So my previous issue with one of the monitors has returned. It went away for a while after I grounded the power cable connected to the back of this monitor but now it’s back exactly like it was before and I have no clue what to do now. DVI and VGA cables test fine on my other equipment. Any ideas? Feels like I’m missing something obvious.
Here’s a couple of pics. one of the monitor by itself and another with the same image split off to the other good monitor. This is the DVI image but the same exact symptoms when using VGA.
Thankfully no bullshit glue on my cabs. The bezel and everything else came off pretty easily. Aside from the other issues, I must be lucky I guess.
I may have isolated the problem to the monitor itself tho. I hooked up one of my Asus “Evo” monitors to the same cab using the same wiring (power feed from cab’s power supply, same DVI and VGA feed) and it’s perfect now. Image looks good, no flickering, no blinking. So I guess it’s just a matter of hunting down a good replacement 32" monitor going forward. I did a quick search for the Sharp model you had in one of your photos but no dice yet on a supplier.
If I end up replacing the monitor with some other brand, I’m assuming the OSD control will be different. If getting to the OSD controls will not be possible through the center panel of the cab, I’m thinking I might need an easier way to access the monitor itself. Do you think the monitor enclosure can support a hinge-type of setup? I’m really not trying to get to the monitor by digging behind the cab and undoing a ton of screws like how it is now.
I imagine you would need to pull the bezel off the new monitor to fit it in the old bezel. As for OSD functionality on the PCB that is provided… you’re going to lose that too. I imagine you’ll need to mod the front of the bezel so the IR sensor is poking out of it. You would need to figure out how to configure the monitor so that it powers on when the power switch is flipped as well.
Decided to switch both cabs to Asus 23" monitors for now, at least until I can find suitable replacements. They do turn on with the cab power switch - just needed to plug the power cable that went to the old monitors into these and it’s all good.
I did end up hooking in a CGA/RGB to VGA board specifically for PS2 support and I’m pretty happy with the result. Image looks good to me and no noticeable lag from what I can tell. Eventually will need to hack into the JAMMA harness and pull the video signal so I can run some boards again on this thing. Guess I’ll need to eventually also do the controls again too.
Aside from the aesthetics of having smaller displays, I’m pretty happy for now since the whole thing finally functions for me. Might end up going with whatever is best for a 32" display, monitor enclosure be damned. I’m more concerned with functionality at this point than what looks good. Although I’d love to figure out how to setup 4x3 instead of 16x9 for older games on the Asus monitors…
