@dav09 I don't suppose you fancy donating the chassis from your other Sega Blast City to me? :-P
I've sent him a message over on UKVac anyway. Let's see what he says.
I used addresspal a good few times for straightforward stuff. What do they do if a parcel arrives that doesn't have all the details they want on it I wonder? If it lands in Ireland it gets sent back to sender, would they do the same in the UK addresspal depot?
Just remember, as soon as you attempt the fix yourself Grant wont touch it. It might be difficult to get him to do the job even as is if you haven't dealt with him in the past.
I have a friend living up in NI which is still within the same customs area as the UK so if worst comes to the worst I'd literally just head up there, spend the night with her and then ship the thing off from there.
He can always send it back to her and then I'll pay her to post it back to me. Should make it easier for Grant at least.
I'm stuck now between whether I should send it over to him or try to attempt the repair myself.
If its the return shipping back to Ireland, folks could use AddressPal maybe?
Was chatting to Grant a couple hours ago. He said he's very selective in repair jobs he takes from Ireland now due to Brexit and all the shipping nonsense. So not guaranteed he will take a job on. No harm in asking him though.
If you plan on sending in off then don't tinker with it. He doesn’t take repair attempts anymore.
If I was strapped for cash I’d do the HOT myself and I have done in a few monitors with various failure and success stories, they usually blow for a reason. Donberg usually sell the parts but seem to be charging crazy shipping rates lately.
Grant is the best bet and I’d personally prefer get your chassis fully refurbed now than take a chance on a second hand one with no history, I think those weiya ones in the blast cabs are known to give issues.
It's a pain in the ar$e when these things happen. But like @o1s1n says, its a good chance to get the chassis refreshed, fully recapped and serviced.
I remember when I got my Egret 3 (Jesus, 11 years ago!), I had loads of trouble with the screen and was really pi$$ed off about it. It took months, 3 chassis and 3 arcade monitors (1 direct from Japan)before it was all sorted. So a dodgy chassis is a pain, but a relatively easy to fix one with Grant around.
Edit:
By the way, the cost to repair the chassis and do a full recap and general service is between about €90-€120 depending on what's needed. That doesn't include postage costs, and I haven't done this since Brexit so not sure how that will work out.
Luckily with the likes of Grantspain around, these things aren't the end of the world. I nearly had a heart attack a few years back when the monitor in my Pony went on the fritz. Stuck the chassis in a box and sent it off to Grantspain and that was it, problem solved.
See it as a good opportunity to give it an overall service and future proof it too. The picture quality will more than likely look a lot better when you get it back aswell.
I have an arcade monitor chassis packed and ready to send over to Grant in the UK to be fixed. He's pretty much the best guy to repair these things and has done a few things for me over the years.
A few years back I had what sounds like the same issue as you with my Ridge Racer cab. Sent the chassis over to him and he fixed it up no problem.
So I haven't slept all night as it's honestly been bothering me that much.
Through the research that I've done it appears that it's likely that my Horizontal Output Transistor has failed. I'm going to build a discharge wand out of an old screwdriver and take the monitor out of the machine.
If I disconnect the chassis and take a look at the board myself I should easily be able to tell if the HOT is gone... all I have to do is test continuity on the middle pin of the hot. If there's continuity to ground then it's fried.
Replacing the hot should be cheap enough. I want to avoid costly measures of having to ship the entire thing over to the UK and back if it can be avoided... I don't have that kind of money. Ideally I'd just buy a new chassis and be done with it but they seem impossible to come by at this stage sadly.
Ohh also when I mentioned horizontal collapse the entire image did just kinda... collapse into one line.
I'd say it's just coincidence to be honest, these monitors are all OLD and have components in them that just give out at any stage. Horizontal collapse isn't an unusual issue on crts. See here - https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/blast-city-nanao-ms2931-potential-collapse-issue.429923/
Your best bet might be to get in touch with Grantspain/Gunblade, and arrange to ship the chassis to him for diagnosis and repair. Someone on here has gone through him recently, they might be able to advise.
So it looks like the CRT in my Sega Blast City just died. I'm kinda distrought and I have no idea what to do quite honestly.
I was working on the PC setup for the machine and one of the things I've been meaning to do for quite some time is rejig the firmware on my ATI card in the PC to lock it to 31Khz so that it won't cause any weird sync issues with the monitor when it's powering up. So I did that and it all seemed to work fine, although after doing so the resolution on the monitor was displaying a bit weird.
Not to worry, I reinstalled the ATI drivers and everything seemed to be fine. The CRT would flicker every now and then but I didn't too much of it but then the worst thing possible happened, I witnessed a horizontal collapse of the image and then the screen powered off. Now it won't power on at all and all I can hear is a clicking noise every time it tries to power up. I'm honestly close to tears here as it took me ages to be able to afford a machine like this and now... this.
This is all that happens when it powers up now, this constant clicking sound with nothing on the screen:
Anybody know what I can do to fix this? I'm so bloody upset right now I should have just left it alone. At least it was working with the Naomi setup that I had in there.
My latest repair/restore/upgrade thread for anyone interested, it's the Amstrad CPD464 Plus this time - https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058265693/amstrad-cpc464-plus-restoration-repair-super-plus-upgrade
For those doing the GameCube mod, or similar. This might be a neater solution than the official Raspberry Pi Pico. This one is USB C, has a reset as well as boot button and an addressable RGB LED if that tickles your fancy. I tested it this morning and it works just the same as the original Pico.
I'm not sure that I'm brave enough to try an FRAM replacement quite just yet... I'm still getting used to micro soldering and it took FOREVER to remove a surface mount resistor as part of the region mod.
The kapton tape did its job but I honestly though that I was still going to end up melting off other components with the heat gun.
I have a few fresh ML3032 batteries so I'll just make sure to power up the Saturn every now and then to keep them charged. :-)
I did have the ability to back up said saves to the action replay cart but now that I've overwritten that with Pseudo Saturn Kai I think I've lost that ability.
I’ve got a replacement PSU in my other JPN Saturn (and a Fenrir). The other one I want to be “original”!
Ah screw that just get a SaturnPSU and be done with it!
Speaking of Saturn stuff I managed to master the art of the swap disc trick earlier today and rewrote the firmware on my action replay cart to Pseudo Saturn Kai.
Now I can directly boot my 100% legitimately backed up games too!
You gotta do a FRAM mod next! Screw using a CR2032 for saves.
I need to recap one of my JPN Saturns as it needs to "warm up" and get reset before it'll actually do more than light the power LED.
Hopefully just the PSU as it's got those surface mount can style caps all over the shop and I'm out of practice there.
Well done Sir Vestek, its rewarding to see something working properly like that isn't it. I really like the switchless mod idea, my only gripe is the multicoloured led's to indicate region....I love keeping things aesthetically original, though they are the most obvious choice to indicate region.
Speaking of soldering... getting kinda good at it myself I think! Managed this first go with no errors. Switchless video / region mod from Consoles Unleashed over in The UK.
My soldering may not be the tidiest but it gets the job done.
Video demo here:
Took me about 2.5-3 hours total to build the main unit. It all works now, but I still need to build the optional DC/DC converter module to get some extra functionality and then on to doing a few of my own mods.
The button caps I designed and 3D printed make moving through the menus and options a little nicer and are less wobbly than the ones you can buy(I'll probably print a red and green one for the "Reset" and "OK" buttons). I still wish it had a clickable dial though.
You have to email him on the site and he'll give you the options. No kits available so he just has the PCB's and you have to order all the other components yourself(he has a very good BOM which makes it easy enough).
Total: €222
The Main PCB used to be cheaper, but the price of the ATmega has gone up a lot in the last year or so. You could save a few quid and get a cheaper ZIF socket as I went for the gold plated Aries one, which was €34 on its own. I had most of the required resistors, caps, LEDs and diodes in my own parts stock, but just ordered all the recommended parts as they were cheap anyway and were included on the saved shopping list for Reichelt.
Looks very handy, how much is the kit? Don't see any prices on the site for it and retrolemon prices for the pcbs are totally outrageous
So much soldering!
Has anyone else put together a Retro Chip Tester Pro? 240+ individual parts to solder on the boards, but at least the surface mounted ATmega2560 is already soldered.
It should look something like this when finished, although I'm hoping to put slightly better buttons on my one(really wish it used a rotary selector instead).
Sure, this is the one I got. It's made of plastic, so if you want a metal case you'll need to go for the older blue/grey metal version(that's what i had before this).
Mind posting the link to that UV Eraser that you got? Need to pick one up myself. Ordered one from AliExpress about two years ago and it never turned up. :-/
If anyone is looking for a tiny OLED for a project, I can recommend the below 64x32 0.49 inch from Ali. It looks blurry in the pic, but is pin sharp in person.
It's going in a weather station I'm building, but would work just as well in a tiny or hidden Gotek.
That's a 0.96 inch below it.
Yep Steve, fire him off an email and get on the list. Colours are black and grey apparently, I'd have liked the white version I think but hey ho. I'll go with whatever he has to hand, not fussed either way.
That'd be great Steve, I might grab one of those off you for something else, cheers dude.
