D9200 inquiry

[Breaker]

Hi all,

I've had this small issue with my D9200 almost since I bought it last August. I had to put my CAB project on hold for a several months but I'm now back into things and I'm interested to discover what might be causing this.

Here's the issue:
Shortly after I started using the unit (perhaps 15-20 hrs) I noticed a small problem with the display. When the 'brightness' was turned up past a setting of 75, a bar (about 2" in width) would begin to appear on the right side of the screen; this bar would get progressively brighter as the brightness setting was increased. The bar appears at all resolutions but is most apparent during games with predominantly black backgrounds. The appearance of this bar also coincided with a very minor distortion in the screen geometry along the same right side. In order to better illustrate the issue I have attached three images showing the bar and the minor distortion. I can confirm that the monitor's image is centered correctly and that the duration the monitor is on has no effect on the bar or the distortion.

* Please note I have turned the brightness way up to to better illustrate the issue.

Has anyone experienced this issue...or know how to resolve it?

Thanks,
Breaker.

[MonitorGuru]

I cant speak toward that specific monitor, but in general when you see stuff like this it's due to horizontal fold over caused by out of alignment coils/potentiometers and/or a weak power supply and/or bad capacitors.

Fold over occurs when the scan range is too wide in one direction/position adjustment is skewed too far towards one edge (this can happen vertically or horizontally, left, right, top or bottom) and the screen ends up "bouncing" the gun back onto the display to draw instead of drawing past the edge of the display.

[Ken Layton]

Yeh, it does look like a horizontal "foldover" due to the picture being too wide. The 9200 was plagued with some design/quality problems. Wells-Gardner has some of the service bulletins on their website you can download free.

However, for the best answer to your problem, I suggest emailing these pictures to the tech support dept at Wells-Gardner. It may take 3 or 4 days before a tech will respond.

[Breaker]

Thanks MonitorGuro & Ken!

A couple of questions in response to your comments:

1) If this is indeed monitor foldover should I see images on top of each other along the right hand side? I ask because this isn't happening. When I play a game which extends very near the horizontal borders it's not wrapped over along the side where the bar is appearing (I've included an image of 'Pole Position' as an example).

2) Ken, when you mentioned it could be caused by the picture being too wide I double checked the horizontal size setting and tinkered with it, but that had no effect, so I can rule out the possibility that I've set the horizontal size incorrectly.

3) MonitorGuro, your point about setting the bright so high is well taken. I usually have it set at about half of what it was when I took the picture. I cranked it up so the bar would show better. However, I can eliminate the bar completely by adjusting the bright control to @ 75. So the next logical question is, if you can eliminate it, why worry? Good point. I've actually been really happy with my D9200 but, as Ken mentioned, the unit has had a rather jaded past. So, when I noticed this, I thought I'd post just in case it was an early symptom of a larger problem - as my monitor is still under warranty.


OKAY, now this is interesting. I just fired-up a few games to snap a shot for point #1 and discovered that the problem is not consistent. From my tertiary sampling, the bar only seems to appear in 'Asteroids' (I tried a few other vector games and the bar was not present) and in my FE and desktop (both set to 640 X 480). I snapped a shot of the FE for interests sake. Could this be a software issue instead?

I will send a message to WG about this as well. Ken, I checked the WG web site and only saw one service bulletin for the D9200 having to do with 'out of range' errors. Is there somewhere else on the site I should be looking?

Thanks again guys!
Breaker.

[Ken Layton]

One of the service bulletins was actually on the Golden Tee golf site: www.itsgames.com/Operators/support/

The Wells site should have two service bulletins on the 9200: one about the picture tube curvature not fitting in some Golden Tee Golf cabinets and the other about sudden loss of color. I think these bulletins are also on itsgames site.

[Breaker]

Thanks Ken.

Based on my last message do you think there could be something else going on other than foldover?

Cheers,
Breaker.

[Ken Layton]

The 9200 is a digital monitor. I have no experience with this type of monitor. If it were analog I'd say possibly brightness/contrast related as models like the old k7000 would 'streak' to the right if the contrast control were misadjusted.

My recommendation is to contact Wells tech support and see what they have to say.