Re: Star Wars 25 inch Amplifone issue

From: Rodger Boots <rlboots2_at_gmail.com>
Date: Fri Sep 27 2013 - 15:06:38 EDT

Isolation used to be done with an isolation transformer. These are getting
hard to find.

Do NOT recommend tapping on the neck or the "blow the short out"
techniques---not for heater-cathode shorts.

See EBay item 150546845743.
On Sep 27, 2013 1:43 PM, "Ken Sumrall" <k_lists@scrapheap.net> wrote:

> And Rodger guessed correctly. Sad face for me. :-(
>
> After probing around with a scope, and checking signals, it became clear
> something was going on in the tube. So we swapped the blue and green
> drive wires in the connector, and powered it back up. If the issue was
> with the electronics driving the tube, we expected the overall gree hue
> would become blue. And if the problem was in the tube, it would stay
> green. And it stayed green.
>
> After some research, we found this:
>
> http://www.repairfaq.org/**REPAIR/F_monfaqa.html#MONFAQA_**002<http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_monfaqa.html#MONFAQA_002>
>
> And it looks like our three choices are:
> 1. Tap the neck (gently) with the crt face down and try to dislodge the
> short.
>
> 2. Try blowing the short out (with a current pulse), but this risks
> blowing out the heater filament too. I have a Sencore CR-70 which I
> recently acquired, but I've not yet powered it on. And the manual says it
> doesn't clear heater-cathode shorts because it can blow out the filament
> too.
>
> 3. Remove the ground reference from the filament and float it.
>
> The last option sounds intriguing. Does anyone think this is a bad idea?
> Do I need to worry about improving insulation on the heater winding or
> wires to the CRT? IIRC, the cathodes are only about 180 volts, so I think
> the insulation on the wires will be sufficient. Will the floated voltage
> on the wires affect other coils in the flyback? If so, we could create a
> separate power supply for the heater.
>
> Comments? Suggestions?
>
> ___
> Ken
>
>
> Rodger Boots wrote:
>
>> Heater-cathode short in CRT green gun? Don't suppose you have a CRT
>> tester?
>>
>> On Sep 11, 2013 6:10 PM, "Ken Sumrall" <k_lists@scrapheap.net <mailto:
>> k_lists@scrapheap.net>**> wrote:
>>
>> The monitor on our Star Wars sit down machine at work is having
>> issues. It started with an intermittent issue where the screen
>> would suddenly turn green, and it was very bright and all the
>> retrace lines were showing, and all the lines were out of focus.
>> Smacking the cabinet would sometimes bring back a good picture.
>> Then we also lost vertical deflection, so we opened it up to take a
>> look.
>>
>> The deflection issue was easy to fix. We replaced a few
>> transistors, and a fuse, and it was working again. The other issue
>> we're still struggling with, in fact it's much worse, and is mostly
>> in the bad state, with occasional flickers of it working correctly.
>>
>> We initially thought it was a bad connection in the CRT socket, as
>> it seemed to change as I was poking the socket with a wooden stick.
>> So I replaced the CRT socket harness with a spare one I had. That
>> didn't work. So poked some more, and started to think there was a
>> loose connection in the focus block. But then poking further didn't
>> do anything.
>>
>> So, we started to suspect that something is just randomly working
>> for short moments, and whatever I was poking when that happened made
>> me think that was the issue.
>>
>> We are now wondering if maybe the green drive transistor is shorted
>> on? That would explain everything looking green, and the retrace
>> lines, and the brightness. Would that also explain the poor focus?
>>
>> Any other suggestions?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> ___
>> Ken
>> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
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Received on Fri Sep 27 15:06:40 2013

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