Hello everyone,
I'm new to the forum and I'm hoping to find some help. I have tried other places without any luck.. Some background about myself that may help anyone willing to help me. I would consider myself a beginner when it comes to electronic fault finding. I can solder and have a digital voltmeter. Unfortunately I do not own an oscilloscope (which will probably be an issue for troubleshooting) and I have never used one before. I am a beginner when it comes to reading schematics. I know the basics switches, diodes, capacitors, resistors etc. I have fixed other retro game consoles but it usually simple things like replacing capacitors or fixing broken traces. Now on to the problem. I purchased a used Vectrex a few weeks ago. When I received it the Vectrex was working properly and I was really enjoying playing Mine Storm. One day I went to play a game and the display did not come on. The machine booted up and the game began to play but no display. The controller inputs worked and you can hear the game playing just no display. There is not even a white dot on the screen that I have read about in a lot of other forums. I started doing some simple voltage reading around the power board and on the logic board and everything looked correct but being a beginner I could have over looked something. There is a feint glow on the neck of the monitor and when you discharge the monitor there is a blue spark so I believe it is receiving high voltage. I ordered a replacement capacitor kit from console 5 and replaced all of them over the past couple days. While replacing the power board caps I discovered capacitor C513 had been leaking and badly corroded the negative trace. I cleaned the corrosion and continuity between it and T503 on the schematics was restored. I thought I had found the problem. I finished changing out the rest of the capacitors and reassembled the Vectrex. when I turned the machine on nothing had changed. I still had no display and the game continued to play through the speakers. At least I didn't make it worse! I did not replace the styrene capacitors but I have replacements on the way. I'm hoping some one see's this post with more knowledge then myself that would be willing to help a beginner out. If you made it this far thank you for reading my post.
I'm new to the forum and I'm hoping to find some help. I have tried other places without any luck.. Some background about myself that may help anyone willing to help me. I would consider myself a beginner when it comes to electronic fault finding. I can solder and have a digital voltmeter. Unfortunately I do not own an oscilloscope (which will probably be an issue for troubleshooting) and I have never used one before. I am a beginner when it comes to reading schematics. I know the basics switches, diodes, capacitors, resistors etc. I have fixed other retro game consoles but it usually simple things like replacing capacitors or fixing broken traces. Now on to the problem. I purchased a used Vectrex a few weeks ago. When I received it the Vectrex was working properly and I was really enjoying playing Mine Storm. One day I went to play a game and the display did not come on. The machine booted up and the game began to play but no display. The controller inputs worked and you can hear the game playing just no display. There is not even a white dot on the screen that I have read about in a lot of other forums. I started doing some simple voltage reading around the power board and on the logic board and everything looked correct but being a beginner I could have over looked something. There is a feint glow on the neck of the monitor and when you discharge the monitor there is a blue spark so I believe it is receiving high voltage. I ordered a replacement capacitor kit from console 5 and replaced all of them over the past couple days. While replacing the power board caps I discovered capacitor C513 had been leaking and badly corroded the negative trace. I cleaned the corrosion and continuity between it and T503 on the schematics was restored. I thought I had found the problem. I finished changing out the rest of the capacitors and reassembled the Vectrex. when I turned the machine on nothing had changed. I still had no display and the game continued to play through the speakers. At least I didn't make it worse! I did not replace the styrene capacitors but I have replacements on the way. I'm hoping some one see's this post with more knowledge then myself that would be willing to help a beginner out. If you made it this far thank you for reading my post.
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