PE PLUS 13 INCH CRT MONITOR PROBLEM

[azvictorigt]

Good afternoon everyone.  Wanted to see if anyone can give me some advise on anything that I can do to enhance the older crt monitors used on the pe plus machines. I have a few monitors with faded color and burnt images (common).  Basic wear and tear for the most part. I tried degaussing the monitors. Slight improvement. Anything I can do to help the picture quality?  I am trying to salvage some of these monitors on my own.  Thanks

[stayouttadabunker]

13" inch ?!! My goodness gracious!
Pull those old golden-age suckers outta there and throw in some cheap LCD screens!
LCD screens at that size come from Japan at a dime a dozen...
and will look a lot better! 
Plus, you will have a lot of less gray hairs! 

[jay]

Bunko - the problem with doing this is that Its a CGA signal with everything inverted. Popping in a LCD will cure the burn in but until you adjust the signal...... I am still looking for this silver bullet myself.

In the mean time a cap kit and a replacement power tranisitor will improve picture and convergence but won't help with the burn in.

Centronix has some LCD dropin replacements for around $450.

[stayouttadabunker]

Good suggestion Jay,
A cap shouldn't be too hard.
The inversion of the CGA...no chinese or japanese board out for that?
I will look around tomorrow...
there MUST be SOMEthing out there that doesn't cost bloody $450 bucks!!
I'd even buy another PE and use the best tube
while saving the other for back up parts!  

[jay]

I don't think this part is Asian....

http://www.mikesarcade.com/cgi-bin/store.pl?sku=NININVAMP

but it might do the trick.

I haven't had the time to investigate this further.

[theDotster]

I'd even buy another PE and use the best tube
while saving the other for back up parts! 

Be careful of this trying this as well, as they appear to have changed the connector on the bottom of the monitor. I was going to swap them between my two, in fact I had put the better one in the other machine before I realised the plug wouldn't fit.

[azvictorigt]

Is it possible to interchange a igt 13 inch centronix touch screen monitor with the basic pe plus non touch screen monitor. I have quite a few of those. They are in good shape but the plug is from the back as apposed to the pe plus monitors connect on the bottom left hand side as you know.  Can I interchange these parts to make the pe plus monitors function better,?

[theDotster]

I don't think the gameking monitors, which I think you are refering to, are inverted like the PE+; so the same problem as the LCD monitors will exist.

If I'm wrong someone will correct me and we will both learn something :-)

[Foster]

If the PE monitors are true CGA signals and not analog a simple TTL inverter would do the trick.

[knagl]

Wanted to see if anyone can give me some advise on anything that I can do to enhance the older crt monitors used on the pe plus machines. I have a few monitors with faded color and burnt images (common).

It won't fix the burn, but a friend of mine purchased a "Tube Rejuvenator" device that hooks up to the back of the tube and does some magic -- it takes old, faded screens and really gives them new life.  He did the screen for my Game King which I didn't even think was bad, and I couldn't believe the difference.  I don't know where one would purchase such a device (he bought his from a friend in the industry), but if you can find one, they work!

(Edit: I did an eBay search for "tube rejuvenator" and found a couple of them in the $200 to $300 range -- if you have a lot of monitors to do, that'll pay for itself in no time.)

there MUST be SOMEthing out there that doesn't cost bloody $450 bucks!!

There is, but it's not in this country:

http://www.freewebs.com/ertech-gaming/productos.htm

Click on the square in the top row, second from the far left -- "DUPLICADORA VGA" and you'll see the board that was created to convert PE+ machine video to VGA (to use a standard VGA LCD monitor).  I've not been successful in contacting the company, though.