A supergun problem I am having.

Norton finished a project for me which I started about 5 months ago, he sent me the unit which tested okay using his equipment.

My supergun is RGB only, so the internal organs are rather basic.

Using a Cyruss external component transcoder to NTSC TV via Euro SCART lead.

Sound is output via 2 x L+R RCA's bypassing the transcoder straight into the TV.

I do have 3 cabinets, which do not produce this problem I am about to describe with the same PCB's tested.


Okay.

Everything initially works fine, great superb picture you wouldnt believe.. its truly fantastic.

Then after a random amount of time the screen periodically goes black and loses sound for approx 1 second. Then after 1 second the picture comes back and audio is restored. The game is uniterupted and resumes as if you just switched the TV off and on.

I was confused because gameplay resumes, and why does audio and video lose signal when they are taking 2 completely different routes to the TV.

My latest tests involved different PCB's, same problems occurred. Not on the cabs though.

Then last night I tried pulling the plug on the transcoder whilst the game was still running and what was really confusing is that the sound cut out. Just like the symptoms I am experiencing. Although in the AC plug pull out deal audio was restored within one or two seconds to the TV. Since the origonal symptoms of the blackout only last a short time (1 second maybe) I am thinking the problem could be with the transcoder.

Another problem could be with the TV, maybe the sensitivity of the signal is weak or it loses sync or something.

If anyone can explain the randomness of these symptoms I would appreciate it.

Thanks.


Richard.

Sound like it's underpowered. What power supply are you using?

The transcoder has its own dedicated PSU as previously stated.

Norton knows the PSU used inside the gun, some kind of PC PSU.


Although, Norton proclaims he did not have the same issues whilst he was testing the unit using the exact same equipment (different PCB's obviously).


I will test on a different TV in the morning, that will eliminate my TV being the culprit. I wish I had other SCART devices to test the transcoder with but I do not. I am hoping its not the PSU unless its a case of twisting a variable potentiometer (which I think I saw when I opened it up).


Thanks for the reply Dean.

Ah, that's right.

In that case it sounds like a grounding issue. You may be grounding the audio or video through the other source which causes issues with such things.

Other source?

You mean the video is grounded twice through the gun and the transcoder at the same time?

Neorichieb1971 said:

Other source?

You mean the video is grounded twice through the gun and the transcoder at the same time?

Click to expand...

You find that if something in your supergun isn't properly grounded that it will get a feedback from another source through the TV.

Example: Say your S-Video jack wasn't grounded but you have the audio properly grounded and both feeding to the TV. It appears to work but you notice wavy lines in the video. Then you unplug the audio lines and the S-Video picture drops. Seen it happen. Check the grounds.

I still think that it's an issue with the transcoder..

On most tv's the sound goes out if the video goes out.

I thought I common grounded everything. It came to me with seperate grounds comming off of the tv.

PM sent to you norton.

Everything seems fine on my 21" TV which I am using for this project. Maybe my HDTV is sensitive to some kind of fluctuation in the signals or something.


So for right now I am happy with the supergun, it does not seem to be any fault on nortons part.

Thanks norton.

I didn't realize that the first tv was a HDTV.

HDTV's have alot of problems with superguns.

Also, to save a PM..

Did your Phillips have any quality problems in Horizontal mode? I remember you saying that it had problems in TATE mode.

The problem with the Philips is that the right hand side leans inwards from 70% up the right side. When playing any game, even on the ps2 the colors and brightness effect how bad it is. When stable you can just see a bit of black near the top right. That would be slightly more annoying in TATE because thats where your scores would be.

Also, I was dissapointed in the component input quality. Colors just seem to blur into each other. Turning the brightness down really helps though.

On the HDTV everything was prestine. My eyes popped out.


Something else I noticed which has nothing to do with the supergun, is that on Bust a move again EX its impossible to keep all text on the screen. If you move the player one side to the right to get the "Press start" into the screen, player 2's playing area goes off the right side. Will have to see if my cab adjustments can rectify that. I think Taito screwed up though.

I will just mix and match until one day the perfect set up will become mine