Blast City resurrection

[mR_CaESaR]

Because working on two blast cities over the last year with a lot of tears is never enough.... guess what I picked up last night???

Yep! I'm back for one more go! hahaha

The Honda HRV is surprisingly large inside! I've now done two cab trips with my Dad's little hatch back (Astro city and now Blast City).

I haven't turned the cab on just yet to see what's wrong with it, but I was told no image - so I'm assuming another dead 2931.

Overall, the condition is much better than I thought (apart from the little tiny rust area on the coin chute door), but it's definitely MUCH better than the two I got at the beginning of the thread and won't be needing a repaint (thank f**k for that! )

Got her lined up next to her older sibling and the path to my OCD pair collection continues (2x chewlix cabs, 2x noirs, 2x astro cities, 2x blasts and 2x new net cities - still need to get my 2nd one)

Like the other blast, this will most likely be another shmup cab - but I am yet to decide.

 

[JohnRambo'sKnife]

I hated my Blast when I owned it, but this one looks nice.

 

[mR_CaESaR]

Another update on my wonderful adventures with the Blast City!

I ended up getting some repro artwork - mostly for the blast, but a few random bits and bobs

The repro blast cp artwork is ok, but not 100% perfect, it will do the job for my purposes

Another artwork I got made up was the little red decal on the bottom right hand side of the blast city - it's the little touches that bring the cab back to life

Lastly, the one outstanding thing on the blast the I painted was the side decal, like the CP repro decal, it's not 100%, but for the purpose of completion, it's perfectly fine.

Outside of the Sega stickers behind the blast, the shmup blast city is now pretty much complete. I won't be touching that any more - no more screen removal, screen rotating etc.... so I thought

Now onto where the fun begins

I sent off the chassis for repair and came back nice and fresh - Joey's exact words were "I think you will be happy with this one". So of course I was pumped! New caps were of course installed which is always a good thing.

I decided to record the first power up and I'm glad I did as everything was captured haha

*may contain some offensive language - viewer discretion advised*

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMS4w84LHnQ


As you see, I got a nice little zap and the monitor did not show any picture so back to square 1. When the OSD was pressed, there was also no image. When I turned the screen pot to 3/4 of the max I got a very feint image with raster lines visible and the image was washed out started to look grey. The neck glow is a nice bright orange.

I needed to confirm if the chassis was faulty or it was something else.

Remember the part where I said I never had to take off the shmup monitor out again... well of course I was wrong!

I completed a number of tests to tr and determine where the fault was. My baseline is my vertical Blast as that's working perfectly.

1. Wired the Horizontal monitor/chassis on a working Vertical Blast - still the same black, completely dark with image only visible when you increase the screen pot from 3/4 and above
2. Wired the Vertical monitor/chassis on the Horizontal Blast - works fine displays the image as normal
3. Swapped the Vertical chassis onto the Horizontal monitor, tested on the Vertical Blast - same symptoms, completely dark. Didn't increase the screen pot as I didn't want to screw up the settings on this chassis as it's already configured and working
4. Swapped the Horizontal chassis onto the Vertical monitor, tested on the Vertical Blast - chassis works, it was extra bright screen pot due to turning it up on the other Horizontal monitor to get the raster lines

I was then led to this post on Arcade Otaku (https://forum.arcadeotaku.com/viewtopic.php?p=523900#p523900) so I inspected the R732 of both chassis

1. 2931 originally paired with A68KZN696X (labeled 2930 on the sticker - originally the "Tate)) has Orange, White, Gold, Gold = 3.9 Ohms and works fine on my Tate cab
2. 2931 paired with A68LBT696X (labeled 2931 on the sticker - originally the "Yoko") has Brown, Black, Gold, Gold = 1 Ohm and is very dim on the Yoko cab.

At this point in time, I think I've come to the conclusion that my tube is shot and the absolute last thing I can do is to try and rejuvenate the tube. Fortunately, I might have a lead on someone that can lend me a rejuvenator and I'm hoping we have the right connections - will update once it happens.

Lastly the zap! When I first received the zap, I initially thought it was because the metal plate wasn't earthed. I looked at the other blast and there was no earth connector on any part of the metal plate, so the only thing I could think of is the switch itself is no longer insulated or it's broken for the AC line to get to me. I inspected the switch and this is what I found

Hit up Mouser to find the closest thing to the model number and what was a 10 dollar switch because a 60 dollar order because I refused to pay 24 dollars for shipping LOL

Brand new switch was just dropped off by the UPS man.

I'm hoping I can work something out with the rejuvenation this week, we'll see how we go. However, I'm also hoping I might have a lead for a spare tube as a worst case scenario.

 

[mR_CaESaR]

Got my hands on a CRT tester on Wednesday night to try out thanks to hwaygo on discord - it's the BK Precision 490 and fortunately for me, it had the correct CR23 connector

Never having done any of this stuff before, I watched multiple videos of what we needed to do, but at the highest level, we needed to set up the heater voltage, the G1 and then RGB cut offs.

There's a website called http://tubular.atomized.org/ which provides the values for a significant number of tubes - of course it doesn't explicitly state my tube. My tube is an A68LBT696X, this only site only has an LBS, so I thought one letter wouldn't be too bad. I base lined the G1 on 70v.

Got everything all wired up, triple checked, it was time to give it a go and see what happens

Had a very nice orange neck glow which mean the tube was physically still OK and the vacuum on the neck was still good - not the dreaded blue glow which meant oxygen has gone into the neck.

According to what we were testing, all three guns were clearly "bad"

So hwaygo and I went through the process of "clean and balance", re-testing and eventually hit the "rejuvenate" function. We did this a number of times until it finally tested in the "good" region

At this point, we decided, all we could do was "test" and see what happens. Wired up the chassis, turned her on and VOILA! We have picture!

It needed calibration, but it was great to see an image on this tube considering when I got it, it was so dim that it was black.

That's where the excitement finished - I got called for a Major incident at work so we had to stop our testing, but thankfully hwaygo left the tester at my place to allow me to do some further testing/rejuving. I left the game running but by the time I checked in (must've been an hour or so later), the green and blue guns significantly faded

I then had the opportunity to test a little further last night and one thing I noticed when I set the G1 to 70v was when I was trying to adjust the RGB cut off in the setup, it wouldn't move no matter how far right I increased the dial, even maxing it out. So this time, I set the G1 to 50v like most of the other tubes. I redid the whole process multiple times blasting the tube - at this point I really had nothing to lose, so I blasted and blasted

After all that zapping, I finally managed to wire it all back up and I've got picture again! This time, I'm very apprehensive as I didn't have much luck the previous time, so all I could do was sit and wait to see what happens...

Colour charts look good

In game looks good too

It's definitely on the "dim" side, but I'll take "dim" over no picture any day of the week

I had it on for about 4 hours last night just looping through the attract mode of the game and it seemed to hold up

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGOBRT-tEt4


I've turned the cab on this morning from 7:30 and will leave it on running just before I go to sleep and see how it holds up before putting it back in the cab. If it holds up, then safe to say it won't do what it did the first time around and I can use it until I find a replacement tube. If it fades, then I need a replacement tube quicker as I can't do a rejuve process each time I turn the cab on.

 

[mR_CaESaR]

Sad day unfortunately... the tube gets dimmer and dimmer by the day

Here you can see just how dim the tube is compared to my other blast. I had to turn off the light on the top left (tired tube side) as you wouldn't have been able to see any image on screen

Now I'm on the hunt for a replacement tube - Joey said he's got a couple of tubes that are 100% on the crt tester, but it's getting it from Perth to Sydney that would pose the biggest challenge. The eastern states, I can organise Bill, but from Perth is a little more challenging.

My options are:

1. Find a proper blast city tube A68LBT696X (2931 tube) or A68KZN696X (2930 tube)
2. Find a donor tube in one of the following consumer tvs and do a yoke swap
   1. Toshiba super crystal 2988UE
   2. NEC SF-6804
   3. Symphonic model ST427F (don't think this is found in Australia,think this is an American only brand)
3. Find an NEC XM29 PVM which is apparently a direct swap - yoke and all! But doing this would probably cost way more than the price of the cab

Somehow, I think it might be a while before I get this cab back to 100%

Another alternative could be install an MS9 (back mounted) and live with the bezel gap, or if I find a flat screen, install that. Either way, it's going to take some patience (which I'm not normally good with )

 

[Thomas]

Wow, all of this sounds like a huge headache. I hope you are enjoying all this work at least a little.

I don’t know what paint you used but if you sprayed with acrylic enamel, the paint stays soft for weeks or longer. Just touching it can leave a mark. Best to use polyurethane or lacquer.

I have the same Sega Aime control panel on my Net City. I like how it looks and it’s in good shape so it would feel wasteful to replace it. But the card reader that I can’t use bothers me.

I’m tempted to tear off the “patent pending“ sticker on my Blast City so I’m surprised to see that someone is selling reproductions. As for the side sticker reproduction, I plan on keeping my thrashed original stickers since the reproduction design is off. I don’t know why people make new stickers for arcade cabinets and get the design wrong.

 

[mR_CaESaR]

My options are:

1. Find a proper blast city tube A68LBT696X (2931 tube) or A68KZN696X (2930 tube)
2. Find a donor tube in one of the following consumer tvs and do a yoke swap
   1. Toshiba super crystal 2988UE
   2. NEC SF-6804
   3. Symphonic model ST427F (don't think this is found in Australia,think this is an American only brand)
3. Find an NEC XM29 PVM which is apparently a direct swap - yoke and all! But doing this would probably cost way more than the price of the cab
   

Shortly after posting this, I was sent a message by a friend to try a Panasonic TC-68GS71A for a consumer tube swap. Whilst not 100% perfect, he previously used it on a tube swap for the blast city and yielded acceptable results. I was able to purchase the TV from FB market place and picked it up around early December.

Here comes the most daunting task I've ever completed in this hobby! Yoke and Tube swap with a consumer TV

After a solid few days worth of reading, watching youtube vids and general research, it was time to disassemble! The first thing I noticed was, this tube was CLEAN!! (compared to any arcade tube - but that's expected given the totally different environments they were in)

Tube is an M68KTY167X

Disassembly wasn't too bad, I had to use the frame screw to discharge as there's no metal frame like a normal arcade setup. Before you know it, the yoke was on and the chassis was installed!

One thing that would've caught me out hadn't I been told, is that the convergence rings for the tube is best kept and used as the convergence rings - I would've disposed of the rings and used the one from the old tube to match the 2931!

First major test - turn her on and hope nothing explodes, shorts or burns! *fingers crossed*

She's turned on without any breaks! Popped a test pattern to first see how the purity is to determine what I needed to do with the yoke. So much discolouration so I needed to start mucking around with the yoke location

Safety first before touching the yoke and rings live!

This was the best I could get after a solid couple of hours s**tting myself moving the yoke and convergence rings whilst the monitor was on - I decided to call it a day and come back at a later time

The last couple of days have been spent on trying to do fitment testing with the original frame, used a number of different ways to space out the monitor with the frame as the rabbit ears didn't have the same spacing

With the spacing I used, the fitment ended up like this

Red denotes there's no more space on the corners to push forward, yellow has a bit of a gap and green has a larger gap than the yellow

 

[mR_CaESaR]

The green gap

The yellow gap

I think once it's turned on and I'm actually playing the gap wont' be so bad and tolerable

It's not a perfect fit... But it'll suffice for now.. 90% fit and working bright tube is better than 100% fit and unplayable

After some more chassis tweaking I couldn't get the geometry perfect (well who can tbh?

- especially on a donor tube). I have this bowing across all edges (drawing of lines are exaggerated, but it's there)

Tried to straighten it up with some magnets, but I just couldn't get it straight, so I've just increased the h and v size to try and hide the imperfections, it will suffice until I come across an original tube (if it ever happens).

Now the monitor looks like this - which I will say looks MUCH better than what I started with and what the tired tube looked like.

I dare say 15khz is done! I will do the same process for 31khz and hope I can get it to somewhat look like the 15khz one as I'm hoping to use this cab for Monkey Ball

 

[mR_CaESaR]

Wow, all of this sounds like a huge headache. I hope you are enjoying all this work at least a little.

I don’t know what paint you used but if you sprayed with acrylic enamel, the paint stays soft for weeks or longer. Just touching it can leave a mark. Best to use polyurethane or lacquer.

I have the same Sega Aime control panel on my Net City. I like how it looks and it’s in good shape so it would feel wasteful to replace it. But the card reader that I can’t use bothers me.

I’m tempted to tear off the “patent pending“ sticker on my Blast City so I’m surprised to see that someone is selling reproductions. As for the side sticker reproduction, I plan on keeping my thrashed original stickers since the reproduction design is off. I don’t know why people make new stickers for arcade cabinets and get the design wrong.

hahaha headache is a big understatement! However, it's all part and parcel of the learning experience and I'm grateful for all the knowledge gained through this whole process.

I think it may have been acrylic enamel which makes sense. Poly would've been better but much more expensive.

@jermz1 was the one who hooked up the patent pending sticker for me, I couldn't find repros anywhere and Jermz1 drew it up for me as a favour. Happy to share it as I've been given the go ahead by Jermz.

 

[kikaso]

Looks like all of your hard work has paid off!

Great work, @mR_CaESaR

 

[Anselmo]

Man, that's some good work you did there

 

[PASTBLASTER]

Good Job man! Looking really nice!

 

[JohnRambo'sKnife]

You can clean the minor bowing and edge up pretty easily, just how much time do you have...

For the gap, grab some closed cell foam. You can use adhesive pieces for ducts/doors or make your own with closed cell and some 3M double sided adhesive sheets. I did this when I had my blast.

Looks good, well done.

 

[mR_CaESaR]

Looks like all of your hard work has paid off!

Man, that's some good work you did there

Good Job man! Looking really nice!

Thanks guys! It's definitely a labour of love!

You can clean the minor bowing and edge up pretty easily, just how much time do you have...

For the gap, grab some closed cell foam. You can use adhesive pieces for ducts/doors or make your own with closed cell and some 3M double sided adhesive sheets. I did this when I had my blast.

Looks good, well done.

I'm happy to spend time on it. What wizardry do you speak of to fix up the bows? Jokes aside, I'd definitely be interested to hear your comments on how to fix this.

As for the gap, I was definitely thinking some type of foam, I'll tackle that problem once I have it mounted on the cab.

 

[mR_CaESaR]

Here it is folks, she's back in business and the cab is playable again!

 

[kuze]

Great setup there, nice work!!

 

[Dekken]

Here it is folks, she's back in business and the cab is playable again!

Those Blast Cabs are beautiful man!

 

[WeinerdogSunflasses]

Love this thread so much! Glad you didn’t get “gooped” on the monitors!

 

[mR_CaESaR]

Oh nah one did... It got cleaned out

 

[JohnRambo'sKnife]

Can I ask you who reproed the red blast monitor bezel stickers? I actually made a thread requesting this earlier this year and then saw you had them done.