CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Artinaz · Joined: 15 Jun 2009 Posts: 107 Location: SF Bay Area

It started fairly innocently...

I was talking to a guy I met on craigslist to close a sale on a ribbon for my Carver Amazing speakers. I told him that we were moving to a new house and I would finally have a media room of my own and I was looking at an Optoma on tigerdirect. He told me how badass CRTs were and that it took 7 hours to set one up, but... they totally beat the sh*t of digitals. He told me about curtpalme.com. I have been reading for the last 2 weeks in this forum now. Love all the resources here!

So then I saw an ad on videogon for a NEC 6PG+ that was being almost given away. The guy lived 1.5 hours away in Tiburon. The catch was that it didn't work.

I met this wonderful guy- he had some great collection- a shanling integrated, a couple of sonic frontier tube amps, B&W 802s, some 9 feet speakers (I forget the name now), 7-8 adcom amps. There must have been at least 50 electronic components there. He told me that the projector had hardly seen 60-70 hours of use, because they gardly used it. It earlier had a problem saving the settings- f you switched it off, you would again have to run convergence. Now it powers up, but there is no picture. He did tell me that he had used piece of foam to make the unit quieter, and ensured that there was space between them. I am wondering if improper ventilation caused it to die.

I picked up the NEC 6PG+ with the manual, the full remote, the ceiling mount and a 25 foot BNC-vga cable. The same week, I also saw somebody selling a DVDO HD+ locally on craigslist. From what I read, 1080p on these PJ may be softer and since the DVDO can scale- I thought I would try this first and then later go for a HDFury or HDFury2, or someday a moOme when I have the money.

Its in pretty good condition. I followed the instructions here to open her up. When I power it up, the fans turn on, the LEDs come on, the status code is 00- no errors. But there is no output from the lenses, no power in them- operate menu does not work. Standby and Power on works, and there is high pitched almost silent sound. I opened up the back and the LEDs on the deflection board are not lit- so I assume the board is OK. I looked at the boards in the cage and there are no obvious burns. I reseated them with the hope that perhaps something is loose. BTW, it has the Delta HD145 color-filtered lenses.

I am not going to fiddle with anything yet. First I plan to go thru Curt's step by step instructions to familiarize myself with the boards and controls, then get a service manual and see if I can figure it out Smile

Its the start of a long journey and I am excited. I have googling like crazy and reading about everything that i can on the web- I guess I am addict now!

Thank you again for this fabulous site. Even my baby steps so far would have been difficult with out this site and all the contributors! BTW, I am in the San francisco Bay Area.

seanb · Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 8:24 am Post subject:

Welcome to CRT
Great projectors, Please follow Curt, Doug and the other NEC pro's advice, DON'T adjust anything until you are sure it is absolutely neccesary.
If you have the service manual follow the trouble guide this will point you in the right direction
Enjoy
Sean

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 6966

Are the tubes turned off via the remote?

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 2:52 pm Post subject:

Did you take the foam out so it won't over heat?

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 7098 Location: Fort Collins, CO

And the #1 advice for new NEC owners: do NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES mess with the pots (adjustable resistors) inside the projector unless you have CLEAR EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS from Curt or another NEC expert. Twiddling those pots can mess up your projector so completely that it can only be resurrected by sending it to a thoroughly qualified NEC wizard -- which is expensive AND there are almost none of those wizards left.

lostmandan · Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 2:57 pm Post subject:

Welcome and congratulations on your foray into CRT!
Reading your post brings back my memories of the exact same experience with respect to google-ing and reading as much as I could about before buying my NEC 9PG+ from Curt a couple of years ago. This is a really cool hobby - lots to learn and lots of fun!

I hope there is something simple wrong with your PJ and you can see it project an image soon.

Cheers,
Dan

Artinaz · Joined: 15 Jun 2009 Posts: 107 Location: SF Bay Area

> Are the tubes turned off via the remote? [macgyver655]

Are you talking about the picture mute function. I tried that on the remote- didn't make a difference.

> Did you take the foam out so it won't over heat? [AnalogRocks]
The foam wasn't actually inside, the previous owner had it outside close to the ventilation. BTW, whats your analog setup ? I have a Technics 1200 and a Sansui turntable.

Thank you for all teh pointers. I do not intend making any changes to the pots etc until I get a hold of the service manual. BTW, when the service manual mentions taking teh voltage at any of teh connectors, do I need to take the connector out to measure that, or can I just put the probe at that point ?

Thanks.

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 6966

1) Do you have a source hooked up to the projector and turned on?
2) Do you hear a static crackle when you turn on the projector?
3) If yes to the above then you need to see if there is a glow at the base of the tube where the boards connect to the tube. You will have to have the cover open and the deflection board flipped up when you turn it on to check for this. Just dont put your hands in there when its running.

Artinaz · Joined: 15 Jun 2009 Posts: 107 Location: SF Bay Area

macgyver, you are psychic!

>2) Do you hear a static crackle when you turn on the projector?

Yes, there is somewhat of a crackle. The overall sound through is more like a high pitched sound like old CRT TVS used to make.

> 3) If yes to the above then you need to see if there is a glow at the base of the tube where the boards connect to the tube. You will have to have the cover open and the deflection board flipped up when you turn it on to check for this. Just dont put your hands in there when its running.

Yes, there is a glow at the end of the tubes.

Thank you in advance!

Azi

Mark_A_W · Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 5:19 am Post subject:

Sounds like it has HV and Deflection.

Unless there is something really simple....maybe it has a dead Gain or Video Out board?

Artinaz · Joined: 15 Jun 2009 Posts: 107 Location: SF Bay Area

Mark, I was reading up on the video board and this was Curt's take on it- http://curtpalme.com/NECPG_Layout7.shtm.

Is there a way I can test this board ? I have a multimeter and soldering iron, but no oscilloscope.

I did not find anything on Gain. Could you explain more on this ?

I appreciate you taking the time to help out.

Azi

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 6966

I would check for G2 voltage at the neckboards.

Artinaz · Joined: 15 Jun 2009 Posts: 107 Location: SF Bay Area

Sorry to be so newbie about this.

I will get a hold of the manual to find out what G2 is. I assume this is going to be on one of the connectors- do I need to take the connector off to measure this or can i measure it with everything connected.

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 6966

If your not familiar with what this is and how to test stuff like this then I am hesitant to give further advice. Maybe you can send boards to Curt for testing...... Smile

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:44 pm Post subject:

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:54 pm Post subject:

If there is no flicker out of the tubes at all, no line at the bottom of each tube at all, no menus, etc, then I'd suspect:

-video output board
-deflection board.

There's an HV turnoff signal on the video board in case of overload, and usually the tubes won't even flicker before it kicks in. the deflection board has an HV turnon signal, which, if missing, will turn the HV on and off instantly, or will never turn it on at all.

You can measure the G2 line to check that. THe red G2 wire should be at 400-800 volts, but will be at 0 to 60 or so if the set has no HV, or is in HV shutdown mode.

If you're not comfortable working with high voltages, then don't touch anything except for pulling boards out to send them to me for testing.

Cheers!

Artinaz · Joined: 15 Jun 2009 Posts: 107 Location: SF Bay Area

Thank you for all the tips.

Update so far is that I have my hands on service manual now. I am leaving for Vegas tonight (yeah baby!), so I will look into these next week. ... and yes we are moving to our new house next week- I am hoping to have the projector the first thing to be moved in there.

I'll try somewhat with the service manual. If it doesn't work out, I will ship the boards to Curt and have him check it out!

Azi

seanb · Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:52 am Post subject:

Good luck, Artinaz

To all the Nec pro's out there, I have a strange fault on my PG6+.
Unit was stored for two years, cleaned and warmed everthing up before power on, had intermitent hor. scan fail led on, replaced HOT, all ok on composite signal.
Switched to RGB 1024x768 and horizontal size started to jump, partial collapse and blew HOT.
After replacement set DEF board as per service manual, Two problems that are probably related the +B DEF is only 27V not 35V,
When attempting .
to adjust H-width with menu set to MAX, can only go to 1.4V on the test points before hor. size jumps and shuts down (at least HOT protection now works correctly)
On composite all funtions are good, convergence good, focus good, White bal poor (someone adjusted G2 to compensate for green wear) will atend to this when unit is reliable.
Have checked for bad caps in PSU, nun found but will replace all of them due to age of unit.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks
Sean

seanb · Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2009 7:34 pm Post subject:

Hi Artinaz,
Any luck with your Nec?
I see you found a service manual, follow the diagnostic section (section 5 if you have HT) but confirm this first as you might hear it start up before on of the protection signals shuts it down.
It's quite difficult without the extention board but most of it is possible.

Still have horizontal problems with mine when switching to 1024X768.

Sean

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 6966