Mame Cabinet Monitor blows, which to get in the UK?

[raqman]

Hi All,

First and foremost, I hope I did not blow it myself, which scares the living daylights out of me.

Let me explain;

Got a Mame cabinet of Ebay and knowing PC's and all, I upgraded the mame, which was 4 years old and also the Mamewah FE, with also the resolution tool.

After using this successful combination a few times, I noticed that Mamewah would crash and I would have to reboot the machine a few times, till I figured to attach a keyboard and see what was going on.

It basically crashed to desktop and left my monitor blank, till I used Alt Tab to bring Mamewah back up and all woudl work fine.

Saturday morning, I switched on the monitor (a Kortek with Smansung Tube 20") and POOF, smoke and sizzling noises from inside the cab, yikes!!!!

Opend the back, put the power back on and all sparks were flying out of the Line Output Transformer (Reading all these forums over the past 4 days, think I got it right).

So searching and searching, I found this place that seems to repair them:

http://www.eurocoin.co.uk/pd_monitorrepair.cfm

But I was thinking to buy a new one as I was at it, as this one did have screen burn.

So questions I would hope someone can help on are a couple:

1. Did I break the monitor playing around with the mame settings, i.e. maybe misconfiguring the 15hz output from my Arcade VGA card, is such a thing possible to make sparks flying?

2. Which is the best 20" arcade monitor to get, and should it be digital multisync, I see everyone talking about the WG9200, but this is 27" and I cannot find it in the UK. Also all the other ones in these forums cannot be located in the UK, the only one I think I will have to get is this:

http://www.eurocoin.co.uk/pd_20.cfm

But is it Multisync, will it be a good arcade monitor, or does anyone
have a better recommendation?

Thanks to all

[grantspain]

there is no way you caused the flyback to fail,it just got old and flaky

that eurocoin monitor is vga only

there are not many multisync available in the u.k at present.
suzo have makvision 29" in stock
wells gardner do not have a distributor,pentranic are bankrupt,kaga/sanwa went into receivership last month,hantarex may have a 20" tri sync left although they have stopped crt production.
eurocoin are the u.k distributor for kortek and may be able to source a multisync for you

imo you should either repair your chassis or get a generic replacement,flyback should be cheap enough

[raqman]

Thanks Grant!!

Fantastic to hear I did not break it through settings, that panicked me a bit. Guess moving it into a garden house with the temperature variotions does not help an old machine!

Good news is Eurocoin confirmed they can repair it, there is a chap called Ray that works there, nicest guy I have spoken to in a long time, he even called me back to confirm this.

Bad news is he too confirmed their model is not CGA :-(

I like many others here in the forum want originality in the games, thus why, even when I get this repaired, will want to get a new one, as going through another weekend without my mame machine cannot happen, sure many of you understand!

Phoned Hantarex, and they only have 11 21" available and no more in production and these are only 15Khz, the trisyncs are all 25" and above, which would not fit in my silverline cabinet.

I would not dare get one shipped to me from the states and go through hassle if it is broke.

Another good friend of mine from my commodore 64 days informed me he has a Hantarex, so is it worth while investing £294+vat in this or better to get the Eurocoin one that does not have CGA at £115+ vat

Read read and read these forums and it seems Multisync is the best.

P.S. I have a Silverline cabinet, would a 21" fit in that?

Thanks all

[grantspain]

if you have no screen burn then just get your chassis repaired,should be around £30 for a flyback and £50 for the repair(all plus vat of course)

another option of course is to get a 20" tv with scart input,this will give you a 15khz rgb input equal to arcade monitor

[raqman]

Cheers Grant, gettign mine repaired, though it does indeed have screenburn, so still hoping to find a new 20" multisync, would not have the foggiest how to open up a telly and find RGB bits and bobs, though am learning alot, but this "watch out a telly can killy you" brings a whole new meaning to - couch potato -

[raqman]

well got it repaired by eurcoin for about £45 and as soon as i plugged it in, it started doing the same thing.
i see it gets connected to a happ control pac, could that be giving a bad power output? infact when it all blew the first time, i did see blak smoke from near the controller

thanks

[grantspain]

eurocoin tested this on a tube?

[raqman]

hi grant, no they tested it on a sega machine they had in the office, guess I should have  brought them the controller.

 i am now tempted to go and buy one of the few hantarex, as it must run directly from the mains, I hope.

that cabinet is a nightmare full of wires............

got the new arcade vga 2 today,connected it to a pc monitor to see if the rest is working,but it does not load mamewah, guess i need to uninstall the old vga drivers and install the new ones.

[grantspain]

a very confusing scenario you have here
i wonder if you are sending too high a horizontal frequency to the monitor and thus blowing the horizontal output transistor

what model kortek is this,the early ones need to be run from 120vac and not 230ac

the hantarex polo range are all free voltage which means they run direct from any wall socket voltage in the world without the need for transformers-filters etc

maybe it is worthwhile stripping out the cab and rewiring it

[raqman]

yes, I think that is what is happening as that is what they replaced.
seeing as I had not connected it to the PC, but only to the power supply though, which seems to go through this happ controllers, I guess that must have blown somehow and sent wrong power to it, doubt it is an issue of 123/230 as it was working fine before this event and I had not touched anything.

So yes, next thought is a partial rewire, I dread to think to rewire all the buttons on the jpac, but will get a new hantarex monitor, plug it directly into a socket and figure out how to get the cga signal to it.

Is there an easy way, I have been reading about the fact that it needs a 5v signal, but this happ control has got me confused, it seems to be connected to the coin mecc and the power supply of the monitor goes through it.

ah, and current monitor is a mystery, even eurocoin classified it unknown, seems tobe a samnsung tube with ktf-h markings, kortek i believe, arounc 30 years old

[grantspain]

the hantarex will run fine without any modifications-just some wiring
you will need a polo 3 monitor if you want cga only,i think they may have a few tri syncs kicking around( polostar)
you said the monitor goes through a happ controller-any photos of the offending item

[raqman]

thanks for the response Grant, have just ordered a new Hantarex Polo 3 21" from them this morning!

Sorry for the delay on the photos, just did them last night:

Here is the offending item, which is wired to the coin box and the power of the monitor:

[grantspain]

the wiring is a disgrace,it needs sorting out
you are using a jpac,are you using soft 15k to produce the video signal or an arcade vga?

[raqman]

Hi Grant,
I know, tis a nightmare, and so I am pulling it all out to reqire.

I am using Arcade VGA, infact, I bought a new one to replace the arcade VGA that was in there, and have opened a post in Software as I cannot get mamewah to work now :-(

might be the sound drivers not installed.

Grant, thanks for all your help by the way, so from what I understand, I just need to wire the RGB from the Jpac to the new Polo 3 on its way, or can I connect that directly the the Arcade VGA card.

[grantspain]

if you were running the monitor from the correct avga output then there is no way you would have sent the wrong signal,unless your software/setup is wrong

i think you should email andy at ultimarc

[raqman]

infact this all started when I updated the Mame and then updated mamewah and used the mameresolution tool, so it is likely then that changing all this sent the wrong signals to the old monitor. Otherwise this cabinet was working fine before.

With this new Hantarex onits way, I hope the same cannot happen and the worst thing is that it simply does not switch on, rather than fizzlying and blowing.

[grantspain]

well in that case it sounds certain you sent a high frequency horizontal signal to the monitor,you will need to put this right before plugging the hanty in
connect up a pc monitor to the other vga output and reprogram the settings

[raqman]

well back from my holidays and spent many an hour on the beach looking forward to the Hantarex, by the way, they are an absolutely great bunch, especially Bob from Hantarex.co.uk, who really helped me prior to the purchase, even sending me a fax with the measurements "outstanding"!!

Grant, quick question, as I did not touch the Ultimarc configuration files, but simply Mamewah resolution tool, mamewah update and the mame (so basically upgraded the gaming part) this could have sent a wrong signal, if so, how can I avoid this.

At the moment, with the new VGA 2 card, I connect to the PC socket and I can see everything, and when I connect it to the VGA connection, it confirms to be out of range.

[raqman]

emailed Andy, who was brilliant and helped, could have sold me a new JPAC from the questions I asked him and he insisted what I had was good enough, talk about service first sales later, great people to deal with too!!

Confirmed that old monitors do what mine did, I am sure my new Hantarex that just arrived will be fine :-)

[grantspain]

its down to the horizontal output transistor,if its a meaty one then they can take some pretty off the scale frequency and survive
if its a crappy bu2520 then you only need to fart near it and they blow

as long as you feed 15khz then you will have no problems