Help with Sony PVM 20L5

[Corredor X]

Hello, I've been a reader of the boards for some time, got here looking for info when the GBS-8200 and DIY scanline generators got popular. Now I need a more specific help...

To make a long story short, today I bought four CRT monitors, three Ikegami TM20-20R and one Sony PVM 20L5, in a series of amazing coincidences. They are quite rare to be found in the wild around here, but somehow I got lucky and stumbled upon an ad of a guy in a nearby city selling of a lot of old video stuff he had, among them the monitors for a really nice price. I took my PS2 with component cable (with BNC adapters I bought in the way) to test it. The Ikegami ones seemed to work OK , one has a faulty on/off button but works; only tested them for a moment because I was a in a hurry. I'll deal with them another day.

I got very interested in the Sony one, always heard great things about them. It showed an all-yellow image, but I took it home with the others anyway thinking it could be some sort of wrong settings (and also because it have a s-video input that the Ikegamis seem to lack). I was right, messed with it a little in a menu and got its nice colors back. By the way, these things are amazing! But there's still a problem with the unit and I hope you guys can help me, since I'm a total n00b at the subject of this kind of display.

Like I said, the image is incredible, but it is "shaky" almost all the time. For some brief moments, a matter of seconds in a couple of minutes, it stops shaking and one can see the best image ever. I tried only the PS2 with it, since I still have to make a SCART to BNC adapter to use with the other consoles, but I also tried the PS2 with s-video and got the same results. Even with no console attached to it, the menu displays still got the shakiness. Some pictures:






Does anyone know what could be causing it? Thanks in advance!

[kamiboy]

I think that L5 is on its last leg. Might be a capacitor issue.

[Corredor X]

I think that L5 is on its last leg. Might be a capacitor issue.

So it could be fixable, then? Well, that's better, I was afraid it could be a tube issue or something. Is there a PDF on the schematics of this particular monitor online, to see what capacitors it has? On a quick search I could not find it. I'll try the other monitors first to see if there are issues with them, and then I'll see if I can find some repair shop around here that works with this kind of monitor. Thanks a lot, kamiboy!

[kamiboy]

Mind you, I said might. A lot of things going bad could be the cause of it getting the shakes.

My own L5 sometimes gets a fit of micro shakes as well. I chalk it up to it having seen heavy use during its life, such as pro monitors are wont to do.

Getting a technician to look at it is a great start.

[Aguilar]

My PVM-2030 does this as well. I'm led to believe its capacitors as well. Probably going to re-cap it soon.

[Corredor X]

Finally I found a technician who said he could take a look on it, every other one didn't even know what kind of monitor those are by the description Thought of taking it to him this week, but a little strange thing happened... Today I got a little time off and decided to check on it again. Tried a cable I assembled myself using a RCA cable, a female scart plug and some RCA to BNC and female to female RCA connectors (for audio). Cut the cable in half and used it like this:

. one yellow end as green (soldered on pin 11, its ground on 9)
. one red as red (pin 15, ground on 13)
. one white as blue (pin 7, ground on 5)
. the other yellow end as sync (pin 19, ground on 17)
. other red and white as audio (pins 2 and 6, ground on 4)

Is it right? Do I need to solder anything else? It didn't work at all with the consoles I tried on RGB (Mega Drive and PC Engine), with and without the ext sync button pressed. However, when I used a japanese Master System on it, I've got some green lines on the screen and the OSD words got normal, without the shaking I mentioned earlier! If I turn it off or change it to component, it gets back to shaking screen again. What could have happened? By the way, consoles through component work OK on it, just with the shaking - that goes for consoles which have true component output like the PS2 and RGB one through scart to component adapter ones too.

Also tried the homemade cable with one of the Ikegami monitors and it didn't work at all. Funny thing is the PS2 using component works flawlessly (may just need some screen calibration, but overall it's OK) but RGB consoles through the converter only give me a green-tinted screen of the game. What could be happening here too?


EDIT: I soldered all the grounds together on the scart pins of the cable and got a different effect on both monitors now. Now they display an off-colour, rolling image of the actual game. On the Sony one, if I turn off the ext sync, the image dissapears, but on the Ikegami it doesn't roll anymore, it's just distorted, off-center and with wrong colors. And on the PVM I've got the not-shaking menu again on both consoles. I know it's related to the sync, but it's weird since both consoles I tried now - Master System and Mega Drive, both japanese - are wired for c-sync, not composite sync, so I wouldn't need a sync stripper, right? What I'm doing wrong now?

[Corredor X]

Sorry for the double post and for the bump, but I just found what was the problem with the cable, I wired it wrong ¬¬ I used pin 19 for the sync, it was pin 20 the right one. Got an amazing image with the Sony monitor with the Mega Drive, superior to the component one I got earlier. Of course it's still shaky, but now I gonna send it to the techinician knowing it's really working RGB-wise The Ikegami one also worked, but the image is a little violet... Just found that the hue control knob is busted, but I hope it can be fixed.