Honey I shrunk the cards! Well not me, the machine did...

[shortrackskater]

I have a strange problem. After moving my IGT Fortune 1 from one side of the room to the other (carefully...just sliding the stand, no jiggling whatsoever) the cards have become "shrunken," They are still perfectly readable and the machine works fine but they got smaller. The only other thing I did notice was a slight flicker when I first powered it up after moving it. At that moment the cards got smaller! I've taken two pictures. One of the machine with shrunken cards, and the other, powered off. The powered off shot shows the burn in of the actual card size so the difference can be seen. Does anyone have an idea what I can fiddle with the get my card size back. I did do a quick check to make sure the chips were all seated correctly but that's all I've done so far

[cowboygames]

Look at the CRT chassis and see if it has a vertical size adjustment knob on the board. Picture looks like the raster's been pinched down a bit

[4 Deuces]

Take extra precaution when turning those little knobs!  Turn very slowly and cautiously.  They're very sensitive, especially if the machine is a little older.  They can easily break their contacts and then you're stuck with the shrinking until you can fix the knob contact.  I found out the hard way.  I found that particular change to be the most sensitive.

Good luck!

[shortrackskater]

Thanks cowboygames and Vegas Local!! I will get to this tomorrow and report back.

[shortrackskater]

I can't seem to find the control! My IGT Fortune One manual says it's to the right of all the controls but when I pull out the CRT, all I see are

Vert Hold - VertLR - Horz Height - Horz Freq

There's nothing else to the right. To the far right an up are two more controls. One is FOCUS the other says SCREEN
The other problem is that I can't reach back to any controls when it's powered up. I can see the RGB controls on the yoke but I can't find any Vert size or raster, if that's the same term. When I removed the CRT I did do a gentle tap with a wooden handle on each pot just to see if that affected anything but nothing happened.

[cowboygames]

I've never seen that particular chassis before. Can you take a close up picture of the area where the contorls are? You may have a cap or resistor in vertical circuit going to crap on you also

[shortrackskater]

Here you go!

[shortrackskater]

The whole thing.

[cowboygames]

Down on the main chassis should be small pots for horiz and vert size control. Generally I would look for them along the rear edge of the board, but no guarantees on that. Best I can tell you is they SHOULD be labeled on the board next to the contorol. Those black controls on the back of the board near the flyback are for controlling focus and drive from the flyback, no vertical adjustments there

[shortrackskater]

I looked everywhere and couldn't see anything! There is a small board on top of the CRT, which can be adjusted with the power on. The three seem to control brightness, contrast and tint. However, when I change the background to blue, something seems wrong. I did find two small pots next to those other ones but they also adjusted vert hold and horz hold. I think I better do a shot of what I'm seeing with the blue background and that should explain it better. PLEASE STAND BY

UPDATE: I just realized, when I bring up the blue (which I think is the default background), it shows the true vertical height. When it was black, it gave the illusion that it was full screen when it was, in fact, "squished." So I think I'm still stuck with finding vert height somewhere. I'll post the picture anyway.

[cowboygames]

Actually, those retrace lines at the top of the screen indicate a probable capacitor issue in the vertical circuit. Probably time to see if someone has a schematic they'll send you and start diagnosing that circuit.

[shortrackskater]

I wonder if I should just replace all the electrolytic caps on the CRT? There's a link here with some troubleshooting help for this slot. I could just start with replacing the caps that are correlated to video issues.  Any thoughts?
http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?topic=255.0

I just realized that link shows mpu board issues... could this problem be there or is it more likely to be on the CRT?

[knagl]

It's a CRT issue for sure. What happens when you adjust the "Horiz Height" adjustment you mentioned earlier in the thread?

[shortrackskater]

The problem is that I can't reach the pot with the CRT in position. I can pull it out only a little and am limited to the length of the cable. I guess I could just mark it, and tweak it, then try the other way. I'll try that tomorrow. Thank you.

[cowboygames]

There's no such thing as horiz height on a crt. That's a vertical problem on the crt chassis. On a picture tube, vert adjusts the top to bottom size and horiz spreads the picture out side to side

[knagl]

I've never heard of it either, but I'm going off of what he posted in Reply #4 above.

[cowboygames]

I guess when I read that I just assumed he meant Horiz Size as that was commonplace on the older boards. The only time they'd label it Horiz Height, I would assume, would be if they were mounting the CRT sideways for some reason like on the commercial video games before they made the tubes oriented that way.

[Jim]

If you enlarge the picture in reply#7, you will see three pots, one white plastic adjustment knob, two are metal. to the left of the 115vac connector plug.   could these be the ones you are searching for???


Jim

[shortrackskater]

Those pots adjust the following:
Vert Hold - VertLR - Horz Height - Horz Freq
The problem is that I can't adjust anything with the CRT plugged in to see which one does what. I've never worked on a CRT before either.
Thank you though, everyone, so far.

[Jim]

the only wat to accomplish that is to make a cheater cord.  just duplicate the pinouts ,basically making an extension cable.

Jim

[shortrackskater]

I should invent a little "grabber" - a shielded, bendable cable with a shaft and attachments fort tweaking different kinds of potentiometers. I could make a fortune!

[Jim]

I may have one, let me check tonight. I don't have a machine in the shop, so tell me how many pins are in the plug.

If I have one ,you are welcome to borrow it to get your  monitor squared away.

Jim

[shortrackskater]

Thanks Jim!
I'm not home until late afternoon but I'll let you know. Earlier in this thread I mentioned electrolytic caps...should I replace those? I thought after 20 years + they start to go, although the general consensus I get here is to wait until I know it's a particular cap...not sure what to do.

[cowboygames]

Can you diconnect the monitor plugs from the receiver try inside the machine to get enough lengh to work on it? As far as caps, yes, you can shotgun the caps on the board, but until you know for sure it's a cap problem it may not do anything but put new caps on the board. The problem could be a resistor, diode or the vertical output itself so caps may not be the golden key to fixing it.

Or it could be just a crappy connection on a vertical size control potentiometer. Just saying you can't solve the problem till you know what's causing it

[shortrackskater]

I can only slide the CRT about five inches back on the track before I run out of cable length but I might be able to reroute the plug below the main unit and troubleshoot, if I can prop the CRT on something. I'm not home though so I'll have to try all this tonight. I hope I'm understanding what you said! Thanks again everyone. I do have a pdf of my manual. I could post it here if anyone needs to see it.