Now that it's here I am kind of wondering what the hell to do with it - bit of an impulse purchase shall we say. Earlier tonight I was mulling over what on earth I could do. If I get rid of the 50" screen section I could always attach a couple of monitors to the seated part.
It would definitely be cool to have a large-scale cab to use for special occasions. I hope you can figure out some adjustments, it would be a shame to have stuff go to waste! On the other hand, I'm sure you'll pick the best route for yourself. When you say it's out of focus, do you mean the color convergence? Is there a chance of anothe control board that might have pots - have you torn down the outside of the PTV in case there's some other goodies on another side? Can you figure out who actually manufactured the display? Perhaps Mitsubishi?
Well, the idea was to put it out on hire at a local games place in town, but I can't in all honesty hand them anything that I'd not be 100% satisfied to use myself. There are a series of 6 pots you can turn to make adjustments at the back of the large facia panel, however you get one color right and the others drift, or you manage to get the focus right and it either drifts, or you step back and think 'shit, that's awful'. Hellishly difficult to get a reasonable PTV image! So, at the moment I am tracking several 42" Plasma screens on eBay. I also know a guy down the road from me who repairs plasma units and sells spare parts, so I've told him I need a really cheap Plasma. The current thinking is to ditch PTV, pull the Toshiba PTV out of the unit and replace it with a smaller, but far superior screen. LCD is out of the question at the moment due to price. I'm not giving up on the Naomi 50 just yet, however it's the last PTV equipped kit I am every going to purchase, it's just so hard to deal with and no amount of tinkering makes the blind bit of really significant difference. The screen burn is awful, plus even at it's sharpest thus far it's still blurry. My son and I challenged one another to Zero Gunner 2 tonight and although it was playable, I'm glad I hadn't put any money into the unit!
Ah, Toshiba then, eh? No cross-referencing? That sucks that it doesn't want to stick into proper adjustment! Sounds like it's just too far gone to be whipped back into shape. Best of luck. Will it be weird to have a widescreen (I assume all Plasmas are) display on a 4:3 (or whatever) platform? [edit, I guess it doesn't have to play only naomi games, but still] I assume you mean that you'll be mounting it inside the old cab, and perhaps fabricating a surround/facia to make it look pretty?
I think this might be the sort of thing where there is a special remote that is used to set up the convergence/other aspects of the picture. My CRT front projector has about a zillion different setup menus...which can only be accessed with a special remote. 6 Pots? That's all there is? If it's analog convergence settings...and it is a true 3 tube CRT projector, theres probably going to be a lot more than 6 of them hidden somewhere. Also of note, I've heard of people improving picture on projection monitors by doing capacitor replacement in them. This is just some anecdote I read online somewhere though...I think on neo-geo.com. You're obviously not going to find a cap kit for one...but you seem technically inclined enough to figure it out. Edit: http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=191185&highlight=projection Thats the thread I was thinking of. Might be worth fiddling around with. Nothing to lose, really. Note: The pictures in that thread (the second set) show an excellent example of what a monitor with poor convergence looks like.
Thanks for digging that information out, I appreciate it. I've yet to find an IR for the screen, plus I can't find any mention of a remote for the screen, but I did find a small 'COM' port on the front and the very top of the unit that actually looks like a USB port (one standard), the other the square type normally found on the rear of things like printers and the like (I am sure there is a more technical name for them). Sadly, the PTV came with no instructions or service manual, plus Sega Service doesn't have anything online about them. I've noticed a few other PTV units Sega dealt with did indeed have a remote control, but it's not a simple swap over plus getting hold of another screen wouldn't be cost effective. If I take the entire cab completely apart then perhaps there are others on the main PCB - this is a small black box attached to the front (albeit hidden behind a panel). These are the user settings I guess. Any service settings are within the actual unit. I suspect the convergence is off ever so slightly. If I step back and watch the unit boot up, I can see a blue outline around black lettering and no adjusting it with those 6 pots gets rid of that. It's nowhere near as profound as the images posted on the site you have linked to. However, the main issue seems to be lack of definition. I really am happy to get the guts out of everything else, it's just monitors I hate, hate, hate! It's an area you really need to have more knowledge about to coax the best out of them. The local TV repair guy has given me tonnes of information and advice, which is fine to a point. This is a whole different ball game.
I second tearing it down a little more. Maybe there's some more pots and a field of caps with some popped ones? In my experience, when the convergence is off a little bit, everything looks blurry and crappy. When it's off any more ("a lot") is when you see the actual haze of one of the colors. Does the blue literally surround blacks or is it just in one direction, say to the left or right or diagonal?
It varies actually, which makes pin pointing it down rather difficult. I've gone into test mode on the Naomi and had a good look at the screen test modes. The white lines are perfectly horizontal / vertical and no ghosts. The color bars are actually pretty good too, perhaps a little less well defined than you'd hope, but converging properly. When you initially boot up the Naomi the screen goes white as the Naomi boot image comes up. Then within fractions of a second it goes a blue. So the original white is now a light blue. When you get a perfectly still screen with say, perhaps black text on a varied background like a graphic or whatever, then the black lettering has a blue background to one side (right), which is not present on CRT. Before I go off and buy a cheap plasma I decided to try it out on my LCD. It's perfectly fine. and I discovered it is the perfect set up for Rick Wakeman!
If its happy enough on a LCD why not just keep the cab and set it up with a cheap 4:3 projector and a cheap screen?
Mainly because I am looking for something in-built that can be easily maintained when out on hire, which will look good. That, and the fact the guy along the road seems to think he can get me a good second-hand panel for roughly £150.00 without any problem.
Finally picked up a 40" Samsung 403T LCD. I also, with some assistance from a mate, cut new holes for extra buttons (I did 1 CP and he did the other). Still to fit screen, but it tested out ok! And how the CP looked when it arrived.
Again thanks to a mate of mine (DrDread), who is giving me a hand changing this unit. He spent much of the afternoon using magic foam pads & and an abrasive marker pen to erase the cigarette burns on the CP and surrounding plastic. I was amazed at the result and can highly recommend it. Tomorrow I'll post details of the actual pen as it is too late now for me to meander down to the garage. Novus will apparently smooth the rest of the marks down. Compare the CP above with the CP below and you'll notice the marks have pretty much gone! For £15 we have ordered up a replacement glass plate in smoked grey finish. Hopefully it'll look good once it arrives. I spent the afternoon gutting & preparing the actual screen cabinet, removing all the guts and old projector parts. A quick trip to B&Q (DIY Store) later and we both worked on the new monitor surround. First getting a sheet of MDF to fit the cabinet, cutting channels down the side for the bezel, then measuring up the exact position of the LCD screen. This is the first rough cut of the new surround place on top of the LCD to ensure it was cut to the correct dimensions. We calculated that we were less than 1mm out.
I'd just like to say a massive thanks to my mate Bernie (DrDread) for having committed 3 days of his time off to giving me such invaluable assistance on converting this cabinet. Simply it was way to big (physical dimensions) to work on my own. It really has been a team effort as we discussed various ways to proceed, took on various tasks and thankfully Bernie talked me out of not moving the bezel forward etc. We will freely admit, our joinery skills are not amazing, but still, we both stood back when we finished the cabinet at midnight last night (yep, like a pair of exhausted nutters!) and felt it had gone well. The bezel was one of the more complicate sections of the unit. On Bernie's advice the bezel should be completely flush with the front of the unit, I was going to recess it slightly, but upon reflection I think Bernie was right. My main concern was the weight of the 40" LCD tipping the cab forward, but as it turns out, although we do have to add a bit of ballast to the rear of the unit, it's pretty well balanced. Once we'd created the "side keys" for the bezel and painted the front (4 coats and lots of sanding between coats - makes all the difference), we set about building an internal 'shelf' to take the weight and strength the cabinet laterally. We also wanted to leave the shelf with a gap to the rear for the power cable and VGA, plus for air flow. The LCD is specifically designed to be low consumption and also generates less heat than most LCD panels. Given the heat that 3 x projector tubes can create there is clearly sufficient airflow. We also took our time to ensure that we didn't have to put a single screw through the exterior of the cabinet and thus damage the facia or artwork. We eventually had to put 3 x screw holes through the top, but nobody would see them. They were countersunk and hidden under the marquee holder anyway. I insisted on a safety screen, which again I thank my wife for cutting as we battered on with the woodwork (she is the acrylic queen). So after several hours of adjusting and readjusting we had the cabinet just how we wanted it. We then fitted the Samsung LCD into the cabinet, which was the hardest part of all. We needed to ensure it was straight, not overlapping and we also had the ON and IR lights to match up with 2 pre-drilled holes on the front bezel. We also wanted to ensure that if we change the screen in the future we can easily adapt the existing system. The Samsung was a professional display panel rather than a TV and devoid of VESA mountings so we had to fabricate our own mounting using box steel. With it being a pro panel it handles 4:3 much better, powers up automatically and has a million input and outputs, but no TV tuner so sadly if people get bored with Zero Gunner 2 they are not going to get Coronation Street instead. By midnight we were both exhausted and had only a few minutes to sit back and take in the scene, but frankly we are both happy with the result. In future, if we worked on another Naomi 50 we'd know the pitfalls and be able to construct something quicker, but for 3 days hard work I think it's turned out better than expected and not the homemade DIY monster that it could have turned into. One site I visit has a 'home made arcade cabinet disasters' thread and I pray this doesn't turn up on it! OH: The viewable screen is huge! The bezel is completely flat and hides all of the panel except the screen. Anything else on the screen is a reflection, including Bernie and me at midnight looking shattered! We did a lot of measuring up during the build and our only mistake was a 1mm error on one section of the bezel, which unless you are really looking, with a measuring tape and removed the safety screen, I really doubt you'd spot!
