Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Monitor/Video Forum => Topic started by: ahofle on March 14, 2007, 12:16:57 am
-
I have a rather non standard arcade monitor, a Dotronix RSV25. It has quite a few years of usage (it was made in 1994 I believe) and exhibits some of the symptoms of bad caps people around here have reported. I checked Bob Roberts, but of course my monitor isn't listed. Is my only option figuring out the capacitance on every single cap and buying them at some place like mouser.com?
-
Check with Zanen Electronics: 888-449-2636 or 806-793-6337
-
Will do, thx.
-
....so what is a cap kit?... What should I be looking for to know that a screen would need new caps?..
what are caps? :dunno
Guess I'm going data digging again...
-
CAPS are a "CAPACITORS". A CAP KIT is simply a group of capacitors for an individual board (chassis). Instead of having to purchase each capacitor individually, folks put together a group of these capacitors for each board and sell them as kits. Sometimes other things (like a transformer, width coil, etc) is also included.
Electrolytic Capacitors (the round "tube" looking things on a chassic/pcb) are filled with a liquid that dries up (or worse, leaks out) over time. When you replace these capacitors, it rectifies many issues with a monitor...such as color issues, geometry issues, "squeezed screen" issues, sometimes it rectifies waves, etc. Being that most arcade monitors are 20 years+ old, it is always a good idea to replace the capacitors. Most kits run $5 - $15 so they are inexpensive. If you have never soldered on a component level before, the task may seem daunting. Prior to doing my first Cap Kit, I was in the same boat...but it is fairly easy to do ...a lot easier than I thought it would be.
Make sure you read up on (A) How to discharge a monitor tube...this is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing you READ and RE-READ and RE-RE-RE-READ about...it can kill you if you don't do it properly...if you do it properly, the whole process is about as anti-climatic as you can get. (B) Read up how to DE-SOLDER. There is two things you can really use to de-solder...a solder wick (my preference) and a desoldering gun (essentially a little mini vacuum pen thing that sucks the solder up after you heat it up).
My first chassis took me 3 hours to complete. The second one (same G07 type board) took me about 1/2 as long. The 3rd board I did in about 45 minutes (though there WERE less caps)...
Good luck.
-
....so what is a cap kit?... What should I be looking for to know that a screen would need new caps?..
what are caps? :dunno
Guess I'm going data digging again...
This gets asked alot so that's why there's a FAQ at the very top of this forum. It is strongly suggested to start there.
-
Well they weren't familiar with Dotronix either. I think this monitor was really more used as a presentation/display monitor than for arcade games. He suggested he could put together a basic cap assortment that should pretty much cover everything for $30. The alternative is to write down all the cap values I need. How much would a TV repair shop charge to do this typically? Anyone live near Colorado Springs that feels like helping out a monitor newbie? ;D
-
I've been working on commercial arcade monitors for 30 years and I've never heard of Dotronix.
-
Well yeah it's not an arcade monitor, but a presentation monitor. It seems to be primarily used for multiple screen setups, with 10 or more used at a time..
-
Well, by arcade monitor I mean a 15Khz CGA monitor that accepts RGB input.
-
I know this is quite old, but did get this resolved. Dotronix is 3 blocks from me and I maintain their network server environment.
-
I never did cap that monitor. For a few other reasons, I went with a new multisync betson monitor instead of the CGA only Dotronix.