Oh. here is what Spy Hunter was doing, before the monitor was replaced:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta2KHGFoRpE[/youtube]

When I cut power to the thing, the smeared colors would still be there for a few minutes until they faded away.

[quote="Flack"]Monitors, I've decided, are what separate the men from the boys in the arcade collecting hobby. I desperately want to be a man.[/quote]

Hahah, right on. Here is my problematic monitor list:

Crystal Castles: sick burn! This is the cocktail version, so I'll have to find a, what is it, 13" tube somewhere? Until recently, there were a bunch of other problems with this, so I never bothered, but I've been toying with dropping a new one in this.

Q*bert: sick burn! But not as sick as CC. I think the tube itself may have been damaged in transit, as it's looks like it was chipped in the lower left-hand corner. Luckily, Q*bert does not really use that area of the thing during play. I'll almost definitely put a Happ Vision Pro in this, because I love me some Q*bert. I'm already way past having in it what I'd ever get for it ($350 + $185 for the kit + $20 for some board repair + $20 for a new overlay and bottom marquee) so the more, the merrier.

Mr. Do!: sick burn! But someone has a wire going from the PCB [i]to the actual monitor[/i]. I have no idea what for - I should take pics and ask around. I have no idea why someone would do that, but it has stopped me from replacing the monitor.

Spy Hunter: it's got Gyruss burn, which is a long story. The word GYRUSS is fairly visible.

That's pretty much it - there are new monitors in Gyruss, Ms. Pac and the 48-in-1.


[quote]I have had those in the know tell me that fixing monitors is "no big deal." This is one of those friends that wires up things for fun and built his first robot while still in the womb. I don't have any other arcade friends like that, but my dad is like that, with cars. To him, cars have no magic -- they're just a collection of parts, and a dead car is a collection of parts with some faulty ones in there. I guess it's like me and computers, as they're not magic to me anymore and haven't been for a long time. But monitors are just some big collection of wires and capacitors and things that would love to shock me to death. [/quote]

Yeah, this is the best way that I would describe it for me, as well. When the monitor goes out in Tempest some day, I'm going to be screwed. I know, conceptually, what parts make up what in a PC and when confronted with new components (like the first time I saw a SATA connector) I understand what goes where, and what is trying to be accomplished.

But at the same time, I made a bunch of mistakes with PCs and learned from them. I've booted PCs with either no power going to a hard drive, or the IDE cable not connected a hundred times. I've gorked the BIOS chip on a motherboard, and taken it into work to be reprogrammed. I've done a lot of damage that I couldn't undo as well. With arcade monitors, the fact that they are not (really) "cheap," along with the fact that they could hurt me if I do dumb stuff is intimidating. I always knew, no matter what I did, that my PC could never truly hurt me. That made experimentation a lot easier, and I think that's also why so many girls in college will be open to kissing each other?


[quote]Le sigh. I'm off to order some cap kits, roll up my sleeves, and see if I can't shock the shit out of myself this weekend.[/quote]

How did that end up going? Also, while I am thinking of it, the dumbest thing I ever did with an arcade monitor is not remove the entire support frame thing on my Ms. Pac - I left that in, and unscrewed the monitor and ONLY the monitor. I had to have the thing on its side to stop gravity from getting in the way when I put the new one in. It is utterly the wrong way to go about things, and I turned the fifteen minute job of removing and re-installing a monitor into a (literally) five hour fit of screaming psychosis. Ah well, at least I know for next time.

[quote="ICJ"]1. Everyone should buy Flack's book - I am going to update my main page this week to say just that. I don't mean to post a spoiler of the review, but it was brilliant.[/quote]

Thanks for the plug and I can't wait to read your review. I hope to sell enough copies between now and Christmas to pay for Rock Band for my spoiled kid.

I have three takes, but I also have to leave in a sec, so here is PLACEHOLDER TEXT:

1. Everyone should buy Flack's book - I am going to update my main page this week to say just that. I don't mean to post a spoiler of the review, but it was brilliant.

2. I will tell the story of trying to fix ... er, replace, the monitor in my Ms. Pac-Man.

3. I will also post the video of the haunted Spy Hunter monitor.

And why can I never stay logged in???

MORE SOON

Monitors, I've decided, are what separate the men from the boys in the arcade collecting hobby. I desperately want to be a man.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't know how PCBs work other than they are a collection of magic chips, connected by magic traces, attached to a green board. That's about the extent of my knowledge. I do know that chips can be replaced and some are easier to be replaced; I also know that boards can be swapped in and out which is typically my plan of attack.

But my god, those monitors! A quick inventory of my games show that half of them could use monitor work. Some could be brighter, some could look better, some probably only need adjusting. But then there are those that area dead, and what a market it that. People have given me otherwise working games with dead monitors because they don't know how to proceed. I had one dumped at the end of my driveway, a gift from a relative's employer. The message I got was, "No picture, enjoy."

I have had those in the know tell me that fixing monitors is "no big deal." This is one of those friends that wires up things for fun and built his first robot while still in the womb. I don't have any other arcade friends like that, but my dad is like that, with cars. To him, cars have no magic -- they're just a collection of parts, and a dead car is a collection of parts with some faulty ones in there. I guess it's like me and computers, as they're not magic to me anymore and haven't been for a long time. But monitors are just some big collection of wires and capacitors and things that would love to shock me to death.

As I wrote in my book, there are three options when it comes to dealing with monitors; replace them, have someone work on them, or fix them yourself. Replacing them would cost hundreds of dollars, having someone work on them would be slightly cheaper but not much. You can cap any monitor for less than $10 which really seems to be the way to go.

When I got into this hobby I had no idea the amount of work that would go into keeping these things alive. They seemed like mammoths compared to tiny Atari carts. All my old Atari carts still work the same as the day I bought them, I'll have you know. No soldering required to keep them alive. For that matter not only are they cheaper, but I've never thrown my back out moving one around. Boy did I pick the wrong hobby.

My wife expressed joy the other day when I got down to only two cabinets being stored in the garage. The number's back up to four, and the van is back to living life in the driveway. Seriously, who deserves to be warm at night -- a Burgertime cabinet or a Honda Odyssey minivan? Please.

Le sigh. I'm off to order some cap kits, roll up my sleeves, and see if I can't shock the shit out of myself this weekend.