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Astro City Monitor replacement

Bluechen

Bluechen

Student
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Oct 28, 2021
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My Astro City runs perfectly, but the monitor has a lot of small scratches. You can't see them in action, but I'd like to switch to a scratch-free solution in the future.

Can i put a 29 inch TV Tube in the Astro and if yes how (i own 2 Phillips 29´ TVs), do i need an original Astro Tube and where will i find one with less scatches or are there any better /modern options ?

What options do I have?


Thanks
 

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This is a rabbit hole bruh.... Here are your options
  1. buff out the scratches with novus, this will most likely take off the antiglare coating. Ive done this before and I didnt like the result. I couldn't get the colors 100% after that although it did make the monitor brighter
  2. tube swap you basically need to take the yoke off your existing astro tube or buy one from ebay and replace the yoke on the tv. Then you'll need to add convergence strips and play with the rings to hopefully get that right. Results vary
  3. Harvest a tube from an old cabinet sometimes you can find a really good deal. your looking for any sega game from the 90's. house of the dead, daytona etc..

Even then the replacement monitor might still have scratches. Then there's the curvature of the tube. I would not swap a tube with scratches for a tube that has bezel gaps and doesn't fit right in an astro.
 
nem said:
Buffing out the scratches is the only sane option here.
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Ive done this before with my older cab and I didnt like the result. There were white / lighter spots in the glass after the polishing with novus. Soon or later all the tubes will die so we all need a proper solution.
 
That may be true but then our sons / daughters or grandchildren / granddaughters have the problem. I mean that the problem is not solved
 
The coating is not just antiglare but also has a tint, serving the same function smoked glass used to. You will have to completely recalibrate after removing it and you need to get it all off
 
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It's a glass sealed vacuum. I don't see why you couldn't have a working CRT 200 years from now.

Anyway, there's a very simple solution to your specific problem. Doing anything else is a futile endeavor or misses the whole point of owning an original arcade cab.

If I was local to you, I would trade you a scratch free tube for yours, but alas, I'm not.
 
nem said:
It's a glass sealed vacuum. I don't see why you couldn't have a working CRT 200 years from now.
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Yeah, the whole "CRTs are ticking time bombs that just die for no reason" meme needs to die
 
ill contact a glazier and a TV technician next week and ask if either of them can fix it.
 
nem said:
It's a glass sealed vacuum. I don't see why you couldn't have a working CRT 200 years from now.

Anyway, there's a very simple solution to your specific problem. Doing anything else is a futile endeavor or misses the whole point of owning an original arcade cab.

If I was local to you, I would trade you a scratch free tube for yours, but alas, I'm not.
Click to expand...

dos said:
Yeah, the whole "CRTs are ticking time bombs that just die for no reason" meme needs to die
Click to expand...
Ok so what's the truth I was under the impression that the cathode diminishes over time and eventually will render the tube dead
 
Ok, so if you have a tube that is working well  now in its "retirement" after 24/7 arcade use, and the colors are bright and it hasn't been abused, it will last a lifetime of home use, probably not even needing rejuvenation.

If you have one that has already been run into the ground, there's a good chance it can be rejuvenated and serve you well. Of course there will be some that are beyond that that just had too rough a life. But you shouldn't worry about your good working tube diminishing like that.
 
For information, the TV Thomson 28DG17E seems to match with Astro/NAC bezel.
 
Romano said:
For information, the TV Thomson 28DG17E seems to match with Astro/NAC bezel.
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Do you know if someone has performed a yoke swap as well? MS8 or MS9 chassis. I'm looking for information on this tube.
 
dos said:
The coating is not just antiglare but also has a tint
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It's not just tinted anti-glare, it's also anti-static. I contacted a specialist company about replacement anti-static adhesive plastics, and ye gods. Several hundred bucks Australian for the pleasure. Grim.
nem said:
It's a glass sealed vacuum. I don't see why you couldn't have a working CRT 200 years from now.
Click to expand...
Because the phosphors wear out and the guns wear out and the boards oxidize and carbonize and the flybacks die. But except for all the irreplaceable parts that wear out with use, sure, they'll last forever. ;) ;(
 
Of course, but there's a huge difference between the kind of use these cabs are getting at home versus what they were made to do.

I have an arcade cab at a location where it is running 24/7. In a year it racks up almost 9000 hours. The monitor is still as vibrant as ever, and since I swap the game every 6 months, no burn in either. How many hours are you putting into your cabs per year? A few hours a week is nothing.

Good quality tubes can do 100k+ hours.
 
nem said:
Good quality tubes can do 100k+ hours.
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The theoretical lifespan of a CRT isn't really the important consideration here. Yeah, agreed, under ideal circumstances it might last that long, but that is exceedingly unlikely to actually happen. We've all got monitors that haven't lasted that long. I've never, ever owned a TV that lasted that long. At 8 hours a day for 340 days a year, that's 36 years. For a whole host of reasons, the number of 36 year old CRTs out there right now is rapidly approaching zero.

I don't know anyone who's into this stuff and isn't acutely aware that their precious CRTs are one more powerup from death all the time. I have owned six in the last 2 years. Three still work. The NEC 21" VGA, widely considered the finest monitoer ever made when it came out, developed a weird horizontal interlacing issue for about 2 hours before it finally stopped working. My 14" PVM just went blank one day. My NEC 14" beauty from Japan decided not to do RGB one day.

Of the three that are left, I picked one PVM up after a full rebuild, one 29" Naomi unit works fine so far, and the other MS9 (in my other thread) has been in the shop -twice- this year because of age related failures.

100k is a lovely number but if you can find MTBF numbers for the whole monitor, it's more like 40k. If you believe this random guy on the internet the mean time to half brightness is 15k hours.

I love CRTs, man, but I am painfully aware that I'd better love 'em while I can because they won't last.
 
Well, I was talking about tubes, not electronics. Electronics won't last 100k hours.

35 years old now is from the late 80s. Working monitors from the late 80s are non-existent, really?

15k hours mean time to half brightness can't be right. Maybe if you run them at max brightness, but nobody does that.

I'll gift my CRTs to my grand children.

and they will throw them into a dump.
 
nem said:
Working monitors from the late 80s are non-existent, really?
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I said the numbers are 'rapidly approaching zero'. Which, I mean, they are. Your grandchildren have the popular idea. =/

nem said:
15k hours mean time to half brightness can't be right.
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Yeah it seemed very low to me too.

I lol'd at your spoiler. Damn near spat out my coffee. ^__^
 
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