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Post by woolfman on Jul 15, 2014 3:00:12 GMT -5
I am just curious:
Yesterday when I first turned on my Vectrex, I noticed by looking at the in-game sprites in Minestorm, that there is a little shiver from the sprites with
a constant position. This is introduced as soon as the game mode starts (after the ship has laid out the mines) and vanishes as soon as the game is over. I couldn´t notice it on the introductory screens with the Vectrex logo or the 1/2 Player screen.
Is this considered normal? I haven´t seen this before on a CRT...and I am quite used to them.
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Post by kokovec on Jul 15, 2014 11:12:07 GMT -5
If by shiver you mean a slight shaking of the sprites then that should be normal behavior.
As the beam draws the objects it will drift a bit and that causes a slight shift of the objects.
If it's too pronounced then you probably need to replace the caps.
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Post by woolfman on Jul 15, 2014 12:44:04 GMT -5
Ok, thanks for clearing it up. It is not very much, but noticeable.
Also the brightness knob is in the first 1/3 of its whole adjustment way for normal brightnesss. Is that a good value?
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Post by kokovec on Jul 15, 2014 22:43:09 GMT -5
You can adjust the brightness as you like it.
Some of the homebrew games run very dim.
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Post by woolfman on Jul 16, 2014 0:20:02 GMT -5
Can youtell me how much shiver of the sprites would be too much? Just wanna knos when it would be time to change caps...
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Post by gauze on Jul 16, 2014 9:03:58 GMT -5
until it bothers you, the dried up caps shouldn't actually hurt anything, they just make the picture unpleasant to look at.
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Post by woolfman on Jul 16, 2014 15:35:55 GMT -5
What would be "unpleasant to look at"? Do you have an example? It isn´t bothering or looks bad, but having a better impression how worse it could be helps  |
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Post by kokovec on Jul 17, 2014 9:17:50 GMT -5
It's subjective.
Keep in mind that your Vectrex is 30 years old.
I remember being back in the 80's and reading that microchips (as they were called back then) weren't expected to last more than 20 years. I guess they were wrong.
However, the electrolytic caps do dry out much sooner and the phosphor in the CRT will start to "fade" over time.
I wouldn't worry too much about the look as long as the vectors aren't shaking so bad that you can't play a game.
Also, there are adjustments you can make for alignment and screen size. You can find these by reading the service manual.
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Post by woolfman on Jul 18, 2014 8:51:58 GMT -5
It's subjective. Keep in mind that your Vectrex is 30 years old. I remember being back in the 80's and reading that microchips (as they were called back then) weren't expected to last more than 20 years. I guess they were wrong. However, the electrolytic caps do dry out much sooner and the phosphor in the CRT will start to "fade" over time. I wouldn't worry too much about the look as long as the vectors aren't shaking so bad that you can't play a game. Also, there are adjustments you can make for alignment and screen size. You can find these by reading the service manual. I also remember that story about limited lifetime...a programmer told me that around 1991, although he said something about 32 years (multiple of 2???)... I haven´t seen any test carts so far. Had they ever been available to some extent? I am curious, since a service manual is there, hence a cart should be there also...right? I´d love to test my screen, just for the fun of it, and going thru all the steps propsed in the manual  Do chips from early 80ies really fail? I can´t remember having seen this on one of my consoles and handhelds so far... |
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