Revenge From Mars
Bally, 1999I'm new to pinball ownership (and repair!) Just bought a great working RFM yesterday. Tried it out before purchse- all was good. Brought it home and now the monitor won't work. It was transported carefully and gently; power is reaching the monitor; and all the connections seem to be hooked up correctly. Any advice? Or do I just need to suck it up and jump into getting an LCD? Thank you!!
I don't know jack about PB2000, but I wouldn't make that leap yet. Check all your cables and connectors again.
I just did a trade with somebody - 4 hours each way. Both machines worked 100% at the start of the day - after the trip, neither of them worked.
Connectors, connectors, connectors. No matter how careful you are, things wiggle lose during transport.
Be sure inside the computer box that every connector and board is in tight.
Then outside connectors around the head.
All good ? Then power up and see if the neck is glowing kind of red. If so you lost signal, if not, then dig deeper on monitor. If it's a ducscan and not a wells gardner, I think I'd do the LCD thing before rebuilding a chassis.
LTG 
As far as we can tell, the connectors seem tight. We tried reseating the card. Monitor has power and high voltage. But when we first turn it on, the neck glows for a few seconds then turns off. one of the sync pins was bent on the video cable, but we straightened that out. And the "keying TAB" was grounded in the video cable. Any ideas? Ack! Help! EEk!
Quoted from Rach:As far as we can tell, the connectors seem tight. We tried reseating the card. Monitor has power and high voltage. But when we first turn it on, the neck glows for a few seconds then turns off. one of the sync pins was bent on the video cable, but we straightened that out. And the "keying TAB" was grounded in the video cable. Any ideas? Ack! Help! EEk!
Does the machine boot? Does it go into attract mode? Do lights come on the playfield and can you start a game without video?
If not, test the computer: If you hook up a regular LCD monitor to the VGA port, you should get some jumbled video. If you open up the computer case and yank out the pci card with the black cables coming out of it, the computer should boot up to a bios screen just like a normal pc. Do those things happen? If not, computer is dead. If so, move onto troubleshooting monitor.
Quoted from Rach:Tried it out before purchse- all was good.
Quoted from Rach:one of the sync pins was bent on the video cable, but we straightened that out. And the "keying TAB" was grounded in the video cable.
Doesn't make any sense?
Thanks, Gorilla- my husband's a physicist, so what I lack, he has. Ha! We can play a game without video. The machine seems to run perfectly except for a lack of video.
Lukex- I bought the machine on Sunday and everything was in working order. Transported it home, hooked it up, and the video monitor no longer worked. The cable that connects the monitor to the chassis had been messed with- you could see the black electrical tape repair. Upon closer inspection, one of the sync pins on the cable was bent pretty severely, but we were able to straighten it out. Also, in the Input Signal Connector, the "keying TAB" was grounded in the video cable. Neither of us can figure out what a "keying TAB" actually is.
If you plan on keeping the game,I strongly suggest looking into a monitor conversion, best money spent on an upgrade.
I agree on the monitor upgrade. Mine has a Ducksan that is slowly dying on me. I have emailed Rob Anthony, who has the converter to use a normal LCD screen. I am torn between that route and the SuzoHapp Vision Pro LCD monitor that a gentleman on RGP used. I guess the upside to the SuzoHapp, is that it is "plug and play" and doesn't appear to need a monitor mounting bracket/kit. I can post a link to the RGP post if you are interested in seeing what he did as I am not sure if he is on Pinside or not.
Quoted from Rach:black electrical tape repair
Sounds like a hack job, hope nothing else is messed up for you.
if you are not getting ant neckglow, the flyback might be dead. the boards at klov.com (video game forums) have tons of info on fixing monitors
If the neck stops glowing after a few seconds could it be a bad tube/flyback? While I don't know for sure it sounds like its not a RFM related. I have to take my monitors to a guy to repair them its not a strong skill I have. If you don't want the full upgrade since its $400 +++ you could always try a replacement monitor on e-bay they run around $125. If you do upgrade people love to purchase the Prism cards. I still am looking for one at the right price.
Quoted from coz6:people love to purchase the Prism cards. I still am looking for one at the right price.
I did not know the prism card had anything to do with repairing the monitor, nor did I see the new owner mention anywhere in any of her posts that she was going to do a complete Nucore conversion.
i bought mine at a place that had some 10 of them. and all of them had the monitors fixed by a specialist.
fixing pins is not that hard with the help of others (except boards), but in pk2000's computer crap and monitors i think you should consult a pro in the area..
if mine blows i am not getting my hands on that :S
Hmm i have a friend with one whom had a simular issue it seems he had to replace some capacitors on the screen driver board perhaps you might have some cracked solder joints in the video section
I cant tell exactly how the machine goes together etc but just relaying what i have heard of as problems with these I havnt worked on one personaly yet
Sorry i cant be more help ATM.
Quoted from jar155:I put an LCD into my RFM and I thought that it looked much, much better.
you can put an LCD without upgrading to nucore? meaning, just replace the tv with the LCD?
how? do you know if there is any tutorial on that around?
Quoted from hassanchop:you can put an LCD without upgrading to nucore? meaning, just replace the tv with the LCD?
how? do you know if there is any tutorial on that around?
You need an LCD conversion board specially for pin2k. To be honest it doesn't look that much better without the nucore. With the nucore the LCD is upscale and the game looks incredible.
Quoted from markmon:You need an LCD conversion board specially for pin2k. To be honest it doesn't look that much better without the nucore. With the nucore the LCD is upscale and the game looks incredible.
thnks
so this means: just change to lcd when the monitor is out..
hope that isnt the issue with Rach here :s
Quoted from markmon:You need an LCD conversion board specially for pin2k. To be honest it doesn't look that much better without the nucore. With the nucore the LCD is upscale and the game looks incredible.
Well, that's not quite right. It does look much better, even without NuCore. The shots are better aligned, there's deeper blacks (despite CRT generally being better for black levels), and the colors pop much more. With NuCore you get better scaling, yes, but the upgrade is still quite noticeable with just the conversion kit and you don't have to break the bank.
Isn't it going to be far easier to just replace the CRT or get it fixed? WG screen's aren't massively rare yet.
Rach, I hope you two get it up and working soon! Otherwise, pinball fix-it party is at your place!
-Aaron
Iowa Pinball Club
PS. To The Gorilla, she knows her stuff! I've already been put in my place! lol!
Sorry I missed this thread when it first came up. I had a friend with a similar issue. When he moved the game, he put the cables in the backbox, on top of the monitor chassis. What happened is it "flattened" some components on the monitor chassis causing them to short out. I pulled the monitor chassis and "stood up" the flattened components and it worked fine. From memory, I think there is a fuse on the monitor chassis as well.
I pecked up a machine a month ago and it had a dim screen. I just said the hell with it and built a nucore and slapped a LCD in it. No regrets. I am currently parting out the monitor. The vertical brackets are taken. I still have the cables and electronics. if you are interested let me know and I can send them to you.
GREAT NEWS Rach! So glad you were able to get a discount! Its not easy to get a new game, and not be able to fully play it.
-Aaron
Iowa Pinball Club
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Cedar Falls, IA