead and ordered this along with its respective bezel. Should be here Friday. I'll report back once it's installed.
http://na.suzohapp.com/all_catalogs/monitors/49-2958-00

Bezel:
http://na.suzohapp.com/amusement_products/monitors/49-2960-00?SS=ON

[Malenko]

where are you located? I'd love to take the broken monitor off your hands

[evh347]

where are you located? I'd love to take the broken monitor off your hands

St. Paul, MN

http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/dak/sop/5045700092.html

[evh347]

Got the monitor today. It came from Suzo Happ nicely packaged and shipped in just 2 days FedEx. I was really sweating when I first tried to put the thing in and I came up about 1/2" too long lengthwise for the monitor to go in. I just shook my head as I sat there trying to figure out what I'd done wrong in my measurements. The Happ salesman said that "The monitor you are looking for is the Wells Gardner 27" L E D  monitor for $464 available  mid  May."

Nearly reserved to the fact that I was going to have to now go through the trouble of sending it back and WG currently makes no other viable WG D9200 replacement.....I sat down, drank a cool one and then I saw that the brackets on the left/right sides of the monitor could be taken off.

I took the two brackets it comes with that are screwed in to the left and right sides of the monitor off. Just had to take 4 little screws out total. With those installed as it comes out of the box, it does not fit the inner dimensions of the SlikStik 27" cab. With those brackets off, it's a nice snug fit.

I also ordered the bezel kit. The only hardware it came with was 4 screws used to secure the top and bottom (with 2 screws for each side) to the bezel frame. The bezel frame attached to my hardware inside the SlikStik cab, but I had to go to the hardware store to pick up 4 additional bolts, washers, and nuts so they would fit the holes in the bezel hardware and then I could go ahead and secure it to the SlikStik's monitor mounts.

The only issue is that the actual physical bezel (goes in between the monitor and glass) that came in the bezel kit does NOT fit. It has the correct dimensions internally to frame the visible area of the monitor, but the outer dimensions are way off. Its far too wide to fit snugly in my existing SlikStik cab and it doesn't have nearly enough height to hide the gaps at the top and bottom of the monitor. I guess my next task is to start researching how to make my own bezel.

Other than that, the monitor is pretty sharp and big improvement. So far, vertical games look good too with no manual resizing on my part.

Here's how it looks mounted so far:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbf11hixwhaay71/LEDMonitor1.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/njjjyfi89y7o52r/LEDMonitor2.jpg?dl=0

[dmckean]

Viewing angles on that thing look awful.

[evh347]

Viewing angles on that thing look awful.

Are you referring to the reflection of the ceiling light in that picture? If so, yeah its not the greatest picture. I turn the ceiling lights off in the room when I want to play.

The actual angle of the monitor standing in front of it should be the same as when the D9200 was in there since I mounted it to the existing hardware in the cabinet.

[Malenko]

Viewing angles on that thing look awful.

Are you referring to the reflection of the ceiling light in that picture? If so, yeah its not the greatest picture. I turn the ceiling lights off in the room when I want to play.

The actual angle of the monitor standing in front of it should be the same as when the D9200 was in there since I mounted it to the existing hardware in the cabinet.

He means if you look at the monitor from extreme angles like face the left side of the cab and look at the monitor or if you're standing a foot or so to the left of player one.   I dont think the angles look that bad, I think its the lighting and the camera.  The important thing is that you're happy with it.

[8BitMonk]

Not bothered by the lack of scanlines and native resolutions? Everytime I go from playing a retro game on my arcade monitor to a 'modern' monitor it looks off, and not in a good way. Did you swap the video card as well? If you can't sell the D9200 for what you're asking I'll take it off your hands, I'm in Minneapolis. 

[Malenko]

Not bothered by the lack of scanlines and native resolutions?

Yeah it doesnt have scan lines, but why wouldnt it support native resolutions? Spec sheet says it supports 15Hz refresh

[dinofly]

Ahhh, I was hoping someone had found a nice big 4:3 LCD/LED monitor... 

Here it is:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-LQ231U1LW31-LQ231U1LW32-original-23-1-for-Sharp-LCD-screen-display-90-days-/261402695995
It's not Plug & PLay, you will need a display controller board and a power supply (i think this will work with a simple 12v output from a pc psu)

This is the biggest 4:3 currently in production.

[mgb]

Viewing angles on that thing look awful.

The viewing angle doesn't look that bad in that picture.
its not like you can really tell from a picture anyway.


as far as your bezel goes, they always come oversized like that so you have to cut them to fit. they cut easily with a razor and a straight edge. for the top and bottom, maybe you can make up filler pieces with black melamine available from home depot or lowes 

[8BitMonk]

Not bothered by the lack of scanlines and native resolutions?

Yeah it doesnt have scan lines, but why wouldnt it support native resolutions? Spec sheet says it supports 15Hz refresh

I missed that, good that it supports native resolutions. Still looks too sharp to me, I think the aspect ratio would bug me as well. evh347, you said it's a 'big improvement' over your D9200, what is it you like better?

[Malenko]

if its the same monitor that MK3Fan bought you can switch it to 4:3 mode it'll just have barn doors on the picture.

[8BitMonk]

if its the same monitor that MK3Fan bought you can switch it to 4:3 mode it'll just have barn doors on the picture.

You also wind up with a smaller image vertically. Look at the D9200 space it went into in the pics, there's a fairly large top/bottom gap.

[Malenko]

You also wind up with a smaller image vertically. Look at the D9200 space it went into in the pics, there's a fairly large top/bottom gap.

well yeah 27" 4:3 is 16.22" tall , a 27" 16:9 is 13.22  but i wasnt talking about in comparison to the old monitor. I was just saying the widescreen lcd can display in 4:3 mode so things dont look stretched.

[dmckean]

if its the same monitor that MK3Fan bought you can switch it to 4:3 mode it'll just have barn doors on the picture.

You also wind up with a smaller image vertically. Look at the D9200 space it went into in the pics, there's a fairly large top/bottom gap.

It's basically ends up like replacing a 27" 4:3 monitor with a 21" 4:3 monitor. For the same price he could have bought a new 24.8" CRT.

[evh347]

if its the same monitor that MK3Fan bought you can switch it to 4:3 mode it'll just have barn doors on the picture.

You also wind up with a smaller image vertically. Look at the D9200 space it went into in the pics, there's a fairly large top/bottom gap.

It's basically ends up like replacing a 27" 4:3 monitor with a 21" 4:3 monitor. For the same price he could have bought a new 24.8" CRT.

But a new CRT doesn't support resolutions like 1920x1080.

[Malenko]

But a new CRT doesn't support resolutions like 1920x1080.

Exactly, don't let this people talk you into regretting something that does what you want it to do.  If I had the scratch I wouldnt mind replacing some of my games aging CRTs with arcade LCDs, in fact I did replace my Faster than Speeds 27" CRT with a 28" LCD

[8BitMonk]

Exactly, don't let this people talk you into regretting something that does what you want it to do.

I don't know that anyone's trying to talk him into regretting his decision, just weighing the pro's/con's as the 4:3 classic CRT vs. 16:9 new LCD/LED decision is something we've all thought about. There isn't one perfect monitor for every situations so it's going to be a compromise regardless.

I personally wouldn't use a 16:9 lcd monitor in my main retro cab to play the classics because I love the screensize, scanlines and original look of the game, plus I get my hi-res game fix on other platforms. However, I completely understand why it was a good solution for the OP. It's a brand new, easy, drop in replacement that can play the classic games as well as some more modern 1920x1080 games, a good overall solution to get back up and running.

To the OP, don't take any of comments personally, just thinking out loud about the benefits and drawbacks. As long as you like it rock on. 

[Malenko]

I don't know that anyone's trying to talk him into regretting his decision, just weighing the pro's/con's as the 4:3 classic CRT vs. 16:9 new LCD/LED decision is something we've all thought about.

I actually wasnt implying you at all 

The SUPER ironic part, is I took the LCD out of my MAME to put in my race cab, and took the 27" tri sync out of it to put in my MAME cab.

[evh347]

Exactly, don't let this people talk you into regretting something that does what you want it to do.

I don't know that anyone's trying to talk him into regretting his decision, just weighing the pro's/con's as the 4:3 classic CRT vs. 16:9 new LCD/LED decision is something we've all thought about. There isn't one perfect monitor for every situations so it's going to be a compromise regardless.

I personally wouldn't use a 16:9 lcd monitor in my main retro cab to play the classics because I love the screensize, scanlines and original look of the game, plus I get my hi-res game fix on other platforms. However, I completely understand why it was a good solution for the OP. It's a brand new, easy, drop in replacement that can play the classic games as well as some more modern 1920x1080 games, a good overall solution to get back up and running.

To the OP, don't take any of comments personally, just thinking out loud about the benefits and drawbacks. As long as you like it rock on. 

Nah, don't sweat it. I'm not offended at all. The whole purpose of this thread was to try to help people who might have a WG D2900 and have been thinking about upgrading. I didn't want to volunteer to be the pioneer on this. If there have been people ahead of me who have gone this road, then I failed to read about it.

as far as your bezel goes, they always come oversized like that so you have to cut them to fit. they cut easily with a razor and a straight edge. for the top and bottom, maybe you can make up filler pieces with black melamine available from home depot or lowes

Thanks for that info. That was very helpful. I cut the bezel with a jigsaw to specifications and then attached a couple pieces of black poster board (Craft Store/Home Depot). The only issue now is that the bezel glass doesn't fit in place because the monitor is positioned much closer than the CRT was. Now there's not enough room for the glass to safely be placed in front of the monitor.

As far as an LED/LCD monitor not looking the part of a CRT, let me just say your fears can be rested. Again, the biggest reason I had to upgrade (besides my CRT dying) was that I wanted to also be able to play modern games at their modern resolutions without compromising the look of the older 4:3 games. Yes, physically the monitor takes up less space than the WG D9200. I was worried about that too, but my fears have been unrealized. I can honestly say that standing in front of this thing your eyes adjust so quickly that you don't even realize that what you're looking at is much smaller than what you were used to.

To answer the fears about how it won't look like a CRT.....here's your answer: "HLSL"

I've been casually paying attention to the advances in MAME and today I threw myself into HLSL full speed.  Up until now, I was using Mame/MAMEUI64 with no reason to switch. Having a new HD monitor changes that. There are some great YouTube videos out there, but they don't necessarily break it down to a dumbied down level for fellas like me. Here's what I learned:

1) Download MameUIFX and put it (without overwriting anything) into your existing MAME folder. MameUIFX is the only app working in conjunction with MAME and capable of displaying HLSL filters which make the MAME games look like they're being played on an old CRT monitor. It basically adds a "screen door" effect.
2) Open MameUIFX and edit your directories.
3) Delete your old game ini's (in "\Mame\ini\" and back them up if you want)
4) I opened up each game in MameUIFX and changed one simple thing, changed it back to original, and "Apply" "OK" to save a new INI per game. Probably a long way to go to create a game INI, but it's the quickest way I know at the moment.
5)For the vector games, I applied a combination of GigaPig's and JezzeShader's filters (Google them on YouTube). They are put in their respective folders under your Mame directory. I think I only used the "post.fx" and a GLSL shader code I created to replace my "CRT-geom" file (make a backup if you want) in \Mame\glsl which I got from "Dullaron" a few weeks ago. His shader will tilt the play field giving you the impression that you're looking down at the game through the bezel glass (like when playing DK). You go into each game's "Display" tab and ensure the "video" is set to OpenGL and then select the "CRT-geom" filter then save. For the games I wanted "tilt", that's what I did.
6) For most games (non-vector), I went into each game's properties in MameUIFX and under the "Display" tab, I set the video to AUTO in MameUIFX. For each of the vector games, under each game in Mame game (not the Mame.INI). Important: If you edit the Mame.INI and the games' INI, the Mame.INI will override and any changes you make to the game's INI will go un-noticed.
7) The last thing I did was run each game in Mame and ensure I had the screens/artwork on the correct monitors.

For the vector games (only) to maximize old school bloom effect, I opened up each game INI (with Notepad+ or Notepad) and edited (just this part) of the code to this:

Code: [Select]

hlsl_enable 1
hlslpath hlsl
hlsl_prescale_x 8
hlsl_prescale_y 8
hlsl_preset -1
hlsl_write
hlsl_snap_width 3200
hlsl_snap_height 1800
shadow_mask_alpha 0.5
shadow_mask_texture shadow-mask.png
shadow_mask_x_count 6
shadow_mask_y_count 4
shadow_mask_usize 0.1875
shadow_mask_vsize 0.25
shadow_mask_uoffset 0.0
shadow_mask_voffset 0.0
curvature 0.0
round_corner 0.0
reflection 0.25
vignetting 0.25
scanline_alpha 0.75
scanline_size 1.0
scanline_height 1.0
scanline_bright_scale 2.0
scanline_bright_offset 0.0
scanline_jitter 0.0
defocus 1.0,0.0
converge_x 0.0,0.0,0.0
converge_y 0.0,0.0,0.0
radial_converge_x 0.0,0.0,0.0
radial_converge_y 0.0,0.0,0.0
red_ratio 1.05,0.00,0.10
grn_ratio -0.10,1.00,0.25
blu_ratio -0.25,0.25,1.25
saturation 1.25
offset -0.30,-0.20,-0.05
scale 1.15,1.05,0.90
power 0.90,0.90,1.15
floor 0.05,0.05,0.05
phosphor_life 0.5,0.5,0.5

#
# NTSC POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS
#
yiq_enable 0
yiq_cc 3.59754545
yiq_a 0.5
yiq_b 0.5
yiq_o 1.570796325
yiq_p 1.0
yiq_n 1.0
yiq_y 6.0
yiq_i 1.2
yiq_q 0.6
yiq_scan_time 52.6
yiq_phase_count 2

#
# VECTOR POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS
#
vector_length_scale 0.8
vector_length_ratio 40.0

#
# BLOOM POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS
#
vector_bloom_scale 1.00
raster_bloom_scale 0.220
bloom_lvl0_weight 1.00
bloom_lvl1_weight 0.16
bloom_lvl2_weight 0.24
bloom_lvl3_weight 0.32
bloom_lvl4_weight 0.48
bloom_lvl5_weight 0.00
bloom_lvl6_weight 0.96
bloom_lvl7_weight 0.72
bloom_lvl8_weight 0.48
bloom_lvl9_weight 0.24
bloom_lvl10_weight 0.12

Just save that INI in your "\Mame\Ini\" and now launch Mame to check your work.
Out of all the work I did, the most important filters I added were to the vector games. Good thing there aren't a ton of them, but the reward was staring at a game that looks like it was displayed on an old CRT with extremely high-res bezel art. The difference between the low-res play field and a high-res bezel seems to add an illusion of depth. And that coupled with "Dullaron's" tilted played filter adds even more dimension.

That was pretty much it and this was the result (My pics are off my iPhone):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jpw6uy1wn4aytqp/tempest1.JPG?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tthhdeoafji5ogw/tempest2.JPG?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2k8m1yz0ubd0le4/mspacman.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5tn8hjnejrofzkw/gwar.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q8bj8yq9ylueias/galaga.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m55l7jilu0ntobi/dkong.jpg?dl=0

It's been a lot of work since I'm new to this, but the I'm certainly not regretting the final result. I'm sure the pics don't do this justice. I'll try to get a video up on YouTube soon. For those of you dreading ditching the old CRT for an updated LED/LCD.....fear not, I've paved the road for you. 

[mgb]

Looks good.
 
I love that this whole monitor swap out has taken you down a new road but you seem to be enjoying the journey and you're picking up new tools and tricks all the way.
Keep at it my man. Its looking great.
I'm still keeping with my crt for as long as I can but the simple truth is that lcd and led displays are the future.
They are what I will be using on future projects.  Things like hlsl and all that make a great difference.

[Malenko]

not for nothing but wouldnt NOT want HLSL effects on Tempest? I'd have the effect off on all vector games.

[8BitMonk]

Thanks for the update, glad you're happy with your purchase.

I've played around with HLSL a bit myself, in fact I use it on my CRT for all vector games, I think it looks great for those. The problem with the other games I found was trying to manually adjust each game, I couldn't find a good 'one size fits all' HLSL setting and manually tweaking every mame game was not an option. Sounds like the route you went with MameUIFX may have automated some of that, I'll have to look into it, I'm still using LCD's on other builds so it's definitely of interest. 

not for nothing but wouldnt NOT want HLSL effects on Tempest? I'd have the effect off on all vector games.

That's surprising Malenko, I use it for all my vector games (bypassing groovymame) and think it looks way better than standard mame settings.

[Malenko]

That's surprising Malenko, I use it for all my vector games (bypassing groovymame) and think it looks way better than standard mame settings.

I just like the nice clean lines of the faux vector on my LCD, I guess its just a preference thing. I think rasters benefit more from CRT effect than vectors.

[dmckean]

I don't know that anyone's trying to talk him into regretting his decision, just weighing the pro's/con's as the 4:3 classic CRT vs. 16:9 new LCD/LED decision is something we've all thought about. There isn't one perfect monitor for every situations so it's going to be a compromise regardless.

I personally wouldn't use a 16:9 lcd monitor in my main retro cab to play the classics because I love the screensize, scanlines and original look of the game, plus I get my hi-res game fix on other platforms. However, I completely understand why it was a good solution for the OP. It's a brand new, easy, drop in replacement that can play the classic games as well as some more modern 1920x1080 games, a good overall solution to get back up and running.

To the OP, don't take any of comments personally, just thinking out loud about the benefits and drawbacks. As long as you like it rock on. 

I was just pointing out other options. I'm not anti-lcd but I'm just not a fan of trying to cram a widescreen monitor horitontally into a cab meant for a 4:3 monitors. The cabinet is large enough that a 40 inch widescreen monitor could have been mounted vertically and ended up with a 30" 4:3 image and a 1080x1440 resolution.

I just like the nice clean lines of the faux vector on my LCD, I guess its just a preference thing. I think rasters benefit more from CRT effect than vectors.

Right now HLSL for Vector games is just a bloom effect. It's pretty but not really that realistic. B&W Vector games had a resolution somewhere around SVGA (800x600) and color vector games had a resolution lower than that.

What's still missing in HLSL is:

Accurate flicker simulation
Afterimage
More accurate drawing of the vector lines
Better support for B&W vectors (B&W monitors used a different type of phospher that was more persistant and also had more varience in beam intensity. Maxing out the Z-amplifer created a super bright image that was impossible on color vector monitors.)
Shadow mask for color vectors
Screen curvature

[MikeR]

evh347,  I was curious if you found a solution for the glass not fitting due to the monitor.  Did you just move the mounts back 3 or 4 inches?

FYI: This thread is exactly what I've been looking for.  My D9200 died many years ago and the replacement D9800 is starting to act up.

[Yoeddy1]

Why don't you guys just send your chassis off to Chad at www.arcadecup.com?  The guy is a master at fixing CRT chassis.  He has repaired 2 of my Kortek 2914f 27" CRT chassis, and they work great!  Going the widescreen route sends chills down my spine, so I'll pay what it takes to keep the brightness and size of my 27" arcade monitor going.

Thanks,
Jason

[evh347]

evh347,  I was curious if you found a solution for the glass not fitting due to the monitor.  Did you just move the mounts back 3 or 4 inches?

FYI: This thread is exactly what I've been looking for.  My D9200 died many years ago and the replacement D9800 is starting to act up.

I haven't found a solution for the glass not fitting due to the monitor and it quickly became a non-priority item for me since it seems to look okay as is.
I did not move the mounts back. I hadn't really considered that since that would require re-drilling the supports thru the side of the cab I think.

I'm still more than happy with this monitor. I love the increased resolution for the modern games and Mame's HLSL filters make the older stuff look very authentic to me.

[dskillz1]

Hey could this be a better replacement that would fit your slikstik? I have the same issue, my D9200 is on its way out..

http://shop.xgaming.com/collections/arcade-parts/products/27-29-inch-makvision-crt-arcade-monitor

[dskillz1]

Hey could this be a better replacement that would fit your slikstik? I have the same issue, my D9200 is on its way out..

http://shop.xgaming.com/collections/arcade-parts/products/27-29-inch-makvision-crt-arcade-monitor