Vectrex monitor making highpitched whining sound and warping

[Quetzalcoatl]

Hello everyone, I was wondering what all parts I should replace or adjustments I should make to try and fix the following Vectrex problem. I get a high pitched whining sound from the top of the monitor, and the screen starts warping, with the vectors on screen scaling up and down, etc. I notice on Pole Position that the vectors bounce around quite a bit, I was told this was indicative of a particular problem but I can't remember what they had said. Based on what's on console5.com I was thinking of doing the cap kit, integrator circuit cap kit, and power supply diodes. A year or so ago I re centered the monitor and also reset the DAC, although it seems to have gotten slightly off to the left again. Also, the Vectrex monitor is seeming to take an extra 5 or so seconds to start up, I don't see a picture or hear it buzzing until much longer than it used to take to start up. Any help is appreciated as I don't know what to try other than the cap kit, not sure what's causing this. Based on what I was reading on the integrator circuit on console5 the styrene caps can degrade over time and decrease the accuracy of the vectors being drawn.

Edited November 7, 2021 by Quetzalcoatl

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

Definitely replace those old crappy styrene integrator caps with some new film types from Console5. Double check your logic board revision first (2GE or 3GE) before ordering though, as there's 2 different cap kits. There should be a little sticker on the board, indicating which rev it is.

[Quetzalcoatl]

On 11/12/2021 at 12:14 PM, SiLic0ne t0aD said:

Definitely replace those old crappy styrene integrator caps with some new film types from Console5. Double check your logic board revision first (2GE or 3GE) before ordering though, as there's 2 different cap kits. There should be a little sticker on the board, indicating which rev it is.

Thanks for the reply and my apologies for the slow response. I ended up doing a full cap kit, the integrator board / styrene cap kit, and the power diodes. This only gave slight improvement, which was Every Day is Halloween no longer causes screen tearing and crazy scaling. I still have really bad buzzing and some high pitched sounds. Also arcade Armor Attack on VecFever as well as the Joust clone Knightex both still cause some blooming / scaling of the screen. For Knightex is happens when a character wraps around from one screen to the next, the screen briefly scales down by an inch or so, then goes back to normal. I looked at some gameplay footage on Youtube and this doesn't happen for everything. Anyway I ended up buying the Buzz Off kit on Ebay in order to hopefully fix the whining and buzzing sounds which have gotten increasingly worse lately. The blooming/scaling issue I'm getting on a couple games seems to be vector monitor performance related, and only applies to those 2 games. Is there anything else I can do to help with this, or is it just that I have the old model of Vectrex and it's failing to keep up with games with tons of large vectors?

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

Sounds like you've pretty much got it covered then! Bummer that there's still some issues though. The Buzz Off kit works great, but you can always use an ebay LM386 module and accomplish the same thing for a fraction of the price, as shown in this video here by Vic (who also makes fantastic Vectrex controllers as well, BTW):  

 

 

I'd look into replacing those 2 or 3 transistors on the logic board and maybe grabbing some spare IC's to swap out & try as well. Wish I could tell you something more specific to try, but I've fixed them by trial & error, replacing various components until I got good results. I'm sure you'll figure it out sooner or later though. Good luck!

[Quetzalcoatl]

3 hours ago, SiLic0ne t0aD said:

Sounds like you've pretty much got it covered then! Bummer that there's still some issues though. The Buzz Off kit works great, but you can always use an ebay LM386 module and accomplish the same thing for a fraction of the price, as shown in this video here by Vic (who also makes fantastic Vectrex controllers as well, BTW):  

 

 

I'd look into replacing those 2 or 3 transistors on the logic board and maybe grabbing some spare IC's to swap out & try as well. Wish I could tell you something more specific to try, but I've fixed them by trial & error, replacing various components until I got good results. I'm sure you'll figure it out sooner or later though. Good luck!

 

Try replacing the transistors to try fixing the issues with the vectors warping and bouncing you mean? What was the chip you were talking about reseating on the thread on the Vector Forums? "Probably wouldn't hurt to pull that 6522 VIA chip, clean the legs & socket, then reseat it (only if it's socketed to begin with)". I mostly just have problems with a couple games, otherwise my Vectrex runs pretty well. I guess since I did all the caps and diodes it got me sort of obsessed with getting it running perfectly now. The buzz definitely seemed to have gotten worse which is why I decided to knock that issue out too, I just ended up buying the kit on ebay so we'll see how it goes.

 

Since you seem to know about this stuff, what do you think about the idea of removing the Vectrex soundchip and upgrading it to a POKEY or something? The goal would be to be able to play arcade quality sound on the Vectrex so that the arcade emulated games on Vecfever and Pitrex would sound right. That's really the only limitation with arcade emulation on Vecfever at the moment, and it's a hardware issue that can't really be overcome without replacing the sound chip.