Radius pivot 0379 Monitor Issue

[TimHD]

I managed to get a Radius 0379 (Color Pivot/LE) Monitor a while back now. I got the seller to pack it carefully and ship it to me and while it arrived fine, I was unable to get a proper image with a IIsi Radius card or a SE/30 Color Pivot cards I have. See images below. Any ideas whether the cards or the monitor is likely the problem?



 

 

[techknight]

Yikes. 

So... Either you have a cracked circuit board or solder joint failure, or you have a vertical drive deflection failure. 

But... Then... theres capacitors... 

 

[TimHD]

So, an update on this project.

I got some more time to re-check things and tried the 0379 Color Pivot LE with my SE/30 Color Pivot card again recently.

Here's what I got at first try... but leaving things for a bit of time, I started to notice a bit of a pattern and turning up the brightness/contrast seemed to speed things up...

So as it warms up, we get a better picture until perfect after about 5 mins... Thoughts on what the issue is - I presume it's the monitor, not the card?

NB: Earlier post with the purple/blue line was the SE/30 Pivot card (not color) which outputs on Blue until you wire R-G-B lines to get monochrome pivot on some monitors (LCD etc).

 

[TimHD]

Finally, about there (a minute later, all good and pivoting fine).

 

[BadGoldEagle]

Something's clearly wrong with the monitor. The cards are fine as far as I can tell.

Leaky, old capacitors appear to be the culprit here. If you were to heat up the Pivot's analog board with a heat gun or even a hair dryer I think it would start right up. You could get away by only recapping the vertical circuit but you'd be far better off recapping it entirely. You'll have to take it apart and make a list of the caps. Those Pivot monitors aren't the most common thing in the world so you'll probably struggle finding a schematic or a pre-made list of caps.

But yeah, it's totally repairable. Oh and congrats on getting the monitor in the first place. Those things are great.

 

[olePigeon]

I agree, probably bad caps.  The fact that it "warms up" and gets a picture eventually seems like a cap issue.  I think there's a small chance it could be a cracked solder joint that forms a better connection as it the metal heats up, but it seems to me that would be more of an on/off binary problem and not a gradual problem.

 

[techknight]

caps caps caps. 

Vertical circuit caps are usually the first to go due to the high stresses they see. those high current ramp pulses cause a bit of heating in the caps. 

You need to fix it now rather than later, because I have seen these exact failures actually take out the vertical output IC, and it pops the fuse (if there is one) that feeds it via the flyback transformer. If it doesnt have a fuse, it can take out the whole horiz stage from overcurrent. Depends on how its designed.