CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Just saw your question about tinted glycol, if the lenses are colour filtered, then the glycol should indeed be clear. It improves colour reproduction accuracy at the expense of light output.

[Rattanee]

Okay! So back on track here! I forgot where I even left off hehh... thanks to gjaky I got the brother to my PG9. Paid the same as the first one, (technically 185 bucks if google converts correctly) except this one is not supposed to have issues! And it also came with the ceiling mount to a Zenith PJ that's been converted to fit the PG, a set of remotes, vga to bnc and power cables.
Looked to be working fine on location, brought it home, put it on the ground, turned the deflection connectors around, fired it up, and... got a horribly pin-cushioned image that I couldn't correct even at maximum pincushion settings... that was a Homer Simpson moment... DOH... forgot to swap convergence yoke connectors
So technically this PJ is working fine, but there are some things that are unclear to me somewhat...

1. Raster size 'jiggles' a little occasionally.... it'll sometimes vary a little in size... it's not bad, but noticable, and seems to be startup related (seems to stop a few minutes after powerup...) probably some aging caps being the culprit, as Gabor replaced all the little caps that usually leak, but not all of the big ones. Unfortunately the other set showed me that even the big ones can leak... I might go all out and do a cap set on this one as well in due time... but we'll see... It is definitely not light output related (ie, not breathing)

2. The tubes are not set up well at all... Test patterns are not centered, causing one corner of the pattern to barely be visible on-screen. Looking into the lenses it's there, but it's so much on the edge of the tube face that the lenses don't really project the very edge... I'll need to remove the lenses and see if there's any phosphor burn. At 1200 hours in the set, fingers crossed there's no visible burn that's off-center... I'm guessing this is a case where I need to set phase... right Case?

3. The deflection board is very much different to what is in my other PG! o.o Are these cross-compatible I wonder? This set has the 47uF cap that should supposedly be replaced with a 470uF cap to stop some buzzing and make keystone more reliable (from what I gather), but upon second look, the other PG's def board doesn't have anything like that... plus the layout is different... and there's a bunch of stuff soldered to the bottom that's not on this one... Anyone know what part number def boards are cross compatible or if they all go into any regular PG ? (Both are plain 9PG types) Should I be safe just swapping def boards?

Cheers guys

PS: The Barco 600s did not wake up even after I made a control box for it... HV is not in holddown mode, and power supply seems to be fine... no idea what's up with it... all leds on focus board lit except for the red one. It's got me stumped...

[CasetheCorvetteman]

You need to have all the convergence connectors the correct way around or the pin cushion will be exactly like you say. Theyre under the DEF board on top of the convergence board.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Its not the phase thats out, you need to set the raster centering.

You dont say which PG model it is, so i cant tell if its a plain plus or XTRA.

That 47uF cap is a 10uF cap on a 9PG plain, i never had a buzzing issue, but i remember others were swapping out to a 470uF.

[gjaky]

For problem #1: You may check the PA connector on the DEF board it sends the control voltage to the PSU and the deflection voltage arriver there too, so you can easily check that the fluctuation is controlled by the DEF board or the PSU do it alone. You'd most likely want to check these with a scope ( you need a 10:1 probe as well).

#3: That is a newer DEF board, they are compatible. You can distinguish the boards by their PCB number, which is 7213709x, where 'x' differs and probably corresponds its design date eg. 92

[Rattanee]

[gjaky]

[Rattanee]

[gjaky]

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Its in the same place or extremely close to it on all four variants, the Plus and XTRA both had a 47uF there, the plains including the 10s had a 10uF, and i do remember a couple others stating in the past they had no buzzing issues on the plain ( one of which was a 10 owner ) with the original 10uF in there. It was always suggested to throw in a 470uF, but i never did, and mine never had an issue.

[gjaky]

Actually the XG also have the 47uF cap in that position, as this part of the circuit is quite similar to the earlier designs.

[Rattanee]

Okay... I had a horrible headache yesterday afternoon that pretty much stopped me doing anything to the PJs... so instead I watched the setup guide video for the Sony that's shared on here... that provided some good pointers regarding setup, especially regarding astig and scheimpf... let's just call it lens flapping...
I also saw someone adding lens flapping capability to the PG9 with some conical springs under the lens mountings... I might just see how well that works...

I got this insane idea in my head to mount the little sony in the middle for use with low res stuff, with the two PG9s right next to it on movable platforms so I can change the angle slightly when needed, so I can experiment using them as either stand-alone, or even a stack or a blend... with so little alteration of projetion angle between stack and blend setups, I should be able to find a lens flapping angle that won't make too much of a difference between PJ positions. (Thanks to Gabor in advance for the flapping spacers!)

I'm going to go and start swapping boards now to figure out what's with the rolling on the first PG... will update with results!

PS: does it matter which way around a tube is installed into a projector? The one I got last has the def yoke positioned so that the cables, and the connectors its wires are soldered to are facing down... the first one has them facing up... which does make setting the positioning rings a pain as they're dangerously close to the bare connectors... which if I'm not mistaken do have at least a thousand volts zapping through them (at least they do on TVs)... Since I need to redo the complete tube setup on the first pj anyways I'm thinking I'll just rotate all the yokes (convergence and EM focus yokes included!) 180°on the neck...

[Rattanee]

So... swapped all the system cage boards, all is still fine.... It's probably going to be a def board problem on the other PJ... dangit...

Also... how the hell do you center the raster on a PG? The position pot only moves the image within the raster... I know I can move it around with the tabs on the yoke, but I have all three rasters off-center in the same direction... or is that the only way to move the actual raster along with the test patterns ?

[gjaky]

Only those tabs are for the raster centering.

[Rattanee]

Someone probably used the green off-center raster for reference then looking at only the screen at one point! It's annoying how the NEC def board calibration manual is less then clear on what signal to use when... says a split screen signal (assuming that means a single cross) then talks about monoscope, all the while saying to use the built in test pattern... when the internal test pattern is not at all affected by the h posi pot...

[macgyver655]

I smell smoke.

[Rattanee]

Nawh no smoke so far... I did go over the calibration procedure on the def board to check everything's set fine on the new PJ. Aside a slight tweaking of the Vert size to get the specified voltage on the test point, all was fine. About to do the same on the first one... curious if I'll see any differences, or if it'll stop the scrolling/blinking/flickering once all the def board settings are verified/corrected.

Also swapped eproms between the point boards, and the working board still works, the dud board is still dud... so it's definitely not a bad eprom.

[Rattanee]

So... I checked the def board, found nothing different... so I swapped def boards... and lo and behold, it's still the first PJ that does the flickering as in the videos...
The only remaining suspects I have are the powersupply and the HV board... the latter seeming more likely... I might just try swapping HV boards too if I have enough time for today...

The inconsistency of the image movement during position control moved with the deflection board though, so that's going to be a problem on there...

Raster position was quite a ways off on all tubes of the new PJ. I took some pics of before and after... the test patterns were pretty much on the very edge of the phosphor area... luckily tube faces are still pristine

EDIT:

Okay so I swapped the HV board as well, same result...
So next up it's going to be a powersupply swap... if the error still doesn't migrate, I'm out of ideas... maybe the gain ctl... but I don't think that'll be the source of this issue...

Here's some pics of the tube faces from the second PJ. 12xx hours on it, tubes are still pristine!

I also checked the manual, regarding chassis wiring and orientation... well... I know that the previous owner (not Gabor) had to replace the glass in front of the blue tube as it had cracked. Fun little project that must've been... but at one point someone obviously removed all three tubes as well... as the blue tube is in the correct orientation, with the HV plug facing down, but the deflection yoke's lugs are facing up, which is incorrect (they should be towards the HV cap according to the manual). The other two tubes are simply mounted upside down. HV cap on the top, lugs towards the HV cap as they should be. I don't think this would be the source of any issues as I'm not getting any arcing, and the deflection and focus/convergence yokes are facing the same direction, so as far as image reproduction goes this should not be a problem... still... if I'm doing it, I might as well do it right... so... next time I get at it, I'm going to turn the tubes around and make sure the lugs are facing down on the yokes...

[CasetheCorvetteman]

The rasters need to be re-centered when you swap from floor to ceiling, and also when you do the astig.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Try swapping the Video out board, thatll likely be the issue.