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canoldenew

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Hi guys - I'm having an issue with a Makvision m3129db1-72. I bought this pre-installed into a cabinet from a local arcade. The monitor is wired in through a cluster of neatly organized wires and 3 fuses located at the bottom of the cabinet on one of it's sides. (The black/white/green cables are spliced into the cluster, not combined into an AC cord.)

I'm not a technically gifted person, but I'm guessing this wire and fuse assembly is either an isolation transformer or is simply there to prevent surges to the various components of the cab (the cab had a ticket dispensor, powered marquee, coin door, etc.). The external power cable is connected to this cluster, drawing power into the cabinet and is connected to a switch.

Flipping the switch turns the marquee light on, but the monitor intself won't turn on unless I go through a bizarre sequence of requirements that I've discovered by tinkering.

I have to connect the monitor's vga cable into a PC, but the PC has to have a fairly high-wattage power supply (won't work from a laptop or compact PC.). Also, I happen to have a cga-to-vga board which has a vga pass-through and component-in, so I can run a component signal into the monitor, but ONLY if a high wattage PC is on and connected to the cga-to-vga board's vga passthrough.

It seems that the monitor is drawing power from PC through VGA, and will not power on at all if it cannot receive enough power that way. The monitor has a switch labeled 1v and 3v - neither setting seems to matter.

The only thing I can think of left to try is to splice out the monitor's power (black/green/white) wires into a grounded AC plug and bypass the fused wire cluster and cabinet switch, and instead just plug the monitor into a standard surge protector. However, I'm not sure of the monitor needs an isolation transformer, in which case, removing it from it's current setup would be dangerous.


So does anyone have any ideas on this? Is the monitor supposed to draw power through the VGA cable? Would that be caused by a mis-step in the previous owners wire/fuse cluster, in which case splicing out a standard grounded cable would work? Or is it likely that the cluster I keep referring to IS an isolation transformer and is necessary for safety?
 
Without pictures it is hard to tell. It almost sounds like the monitor will only turn on if it detects a signal?
 
I'll try to post some pictures in a bit. Oddly, I don't think it's just needing a signal because aytime I send a signal in from a laptop or a compact PC (laptop power supply) or from another vga source like a dreamcast, etc. it never works - it only does when a desktop pc is connected somewhere in the pipeline.

And to clarify I've ensured a 640x480 signal on the other vga sources. Head scratcher.
 
Does anyone know if this monitor specifically requires an isolation transformer? I'm tempted to buy this cable: https://na.suzohapp.com/products/monitors/49-5179-00

The description says it works for Makvision tri-mode 29" monitors, which mine is - and the AC power connector on the monitor's board has 3 pins labeled AC-L / FG / AC-N which seem to line up with the wiring of that suzohapp cable.

What do you guys think? Am I ok to hook this up directly to an AC outlet via that cable and completely bypass the cabinet wiring? Currently, there is a molex connector on the AC pins of the monitor, which is spliced into the "fuse cluster" I referred to in the original post. I could simply slip off the current molex connector and use the suzzohapp cable, which could plug directly into a surge protector. Just wanting to make sure it won't result in my becoming a pile of fried human meat.
 
An old VillageBBS post says it doesn't require and ISO Transformer. You should be able to just plug it in no problem.]

FWIW, this is a rebranded Wei-Ya chassis. Might make searching for it a bit easier.
 
In general if you are not 100 percent sure the monitor is designed to be operated that way, NEVER skip an iso transformer. The only monitor I run that way is a D9200 as sega shipped them without isos and its documented.

We need pics to be sure but looking at the cable you should be OK.
 
Man, you guys are awesome. Thanks a ton for the help. You are right about the Wei Ya brand - it's actually on the label.

Here are some photos (Hopefully they're not too low-res - I had to reduce them). The bottom two are of the "cluster" I keep mentioning. Just to restate, this cabinet had alot of extra peripherals like ticket printers, counters, marquee, etc. I would not be too surprised if most of this was meant to protect that assortment of equipment or to ensure safety given the electrical requirements.

Also, might be too much info, but I've read that alot of gambling-related machines (this was a poker chip game called "Chip-a-way") would often have an isolation transformer built-in so that if they needed to swap in a monitor requiring isolation, they could minimize down-time.

That said, if you guys see any red flags here, let me know. Again, if it's safe, my plan is to run the monitor from a wall AC outlet with a surge protector.
 

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I see no red flags. I say go for it.
 
Ok - going to order the cable and give it a shot (while exercising ridiculously extreme caution) . I'll report back if I don't have any shocking discoveries. ;(
 
they are full range ac chassis (work on 100vac to 255ac) direct from mains
maximum resolution 640 x 480- if you exceed this you will kill the horizontal output transistor
 
Just reporting that it worked like a charm. I spliced a cable rather than ordering the suzohapp cable because they had a minimum order of $50. I couldn't find a molex for the 3-pin power connector, so just used the current one with some wire disconnects so I can revert back if needed, but so far so good.

Also, this fixed the issue where the monitor was having to draw extra power via the VGA cable.

Thanks everyone for the help!

Gunblade, thanks - luckily I pieced that together before damaging it. Now if I could just find a reliable way to convert s-video/rca to vga at under 800x600 (which seems to be the standard), I'd be able to run old consoles throught. A problem for later though.

Thanks again!
 
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