Hi all, countertop noob here.

I have been fixing video games for many years but this is my first Merit game since the eprom based units. Its a Force Radion 2005.5.

First problem was the CRT colors are shot. I found the guns are just flat worn out. Red was completely gone and B/G were weak. I shot the heck out of them with a rejuvinator and the colors came back, but without any cutoff left so the tube has to go. Further reading on this forum and others indicated that there is a common problem with this monitor and a neck board resistor (and tube) change will fix it.  Thats good news.

The second problem (once I could see the game again) was that the game will appear to freeze from time to time, usually after a touch to the screen. Yet if I leave it alone for a while it will eventually go where I told it to. Even though there is no disk thrashing during this pause, this symptom tells me to look at the drive.  I have run merits own drive tests, used the 2 button reset, and I have run my own tests on the drive out of the game and can't find anything wrong with the drive. I replaced the IDE cable and I connected another P/S to the game and the problem persists.

I read here that recapping the motherboard is a fairly common practice, yet I have never read why this is so common. I know about monitors needing this done so I can understand the logic, but before I do this, is this "stalling" one of the symptoms that warrants recapping the MB? ( I dont see a kit available from badcaps.net for this P61WP-Fe M/B either)

I appreciate any advice on this, thanks in advance.

I dont either, I understand that the neck board resistor will only help prolong the life of the new tube by dropping the drive voltage to the guns.

Have you ever capped a motherboard? Why did you need to do that?

BTW-LOL over that avatar of yours. Thats just hilarious.

Just to add, In a few cases I found the hard drive cables bad, Dust on the ram chip, Bad ram chip. Add some more ram helps reduce hard drive wear. These had 64 megs upgrading them to 128 or 256 meg really makes a difference. Just basic old pc133 dimm ram. If you have any old touchtunes gen 2 stuff touchtunes didn't want back the ram works great in merits. 256 megs.

Make sure the CPU fan is running and not full of dust.

You can go into the operator setup screen and run a full hard drive test although that test seems to miss about 40 percent of hard drive problems but may tell you something.

We need to change our job titles to " Capacitor Replacers"!! Seems to be 80 percent of it all now.........

Old Fogie wrote on 02/10/10 at 06:35:21:


Unless the caps are swollen, I doubt it's caps.

Definitive test is put it in another Radion.

re: Happ LCD kit - the reason it is costly is the touchpanel, not the LCD

Let me look here, I think I have a new tube here I never used, Ended up putting lcds in them. If I have it yet I'll give you a great deal on it.

I did some digging in my spare parts and found that tube. Brand new in the original box, I just opened it to check it out. This one has everything on it already, Yoke purity rings etc so it should just be a plug and play swap.
I don't have a clue anymore what I paid for it anymore, I had it here a few years. How does about 80 bucks sound?

Sounds good, Just keep a eye on this thread then.
Robb

Send me a PM here with your name and shipping address, I'll figure out the shipping for the total

Got you PM, I'll check on the UPS cost, Shouldn't be to much.
DavemanUT here does many of these and could suggest what he found works best. I know it is changing a resistor on the tubes neckboard to drop the tubes heater voltage but don't recall the new resistor value that works best, Could not find my notes here on it.
Robb