Video Out of Gamera High Grade Vision

[Captain Hook]

I have a Gamera High Grade Vision Slot and the Video has gone out.
This machine has the large video screen that surrounds the 3 reels and the video has suddenly gone out on it. When you first turn the power on to the machine the screen lights up and displays the software logo then after a few seconds it goes black. It appears the backlite has gone out. If you look at the screen in a completly dark room you can see the video a little bit but without the backlite its useless.

Anyone have any ideas what could be wrong??

Other than the video the machine appears to work fine.

Thanks much

Captain Hook

[luckydog]

for some reason a lot of people have had this same problem with the Gamera

[Youngjedi]

I have the same problem. I have a spare monitor. Same problem on it as well. I got it to work (both monitors) but when I moved the machine 5 feet to the left, neither monitor worked. I think it's either a cold (broken) solder somewhere to the lights, or something is loose. I have eliminated the problem being in the monitor itself only because I had both working, then when it went out and switched the monitors, both of them didn't work.

If someone finds the solution...Please post it!

[RaymondV]

It sounds like the LCD inverter is bad.
I have a Dell laptop that I have had to replace the inverter on 3 times.
Same symptoms, it will flash on at startup and then go dark.
In a dark room, you could see it very dim.
The inverter should look like one of these in the picture below.
There should be part numbers on it and maybe you might be able to find one somewhere.

[musky]

When mine went bad only half of the screen was lit. Been lots of problems with the High Grade Gamera. Rays answer may help with those with a total screen loss

[new in town]

Darken the room a bit and look at the screen with a flash light from a side angle. Make a couple of spins. If you can see the display and it is full, the LCD is not the problem. The back lighting built in around the LCD screen has gone dark. The Lights are inside the sealed LCD monitor silver frame. See my post (16) on this.

Gamera High Grade Vision Display

It might just be re seating the plugs and ribbon cables around the frame. If not the power supply board may have gone south. That's what happened to mine. If the lights are working, (you should be able to see them from the backside of the screen inside the machine) still try opening up the silver frame and re seating ALL connections, especially the ribbon cables.

There are Wire plug in types and one actual gold flat ribbon cable.

Pat had and extra that he was kind enough to part with along with a reel set.

The LCD on that one was bad but the Power supply for the light was good. Mixed and matched light parts and was able to get mine back up and running.

Ultraman ST uses the same display setup. I originally swapped it out into Gamera and that worked which told me the main boards and wiring in the machine was O.K.

[RaymondV]

I was guessing that there was an inverter on these LCDs.
I assumed they worked on the same principle as a laptop LCD.

[Captain Hook]

Like I said the display lights up for a couple seconds when you first turn it on then it goes black. I did look at it with the room totally dark and it looks like you can see the display a tiny bit but just barely.

I will double check all the plugs again. I did find a circuit board like one of those in the picture above but when I unplugged it the fluorescent light over the reels went out so I guess that's not it.

Thanks again for everyone's help.

Captain Hook