Troubleshooting guide

Cinematronics Vector Monitor Repair Guide v.1.0
Page 23 of 53
TUBE AND YOKE
Cinematronics utilized both a Sylvania 19VARP4 and an AMPEREX M50-102W picture tube in
it’s games. New replacement 19” Black & White tubes are available from Richardson Electronics
for about $115 each (www.rell.com).
There were two different yoke designs on the Cine monitors. The earlier design used on Space
Wars required an extra set of 1.2k resistors across the yoke windings noted as R122 and R222 on
the schematics. These resistors were placed there to compensate for non-linearity in the yoke. The
later yoke design required these resistors to NOT be there.
If someone in the past replaced the yoke/CRT assembly with one that is different than the one the
monitor board is configured for, you will not be able to line up the drawn vectors.
(yoke parts numbers ?? _______ )
If your image is too dim even when the brightness adjustment is all the way up then you most
likely have a bad picture tube, which should be replaced since it is going bad. For some reason,
there are a lot of Star Castles with dim tubes but never any other game. Even though Star Castle
(undoubtedly) got much more use than the other titles, poor initial tube quality, not on-time, is
generally the cause of this kind of tube failure so perhaps the Star Castle production run(s) used a
different (worse) tube supplier. Rick claims that this dimness in Star Castles was prevalent even
when the games first hit the arcades, which would also point to manufacturing defects in the tubes.
There are dim Star Castles that have an Amperex M50-102W tube, but bright Rip Offs that have a
Sylvania tube. Strangely enough, there are bright Armor Attacks that also have the Amperex tube
so it would seem that not all Amperex tubes go bad even though most (if not all) tubes that go bad
are Amperex.
Wondering what the big capacitors hanging off the monitor board do? They are there to help
protect against static discharges from the picture tube. The static was supposed to charge the caps
instead of blowing some DACs or whatever else might be sensitive to static electricity.
Cinematronics had a big problem with this and it is not clear how well these caps worked.
CRT (Neck) Pinout
Here is the complete pinout of both the Sylvania and Amperex neck/tube.
Pin 1 - Filament GND
Pin 2 - G1 30V
Pin 3 - G2 410V
Pin 4 - G3 300V
Pin 5 -
Pin 6 -
Pin 7 - K 94.5V
Pin 8 - Filament B+