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

[cowboygames]

You can start by looking for obvious stuff like a resistor that's got burn marks, a cap that doesn't have a nice flat top or obviously bad solder connections on the bottom of the board. You might get lucky with one of those, but if you can reroute those plugs to where you can futz with the differant controls to see what effect they have on the picture you'll make better progress towards figuring this out

[knagl]

Just a general warning since you said you've never worked with CRTs before: they can carry some extremely high voltage. Be careful not to touch anywhere inside the chassis or on the back of the monitor, even when it's disconnected.

[shortrackskater]

I did know that but THANK YOU for the concern! I was an aircraft VLF navigation tech a million years ago and learned on the job, but I did have some electronics in school. I remember my electronics 100 teacher in high school would always leave a HUGE charged capacitor in front of the class for any unsuspecting students to fiddle with. 
Of course, if that happened today...fired, lawsuit, jail time

[Neonkiss]

I did know that but THANK YOU for the concern! I was an aircraft VLF navigation tech a million years ago and learned on the job, but I did have some electronics in school. I remember my electronics 100 teacher in high school would always leave a HUGE charged capacitor in front of the class for any unsuspecting students to fiddle with.  
Of course, if that happened today...fired, lawsuit, jail time

Ya, In my high school electronics class we would charge big caps. Hold them by the can and throw it to your buddy....
Worked best by calling out their name first to get their attention and as soon as they turned around, chuck it to them. Natural instinct is to catch something coming at you.  

Today one would be expelled.

[cowboygames]

Where are you guys getting shocked touching a crt while it's on(or off)? Unless you're shoving your finger under the cap for the anode lead to the tube you should be pretty safe. Where the Fortune series machines not wired well?

[stayouttadabunker]

Where are you guys getting shocked touching a crt while it's on(or off)? Unless you're shoving your finger under the cap for the anode lead to the tube you should be pretty safe. Where the Fortune series machines not wired well?

You right cowboy...but when somebody for the first time plays with those things...
the 1st thing they do is stick a screwdriver under that big rubber thing! 


"Hey...what's under there?                         BOOM!


The screwdriver needs to be grounded with a lead
and clipped to the chassis with one of your hands in your pocket.....or else.

[cowboygames]

LOL, been there, done that, except it was a high voltage probe on a running tube and I'd knocked the ground off as I was reaching in to the anode lead. It's ticklish when you're just discharging a tube. It's a little more than that when the set is running Anyway, point is, you gotta pay attention to what you're doing when the back's off the set

[knagl]

Where are you guys getting shocked touching a crt while it's on(or off)?

There's a video on YouTube of a guy discharging a monitor by using a flyswatter covered in aluminum foil hitting the circuit board plugged into the neck of the tube -- lots of sparks until it finally loses all of its charge.  Not the way I'd recommend discharging a CRT.

While I know the risk of getting the shock of a lifetime is pretty small, especially on the newer CRTs that are self-discharging, I always treat them with a healthy amount of respect, and assume that they're holding a deadly charge until I've discharged them repeatedly with the grouded screwdriver method.

[shortrackskater]

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

Okay I've checked everything I could. Can't see any obvious part issues. I did use my little vacuum and just brushed and vacuumed the interior but the problem still is there. So, for Jim, here's a picture of my plug and I'll take your offer on borrowing your cable! Thank you.

[shortrackskater]

Got my extension cable from Jim...THANK YOU. Since I'm not a CRT tech, I just did a video of my tweaking and the results, which unFORTUNately didn't fix my Fortune One. Like my little play on the word? Sorry the video is shaky...I didn't have a way to prop it up anywhere. But you can clearly see what it's doing, or not doing I should say. Also that "wavey" dark bar isn't a problem. I think that's just something to do with the camera catching the way the CRT scans, if I'm saying that correctly.
Here it is. I hope there will be an answer. Again, I don't see anything obviously blown inside the chassis either. It all looks fairly clean.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/yrXm1LxkPqc&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/yrXm1LxkPqc&rel=0</a>

UPDATE: The cards ARE bigger again! I don't know why...maybe just the tweaking on the back. But I still have the missing video portion at the bottom and the horizontal "noise" at the top. I could almost live with it like this but still I know there's something not quite right. 

UPDATE AGAIN: I took the CRT back out again and fussed with the controls and with the brightness in the back. As you can see in the picture below, it doesn't look half bad!!! It's back to full size I think and I was able to just "black out" the lower area where there was no video and then adjust the colors to get rid of the bleed over.  I think this background was supposed to be blue (see reply#9 for blue picture) but when I make it blue, then the dead video area becomes visible. I think I like the black anyway...but as I said a few lines up...somethings not right.

[shortrackskater]

      Where did everybody go? 

[cowboygames]

Now that you've got it out where you can work on it, cross-referance the part number on the vertical output IC with the ECG number to get the readings for what the differant input and output voltages are suppose to be. Use a multimeter to then check them with the machine running. If the inputs are low then trace it back to the cap or resistor that's changed value. If the outputs are wrong, replace the vertical output

[shortrackskater]

cross-referance the part number on the vertical output IC with the ECG number to get the readings for what the differant input

How do I find the vertical output IC and what's an ECG number? What kind of voltage am I looking for? DC AC? I'm not a CRT tech...never worked on them before. I have a good multimeter so I can start looking once I know a little more on this. Thanks so far, though! Did you see my video?

[cowboygames]

If you google ECG you'll find they're a maker of electronic replacement parts and there'll be a cross-referance guide and chip diagrams on their site. Your vertical output, on that chassis, will be a 7 or 9 leg IC attached to a sheet metal heat sink probably close to the back of the chassis and the part number will be printed on it. Probably start with LA something. I've never held one of those so I'm going from what was common on chassis' from that time period. Anyway, when you get the part number off the chip you can then cross it on ECG's website and they'll provide diagram info with what each leg and what voltages should be there. Maybe someone will pop in here with the chip number and save a little time here

[shortrackskater]

A friend of mine just found me this:
http://arcarc.xmission.com/PDF_Monitors/Electrohome%20G07-902_Manual.pdf

[riverratmike]

interesting thread, did you ever get it fixed?

[shortrackskater]

Well not really. One of the members here loaned me a cable to do some adjustments on the monitor with it out of the unit but I was unable to find anyway to "spread up" the picture. I don't have enough electronics knowledge to fix it myself so I just adjusted best as possible. It works but I know the cards could be bigger! CV slots also suggested I just send in the monitor to have it rebuilt, which I'm still considering.