Vector monitor G08 on ebay

[dmckean]

I'm looking to build a ZVG cabinet to play vector games and wanted to know if this monitor is a decent deal?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=001&sspagename=STRK%3AMEBI%3AIT&viewitem=&item=110099507695&rd=1&rd=1

[Rickn]

Nick and I checked this out today- Nick is my technician ( he was Electrohome's production engineer for the G08, G05...).

His feedback is that there was a quite a few growing pains with the G08.

It started with some pretty severe "blow-ups" and burnt components.

One of the first fixes was the addition of the cooling fans that you see in the pix.

The ultimate fix was the addition of current limiters which led to eliminating the fan.

So I guess what we are saying is the one on e-bay is "mid stage"... considering it has lasted 25 years says a lot.

Idealy it would be of the vintage that did not require the fan but had the current limiting circuit...

In any case, probably a rare find, the price of $220 seems very good in a supply and sdemand market.

Good Luck

Rick Nieman
Rick@niemandisplays.com

[shorthair]

Hey, Rick, did you ever ask Nick about any vector monitors he might have floating around?

[dmckean]

Thanks for your help Rick, that is what I figured but I wanted to be sure. It should at least get me started anyhow.

I think ideally what is needed is a newly designed vector monitor that plugs directly into the wall with ZVG circuitry built in and VectorMAME ready. It'd be nice to have some linux or windows drivers for the ZVG too. I think this would open up the market to a lot more people that wouldn't mess around with vectors otherwise. I was a DOS scripting guru back in the day but even I've got to admit that DOS is dead now. I'm dreading having to build this machine and find sound drivers that work under DOS.

[Rickn]

Yes Nick and I have been talking about these this past week. He brought in some of the schematics this week.

He says he has a G08 and a GO5 aG19 and perhaps a G09??

He is going to dig them out some time in the next week or so and bring them to the shop.

At this point he wants to hang onto them, seems he is kind of partial to the dust they have collected.

He is still searching for his X-Y patern generator if he comes up with that we may decide to offer repair services. We will have to think that one thru as parts may be hard to get?

If we do I will post it here.


Rick Nieman
Rick@Niemandisplays.com