Blast City – Zap!

Another update on my wonderful adventures with the Blast City! 😀 😀

I ended up getting some repro artwork – mostly for the blast, but a few random bits and bobs

The repro blast cp artwork is ok, but not 100% perfect, it will do the job for my purposes

Another artwork I got made up was the little red decal on the bottom right hand side of the blast city – it’s the little touches that bring the cab back to life 🙂

Lastly, the one outstanding thing on the blast the I painted was the side decal, like the CP repro decal, it’s not 100%, but for the purpose of completion, it’s perfectly fine.

Outside of the Sega stickers behind the blast, the shmup blast city is now pretty much complete. I won’t be touching that any more – no more screen removal, screen rotating etc…. so I thought 😀 😀

Now onto where the fun begins 😀

I sent off the chassis for repair and came back nice and fresh – Joey’s exact words were “I think you will be happy with this one”. So of course I was pumped! New caps were of course installed which is always a good thing.

I decided to record the first power up and I’m glad I did as everything was captured haha

*may contain some offensive language – viewer discretion advised* 😀

As you see, I got a nice little zap and the monitor did not show any picture 🙁

 so back to square 1. When the OSD was pressed, there was also no image. When I turned the screen pot to 3/4 of the max I got a very feint image with raster lines visible and the image was washed out started to look grey. The neck glow is a nice bright orange.

I needed to confirm if the chassis was faulty or it was something else.

Remember the part where I said I never had to take off the shmup monitor out again… well of course I was wrong! 😀

I completed a number of tests to tr and determine where the fault was. My baseline is my vertical Blast as that’s working perfectly.

1. Wired the Horizontal monitor/chassis on a working Vertical Blast – still the same black, completely dark with image only visible when you increase the screen pot from 3/4 and above
2. Wired the Vertical monitor/chassis on the Horizontal Blast – works fine displays the image as normal
3. Swapped the Vertical chassis onto the Horizontal monitor, tested on the Vertical Blast – same symptoms, completely dark. Didn’t increase the screen pot as I didn’t want to screw up the settings on this chassis as it’s already configured and working
4. Swapped the Horizontal chassis onto the Vertical monitor, tested on the Vertical Blast – chassis works, it was extra bright screen pot due to turning it up on the other Horizontal monitor to get the raster lines

I was then led to this post on Arcade Otaku (https://forum.arcadeotaku.com/viewtopic.php?p=523900#p523900) so I inspected the R732 of both chassis

1. 2931 originally paired with A68KZN696X (labeled 2930 on the sticker – originally the “Tate)) has Orange, White, Gold, Gold = 3.9 Ohms and works fine on my Tate cab
2. 2931 paired with A68LBT696X (labeled 2931 on the sticker – originally the “Yoko”) has Brown, Black, Gold, Gold = 1 Ohm and is very dim on the Yoko cab.

At this point in time, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that my tube is shot and the absolute last thing I can do is to try and rejuvenate the tube. Fortunately, I might have a lead on someone that can lend me a rejuvenator and I’m hoping we have the right connections – will update once it happens.

Lastly the zap! When I first received the zap, I initially thought it was because the metal plate wasn’t earthed. I looked at the other blast and there was no earth connector on any part of the metal plate, so the only thing I could think of is the switch itself is no longer insulated or it’s broken for the AC line to get to me. I inspected the switch and this is what I found

Hit up Mouser to find the closest thing to the model number and what was a 10 dollar switch because a 60 dollar order because I refused to pay 24 dollars for shipping LOL

Brand new switch was just dropped off by the UPS man.

I’m hoping I can work something out with the rejuvenation this week, we’ll see how we go. However, I’m also hoping I might have a lead for a spare tube as a worst case scenario.