It's been 3 years since Johns last video. Everything o.k. with John? Did he just get burned out? Any possibility of new videos???

Well, I never said how I got it fixed. I found a local guy that knows how to work on this thing. As a matter of fact he does arcade games, security cameras, and hydraulic repair (hey ohms law works for hydraulics too). He fixed my monitor and then my church had a man lift that needed repair. I asked him to work on it with me and between the two of us we fixed it. He donated his time and only charged the church for the parts. I got to be friends with him and I do my best to learn from him.

On to the next game.

I tried to rebuild this monitor myself. It's the second monitor I've tried to tackle. The first was a WG 4900 in my Ms Pacman and other than the red tones are a little week (tube is just shot) it came out great and works well. So this time was my Space Invaders black and white monitor WG 19V1001. It was having a little trouble with the image fading and it was starting to get some screen curl. Here's what I did...….

I replaced the caps on the deflection board, and the large cap can on the chassis (4 caps in the large can). The monitor ran for about 5 to 10 minutes with a scrambled rolling image. I started to do the set up to adjust all the pots on the deflection board, first up was the B+. Measured at 66 volts, it's supposed to be 73. I tweaked the voltage pot the smallest amount I could and one of the replacements for the can capacitor (it was either cap B or cap C) exploded. I took it back apart and found that the top of the cap was blown open and one of the resistors under the chassis was black in color. Yep I did it good. So here's the question. I really don't want to give up on my Space Invaders game and this has obviously gone beyond my ability. Does anyone know someone who knows how to work on a WG 19v1001 black and white monitor and who would be willing to tackle my mistake? So far the few arcade repair shops near me have said that it's too old and they no longer work on them. Seriously I need help.

So I replaced the caps on the deflection board, and the large cap can on the chassis (4 caps in the large can). The monitor ran for about 5 to 10 minutes with a scrambled rolling image. I started to do the set up to adjust all the pots on the deflection board, first up was the B+. Measured at 66 volts, it's supposed to be 73. I tweaked the voltage pot the smallest amount I could and one of the replacements for the can capacitor (it was either cap B or cap C) exploded. I took it back apart and found that the top of the cap was blown open and one of the resistors under the chassis was black in color. Yep I did it good. So here's the question. I really don't want to give up on my Space Invaders game and this has obviously gone beyond my ability. Does anyone know someone who knows how to work on a WG 19v1001 black and white monitor and who would be willing to tackle my mistake? So far the few arcade repair shops near me have said that it's too old and they no longer work on them. Seriously I need help.

I'm sure John will post video's when he's ready. He's got a life like the rest of us and he needs to do what he needs to do.

Although I'm craving a new video too. Just saying.... 

Had a few minutes to tinker with it today so I looked over the schematics and found two good test points to measure B+ at. B+ was 67.5 volts. The manual say it should be 73 volts. However the game ran for over 1 1/2 hours today without a glitch. I "could" adjust the B+ but I don't want to until I can measure it while the monitor is acting up, so for the next few days I'm going to turn it on when I get up in the morning and let it run until it acts up or I have to leave for work. If I can't get it to act up then I'm going to pull the board and install the two cap kits I bought for it (main board and power supply section) and touch up ever single solder joint then reinstall it and set B+ to 73 volts and then let this thing run everyday until I'm convinced that it's actually fixed.

Thanks for the suggestion John, it at least got me to start looking into this. I'll keep you posted.

No not yet. I have the manual for it and schematics. I'll see if I can figure out how to check it. Thanks John.

Any chance that there might be a flow chart for a Wells Gardner 19V1001? I'm having fits trying to get a Space Invaders back up and going. The video on the screen slowly fades away until you can't see the picture. I've ordered a cap kit but I have a hunch that there's another problem.

And the video issue is back. I think it's just time for a full monitor rebuild and replace the pins for the video signal where they plug into the monitor.

On the plus side I did find time to fiddle with this game a little and I fixed all but one of the non working sounds. The last one is a little beyond my skill set so i'm going to hire it out.

So I fixed the video issue. I found the anode wire was not fully inserted into the fly back. The video looks great now. It’s missing the invader hit sound. That gets fixed next and then I’m going to try to find some LEDs that spread the light like an incandescent bulb and then I’m calling this thing done.

Got the board back, they played it for 14 hours without a glitch. So I guess I need to look into the monitor and the wires that transfer the video signal.

Thanks Hgloth. I already pitched the other power supply but I'll make sure to look for that in the future.

Well.....


It didn't last long. I installed the Braze kit and it didn't work. Called "highscoresave.com" and talked to the gentleman that runs the place. He thought that I had a bad kit and so he swapped it with me. So I installed the new kit. It worked great, except that after less than 5 minutes the video signal fads away and I get a blank screen, game plays blind. So just to make sure I removed the Braze kit and it does the same thing. I turned up the brightness on the screen and I can wash out the screen so I don't think it's the monitor. I call the guy that fixes my boards and he had me drop the game board off with him to look at. At the moment he has the board and I'm waiting to hear from him. Damn so close....

Yay! It's alive! Got my game board back today and the tech that I hired also brought a new switching power supply with him. We installed the game board and new power supply and BINGO, it's working again.

So what had happened is that the power supply that I got from Arcade Shop was faulty, it was putting out over 30 volts on the 12 volt line. BZZZT! The timer chip that I had mentioned before and one capacitor basically acted like a fuse and stopped anything else from being damaged. Still....

Also before I got this repair tech involved, I had replace the chips on the board that control the "thump, thump" sound and the "ufo" sound. I was never able to test them due to the power supply issues. When we turned it on today all of it worked. So even the repairs that I had made were working.

At any rate I'm not saying anything bad about Arcade Shop. I'm sure when all this first happened, if I had figured out that the power supply was bad they would have stood behind their product, I just didn't know any better and I'm pretty sure that by now I'm well beyond any warranty period so I'm just going to chalk this up to experience.

Next up rebuild the control panel and maybe a Braze kit.

Still looking for LED's that look like normal light bulbs for it...

Wow talking about digging up old threads....

So here's an update.

If you look at what I had said earlier in this thread I had purchased a switching power supply with adaptor for Space Invaders from Arcade Shop. It didn't work, it just went into shut down which indicated a short on the game board. I called Arcade Shop and they told me that it was a short on the game board and not the power supply. So whenever I had time I searched and searched for a short on the board. To be honest I knew it was beyond my ability to find the short but I tried it and....... I didn't find it.

I hired the job out to a local shop that's right around the corner from me, called Big Toys. They sent their tech out, he looked at what I had done and did a little diagnostic work at my house and found that they new power supply was totally screwed up. When I checked the voltages they weren't bad but he used a simple light bulb to load the power supply and the 12 volts jumped up above 12 volts. After a brief conversation him and I both agreed that he should take the new power supply (from Arcade Shop) and the original power supply along with the game board back to his shop where he has all his diagnostic equipment. Today I got a call from him to give me an update on the progress. Not only was the new power supply screwed up it was outputting more than 30 volts on the 12 volt supply when he used his equipment to put load on it the right way. He was hoping that it didn't hurt anything because it went into shutdown so quickly (when I turned it on, installed in my game). Well first he found the short, bad capacitor on the 5 volt side of the board (nothing to do with the 12 volts being too high), AND he then checked the 12 volt side of the board. Well there is a clock chip that it fried and he's looking for one. I don't know the number of the chip but he said he was going to look over some old Midway boards to find one. Sounds like it might be a chip that's no longer made. I might call him back and ask for the number so I can look for one too. So that's where it's at. Sucks but at least it will live again. I'll leave another update when I get one.

Flyback?