/vr/ - Retro Games

heres some "failure notes" for CRT tv:

-pic related is the schematic of the "horizontal drive" this zone is the most prone to failure, theres two specific components with high-ish fail rate the horizontal transistor (Q4012) and the flyback transformer (T402)

-the power supply is another place i've seen simple malfuntions like bad diode, bad power transistor/regulator , bad main power capacitor, all this components are easy to find and cheap.

-the CRT itself is NOT prone to faliure. the main type of wear is the reduction of "emission" (electron emission from the cathode) but I have never seen a full "weared out" CRT tv , what I have seen is oscilloscope CRT with very low emission but that's because it was abused meaning usage at maximum brightness that can even left a permanent image on the screen (kinda like a permanent shadow)

- the best way to protect the emission life and emission characteristics of your CRT is to NOT use too much brightness. i have seen a lot of arcade cabinets with too much brightness (because people percive this as "better" picture quality, this "dirty" trick is still used in stores even for LCD and other modern screens) the way I set brightness is at night in total darkness, I look carefully at the black reproduction, it should be black and not grey-ish this would mean it's too bright. color saturation will depent on each case I don't have a recomendation other than the red color should be well difine you will see it "splash" when its too saturated.

-failure of the filament in my opinion is not a big problem because the voltage supply does a " soft start" of the filament and high voltage (it depends on the turn on time of the horizontal transistor) the filament doesn't see an inrush of current at start up.

cont...